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Justice@studentloanjustice.org
Massachusetts
The following are testimonials submitted to this site. To tell your story, please go here. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Witheld $21,000 IN DEBTS as of 6/96. Ballooned
to $46,000 thru "consolidation" techniques
of Sallie Mae, USA Funds, DCS and DOE as of 02/02.
I dont undersatnd how a defaulted loan can both
be owned and paid off by Sallie Mae and DCS. They
were the same loans! By the time these are paid
off I will have paid over $280,000. I have paid
$11,000 in the last four years and the principal
hasnt even moved by $1000. This is insane and
criminal. Their profits are criminal and their
tactics should be illegal. Anthony I worked from day one, freshman
year to pay my education. No parental help! They have trashed my credit and life. I am locked. My wife has breast cancer and this has crippled us. I am extremely responsible and pay my bills diligently! Something has got to be done! The wall street journal, I believe in Jan of 05, had an AIDS victum on the front page who was dying. He took a small loan. They boosted it up, told him to get rid of his cats and car etc. This attorney at Harvard, Elizabeth Warren, was in the article talking about how incredible the goverment collectors were. I contacted her and she simply said to call the Mass bar. No attorneys want to deal with this. Something has to be done! ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Witheld I pursued college in the hopes of finding myself somewhere successful in my older age. I was an excellent student in high school and received a fair amount of scholarships. I graduated college in 2003 with a BA and about $40,000 in debt.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Witheld I graduated college in 1997 with
approximately $13,000 in student loans.
In 1998, I started a business and requested loan
deferrment. Sallie Mae, the USA group, Chase,
and Citibank had a cascade of loans. I believe
nine in total. The deferrment was not recorded
by all the loan service companies and many went
into default. I made a lump sum payment
in 2002 of $21,000 for all the interest and penalties.
They are all paid off through collection agencies,
yet my credit is destroyed. I have been
working for eight years to repair my credit and
the incident has hurt my business and career;
the reason I went to college in the first place. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Michelle My name is Michelle and I graduated
from Wagner College, in 2004 with a BA in Marketing.
I graduated with $99,476.00 in total private loans
from Sallie Mae. Since graduating I have already
had to push back my loans twice, both times having
to pay $150 dollars for a forbearance fee, because
I could not afford to pay rent, utilities, transportation
costs, food and my loans every month while I was
making 30,000 dollars a year, living in NY. Because
I could not afford the cost of living because
of my loans I was forced to move back home to
avoid paying rent, and now the only job I have
been able to get is a part time job as a production
assistant, making 8 dollars an hour. I make a
total of about 800 dollars a month, and my student
loans themselves are 1000 a month. I am living
at home with my parents, and I have been forced
to share a car with them. Because my parents work
as well as I, I cannot get a second job at this
time because I can't afford to get the! ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Witheld I took out 3 loans in 1984--two for 1,000, one for 2,000. I went in to the peace corps and deferred, then tried to consolidate my loans. During the time they were consolidating them, I thought they were still deferred. 3 months later I was told to avoid default to pay the total, which was impossible. I finally got two paid off and paid half of the defaulted one. Suddenly I was told to pay in total again. I couldn't. I worked with a lawyer who set up a payment schedule with another lawyer. Then I started to get charged again for one of the loans I had already paid off. When I said I was ready to go to court, I got a notice that to appeal I needed to show up in San Francisco (I lived in Boston) in a week. I just gave up. Fast forward to the Clinton administration, and the loans actually got turned over to the department of education and they were easy to deal with--I said I'd love to set up a payment schedule but noone would let me. By now I owed 6,000, but I told them two had been paid off, could they find the loan. I started paying $100.00 a month. I finally received a response and was told they could not locate any paperwork on my loans from the private agency. (I still have that). I stopped receiving the monthly payments. I just said I couldn't agree to a loan I didn't owe, and always stipulated that there was a least 2,000 I hadn't paid back. Fast forward to the Bush administration. Early on first term, I started getting phone calls from private collection agencies. Now owing $11,000. Again I offered to pay $4,000 if I could be assured the interest from the time they told me they had lost my paperwork would not accrue. Again I was told to go to San Francisco. I contacted my senator, who got some response on the loans, but again it was inaccurate. At one point someone called my house 13 times in one day, threatened me, and screamed at me. I reported that and it stopped. I am now going to the law clinic at our university.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Dave In 1992, I was living in Los Angeles
and I was tired of being told I wasn't qualified
for jobs. Deciding to return to school to
finish my degree, I applied for admission to UMASS-Boston
and I spoke with the financial aid office to learn
about payment options. I told them I had
no money at all but desperately wanted to complete
my degree. The option presented to me was to apply
for a loan, which I did. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Diane As a parent I thought I dotted my
I's and crossed my T's to find the best student
loan program for my kids. After my first son graduated
with $70,000 in debt,(parent loans) we discovered
this loans couldnt be consolidated into a fix
rate. A graduate from Yale Univ a Ivy league
school mislead us regarding these loans. So, knowing
my twins, son & daug would be starting college
the following year,it was suggested I contact
Sallie Mae, which I did. I was told that the 'signature
loan' program would allow students to consolidated
to a fix rate after graduation. Great, so this
is the avenue I took for my next two children
attending college to prevent them from going through
what their brother went through. Sallie Mae told
me if I co-signed their loans for the first two
years it would reduce the interest rates at the
time the loan was disbursed. I did thinking it
would put them in a better position once they
graduated. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Julie I feel as though I am never going
to recover from this student loan situation.
This will be my end. I have over 90 thousand
dollars in loans, and I don't even have a 4 year
degree. 2-years at an out-of-state school
did me in. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Peter In 1992 I graduated with honors
and was headed to graduate school. I took a position
at a psychiatric hospital where I was injured.
I had taken a female patient out of harms way
because she was being abused by staff who were
later charged with violating her human and civil
rights. I was assualted by the staff afterward
and incurred a spinal injury that lasted for over
five years. 50% of my body was in excruciating
pain, I became indigent and homeless.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Jennifer I took out a thirteen thousand dollor loan from Sallie Mae in 1991. I started repayments in 1994 at 7.75% interest. In 1996 I had to file bankruptsy. All debts I had were wiped out except Sallie Mae, I was not able to pay on a regular basis and extended the loan through several differant periods of forebearance and deferments. My loan ballooned to over $17,000 at present. Often I could not get through to Sallie Mae when I needed extensions and they had no sympathy at all. I saw the program on 60 minutes and felt very angry that Sallie Mae has taken advantage of so many students! This not right what Sallie Mae has done and I want to fight back! ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Robert I am married to a woman with a severe handicap. Because of this we have always been a single income household. To keep our heads above water, I decided to attend NETTS: New England Tractor Trailer Training school. I was given a student loan for this. I have since lost everything because of it. Our house was foreclosed on: our vehicle was repossesed: I have been threatened with both wage garnishment and income-tax garnishment. I had to agree to allow them to take electronic payments every month. Frankly, I cannot afford the amount of money they are taking from me: and if my wife and I do not end-up homeless again ( which we were for a while) it will be a miracle. A collection agency called DCS keeps taking the monthly payments from me, but nothing comes off the balance of my loan. My wife has bone-cancer and I really wish someone would do something about the student loan industry. As a single-income household I need a lower monthly payment. My student loan has already cost me just about everything. We have a choice between eating, payimng insurance co-pays, and paying for prescriptions or paying Sallie Mae. Some choice, that is. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ UMASS Sophomore I happened upon this website as I was searching for help to finance my daughter's continuing college education. She is straight A and serious about her studies. I was determined to borrow the money to help her. After much disappointment dealing with the financial aid office and frustration over trying to make sense of FAFSA, I decided this game of you can afford it even though you can't was a dangerous one indeed. I am grateful for the stories shared on this website. They helped me decide to find other options for my daughter's future outside of the US education system. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Glenn From 1990-1994, I borrowed, as an adult and "non-traditional" (older) student monies to attend law school, support my family (I married in 1991), and take the bar after graduation. I attended Northeastern Law for the first year, then transferred to George Mason School of Law, to finish in 1994. I passed the Virginia State Bar on the first attempt in 1994 after attending a bar review course. In the years 1993-1994 there was a record national glut on attorneys, esp. severe in the NoVA-D.C. area where I then resided. I could not get a legal job, not even a temp. or part-time. I had career status in the federal gov't - left the fed civil service to go to school - but there was a hiring freeze and I could not get in. Despite the so-called Clinton boom, I could not find work. - to be continued. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Glenn Back in 2003, the school, Advanced Centers of Technology and Training (ACTT), in Quincy, Massachusetts had closed before I could attend. Sallie Mae had sent me forms to fill out because of the schools abrupt closing. I filled out all the paperwork and sent them what they needed. Then the Department of Education had sent me forms also to fill out, which I did and sent them to Richard Pedro, who at the time worked at the DOE and who was the contact person. After I had sent him all the forms, I stopped getting phones calls regarding the matter and the bills for the loan stopped coming. I did not hear from anyone from then on. I recently went to a mortgage company, to try and purchase a home for my fiancé and I, and when my credit report came back it showed up as being deferred until April 22 of 2006. This is now over $16,000 and is doing a number to my credit. Not only is the loan coming up, but it is on there twice one from Sallie Mae Services and the other from Sallie Mae. I called Sallie Mae and the Department of Education, number of times before I could get someone to actually listen to my situation, before they told me "Too Bad". I was told by Sallie Mae they are no longer dealing with it and that I would have to contact the Department of Education. I finally spoke with Mary Jayne Faye. She first also told me there was nothing I could do and that I would have to pay the loan. This confused me, since it keeps being deferred since 2003. I again contacted Mary Jayne Faye and she had told me that I didn't reply to certain letters, she had dates of when the letters where sent out when I spoke to her. Since I kept the paperwork, I have proof that I replied to all letters I received. I once again contacted Mary Jayne Fay and she finally agreed to have me send her the responses and paperwork, by fax that she had said I did not send in. It has been about two weeks now, I had called Mary and left a couple of messages which were never returned. I called her on April, 20, 2006 and she had answered the phone and I spoke to her briefly, she had said that when she has time she will review my paperwork and get back to me. Also, after many calls with Sallie Mae, I finally got them to reactivate my Sallie Mae On-Line Account. I am not sure why it was disabled and why they gave me such a hard time to reactive it. When I mean a hard time, I mean it took me days of calling them. I really got the run around then, but it did happen. Now that I can check on the loan, it once again has been deferred till September of 2006. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Carla Let me start after having yet another frustrating start to my semester due to Sallie Mae's "customer Unservice employees." Ever since I had taken out a $3,571.43 it has come to 4,294.64 in 4 years and that was with a fight. Let me tell you the countless times I have had to resend and resend an Inschool Forbearance form signed and stamped by the registrar's office of my school during the beginning of each semester.I am getting to the point I want to cry, they call me night and day even after I send the forms on saturday and Sunday morning and well into the night and all through the week they call around the clock. The funny thing is the Customer Unservice Monster People seem to take it so personally like you have done direct harm to them when you haven't paid your loan (EVEN THOUGH I HAVE DEFERED IT FROM BEING IN SCHOOL a million times, AHHH!!!)What is wrong with them they never have any correct records of my information on when and for what school ( since I transfered) I'm calling about. If you tell them your calling about Spring smester of 2007 they start refering to 2003 2005 who knows what they hear. They don't seem to understand when you explain nicely that there must be a mistake and I end up yelling because they speak so rudely to me and strees it's my responsibility to pay. I'M BEING RESPONSIBLE AND DEFERING MY LOAN ON TIME AND I'M NOT SUPPOSEED TO BE PAYING WHILE IN SCHOOL FULL TIME. But obviously they seem to think they are a loan company for some other industry ( not student school semester schedule) They seem to take it upon themselves to say your wrong. Well my mother and grandmother co-signed my loan and they are harrassed daily. My grandmother never had a late bill in her life and they scare the everything out of her and make her so nervous she doesn't know what to do. My mother call all the times explains to them I am in school we send the forms continuously and we are part of the national clearinghouse of schools that reports full time status to the loan companies. My mom gets no where they are rude arrogant and have put a not on my account that she rants and raves, UMMM I wonder why she is ranting this has been going on since 2003 and they keep charging me for no reason. I need major help before I loose all hope and trust in the education system and these loan sharks because it becoming more about them making money off of students and our families than getting through the education system. Soon avergage and poor families especially will have little chance in getting an education unless they get scholarships and grants and not all can manage to get that. I'm so confused and upset I could explode from all the steam inside.
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