Upromise, a part of Sallie Mae has started a contest for 10,000$ towards education called “tuition tales”. The contest is for people to enter a 30 second video clip on one of three categories (saving for college, in college now & paying it back). The prizes are for 10,000$ and various runner up prizes like 250$ gift cards. Man there could be some funny entries poking at the whole student loan establishment so I will start jotting down some ideas. The contest ends May third. 10,000$ would be a nice chunk out off the student loan yoke.
This is the smallest loan I have with Sallie Mae. When I first started paying this back the interest was over 18% now it is at the incredibly low (sarcastic) rate of 13.125. I have not been paying much more than the minimum, maybe a little here and there but I have recently found that that did absolutely nothing due to how Sallie Mae handles the payments.
This is a sub loan as they are grouped together and disbursed when I pay them. They call them billing groups. So after a few years I have made no dent in the principal. What really gets me is looking at the payment history and seeing 0’s in the applied to principal column (which includes the capitalized interest I believe so that seems a little misleading). So kids… this is what happens then you get a private unsubsidized loan and don’t make the payments when you are going to school.
About a year ago I could not get into the Manage Your Loans website without a email address on file. Since there was no way I was going to give them a real address and I had to have something to put in their system I made up a nice one for their records… I make up email address all the time because.. seriously everyone wants your email address and it is almost never a benefit to you to hand it out. Unless you like to get junk mail or spam from a company like Sallie Mae. All you need to do is put “something”@”something”.com and it will pass almost every checker that makes sure it is a valid email address. Here is mine.
Typical of Sallie Mae, they ask me to enroll in online billing ( I refuse to give them my email because they have lost all email privileges as far as I am concerned) or Automatic debit (they also don’t deserve access to my bank account info because they are untrustworthy) every time I log into their website. They must think I will eventually fold and change my mind. No this will not happen. By Sallie Mae asking me every time this makes me think it benefits them in some way so I am even more unlikely to do it. In fact this makes me hate this company even more its all the little things that add up to this crappy company.
I came across this trailer. A few things I did not know on the list of protections that student borrowers are not entitled to. Some of these I did know about others I don’t know what they are like the usury laws.
Bankruptcy protection
The right to refinance
Fair debt & collection practices
Adherence to usury laws
Truth in lending requirements.
Statutes of limitations
I will watch it because I am a documentary junkie, but it has a hint of the current leftist music (characteristically at the end when you fall to your knees at the insight they have just provided…how cheesy) so I hope their solution is not to forgive all loans or something that just does not work in the real world or opens a Pandora’s box.
I sometimes pay a little extra on my student loan and I never noticed this before but what Sallie does is take the Money and hold it for you and then use it to pay next month’s payment. Should you pay them extra again they would hold the larger amount for the next payment. Now times this by how many people would pay a little over not realizing they are playing a little shell game and they could make a ton of money just off the interest of holding your money for you (how nice of them).
I am sending them an extra check this month with the account and specific loan number and instructions to apply to interest & principal. I wonder if they can handle that…
I have been looking at Sallie Mae student loan complaints for a long time and this is one of the most original. The poster is trying to get people to donate to help get her out of her abusive relationship with "Sallie". I am not sure if the actual .02 cent donation would work out as I am thinking it probably cost some type of fee to accept the 2 cents. She only needs 7.5 million people to pay off her student loans.
Seriously every time I go to the Sallie Mae Manage Your Loans website I have to tell them their contact information is correct.. For the longest time they would not let me proceed without a valid email address and after months of them spamming me I gave them a fake email address.. but not just any fake email address it was a fake worded in such a way I could let them really know how I feel.
