So Annoying I Just Had to Blog About It

This could be kind of a long winded one. Basically here's the background: Joel has a massive amount of student loans. He's on a graduated payment plan, meaning for the first 48 months of repayment, he paid one amount, then the payment goes up for a certain number of months, then up a little more, then remains flat for like another 20 years. His student loans are serviced through Sallie Mae, and they advertise that if the first 48 payments are made on time, they will drop the interest rate 1%.

Joel started paying his loans back when we moved to Charlotte, so just over 48 months ago now. So he called to find out, were they dropping his interest rate after making 48 on-time payments? The answer he got was No, because his account showed a delinquency in 2005.

Joel was not paying his loans in 2005, he was under an in-school deferment at the time. It took him about a month of repeatedly calling Sallie Mae for them to finally acknowledge that yes, he was in deferment in 2005 and there should have been no delinquency recorded against his account from back then. But then they said, your 49th payment was delinquent, so while we would have given you the 1% interest rate reduction, we would have taken it away again anyway because of that delinquency.

Joel's 49th payment was made on time, it just accidentally was for the exact same amount as the first 48 payments, instead of about $100 more, because of the aforementioned graduated repayment plan which kicked in that month, and I had been under the impression that it kicked in the following month.

To which Joel's response was... Yeah but if you'd actually given me the 1% reduction like you admit now you should have, the payment I sent in for that 49th payment was actually too high, not too low! (Because a 1% interest rate reduction on Joel's enormous principal balance is a savings of a couple hundred dollars a month in interest). To which the reply was.... Uhhhh.... I'll need to check with my supervisor and get back to you in a couple days.

Again.

In case anyone from Sallie Mae is reading this, you guys all suck.