I hate you, Federal Direct (Student) Loan Servicing company. I hate you with the fire of an acid reflux sufferer that has just had Indian food without Beano, a bottle of Pepcid and a roll of TUMS. I hate the scripts that your customer service people use and their sometimes snarky attitudes, and this is coming from a New Yorker. I hate that your calling tree makes me punch in three different sets of numbers which I then I have to re-verify with the live customer service drone that I know is only following a dumb-ass script that you give them. I hate your archaic payment options. Who the heck owns a check book anymore?!!! I haven’t had once since 1999 when I was 21.
I hate that my interest rate is locked in and that I’ve been paying you for a decade now but that I’m still getting the shaft. I hate a lot of things about you, but the worst is that I hate how they’re screwing me over and ratcheting up the interest that you are collecting from me just because you can and there is nothing that I can do about it.
I’m not given to rants. Okay, okay maybe one or two where my tenant from hell is concerned, but since you’ve been doing this to me for years, I feel like Jennifer Lopez in that horrible film, Enough, and I’m ready to kick some ass. I feel like you’ve slammed my head against the wall so many times that it’s all I can do to not scream at the customer service person that answers the phone and gives me the same scripted answer that tells me nothing at all while smacking their gum in my ears.
I’m not pissed off for no reason. I’m pissed off because I sent you three electronic payments and despite my repeated phone calls, you refuse to correct how you’ve allocated them. You took your regular payment of $207 on February 21. I don’t care about that because I know that 90% of it will go to interest, but I’m trying to be responsible and pay your ass off, so I sent you a payment of $1,000 and another payment of $6,500. I called you long before sending the payment to ask that they be allocated to one loan and not split between the loans thereby maximizing the interest that you get to collect from my wage slave self. I was told that you would be able to do that, but to call again once you received my payment to confirm how I wanted the payments reallocated. I called you on February 24 when one payment cleared and again on February 25 when the second payment cleared. The standard 5-7 business days was what I was told that it would take to accurately reflect the payment. No problem, I’m a patient woman – or I can pretend to be.
Here it is now March 11 and you still have not reallocated my payments. It’s been a full 12 business days since my original phone call but you won’t shift my money around and I know that it’s to let you keep me in bondage for much, much longer. My loan that should be around $2,000 is still above $7,000 and I can’t stand it anymore. I’m sick of this stupid loan affecting my credit report and score. I’m going to pop a blood vessel. I curse the day that I met you. I should have gone to a community college and never accepted your offer because 10 years later, I can’t divorce your ass. You just won’t let me go.
Well dammit, no more alimony for you. I vow to get rid of you as soon as humanly possible since you’re already collected more than my original loan amount in interest. Gosh how the young is naive. I’ll make sure that my future family will never have to meet you…and I want my money back! Stay out of this mess that I got myself into with the student loan people. Find out how much you can afford to spend with this student loan calculator.
Update 10/26/2011: As if you needed more reasons to hate Direct Student Loans, they have a new site which is just now start to work properly. You can now allocate extra payment exactly as needed without going through the headache that I had. But it wouldn’t be the government if they didn’t make it hard for you. First, it’s hard to find (the new site is at MyEdAccount.com) and second, you have to register all over again. After jumping hurdles I will give them credit. The new site seems better than the other.
This post was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance #300 Pi Day Edition hosted by the Magical Penny.
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