Bummer. Bluebird/Serve seems like such a hassle and only questionably ethical...
You stated you were still in deferred status. You do know you can make payments while still in deferred and drop the balance that your payment will be calculated on when it starts needing to be being paid.
I did this and by the time my loans came up for them to calculate payments etc I only have to pay 131 a month. With the lower payment I can pay extra and get it paid off sooner as it stand now I am already paid thru 11/2014. 
I am looking at it as my own little safety net in the case of job loss or some other possible income hit.
Just an idea for you if you want to try to get the monthly payment down before it is required to be paid.
@longtimelurker wrote:There are at least two ways:
1) Chargesmart.com This takes credit cards for student loans (and utilities/mortgage/car loans) and if your provider is one of those listed, you can pay with credit card. It's easy, but they charge a fee (2.5% or so for mortgages) that will negate most rewards. Good to use for meeting spending requirements though
Have you personally used Chargesmart? If so has your CC posted Chargesmart transactions as regular transactions? My SL's are listed there and I want to make sure there is no additional fee.
@longtimelurker wrote:Don't think the question is really ethical (Open123 had a good post on ethics vs big banks). If you get shut down it would be "not used as intended" or "perk abuse", i.e. using more than they intended of the benefit.
Once you have located a place to buy the goods, it's not much of a hassle, unless you are trying for big amounts (one person ran into trouble with $150K per month spend, but he/she feels that they got the benefits in that month so it was a success). In my area, I eventually found 2 of the nearby 6 CVS stores have a reliable supply, after wasting time visiting the other four every few days.
For some, it is also a game, like collecting higher unneeded CL is for many here. Some of the more aggressive players are getting $30-40K a year profit (if it's worth doing it's worth doing a lot!), whereas if you are going for say $3K a year, more like a hobby than a life changer.
In CVS to buy gift cards? do they count as goods towards the rewards ? if you have any threads talking about this instead of taking your time to explaining it here feel free to link me
@Rhaeny wrote:
@longtimelurker wrote:There are at least two ways:
1) Chargesmart.com This takes credit cards for student loans (and utilities/mortgage/car loans) and if your provider is one of those listed, you can pay with credit card. It's easy, but they charge a fee (2.5% or so for mortgages) that will negate most rewards. Good to use for meeting spending requirements though
Have you personally used Chargesmart? If so has your CC posted Chargesmart transactions as regular transactions? My SL's are listed there and I want to make sure there is no additional fee.
after this thread I started readying on the chargesmart site, atm cant find how they make money or the charges for us customers
@longtimelurker wrote:
@Rhaeny wrote:
@longtimelurker wrote:There are at least two ways:
1) Chargesmart.com This takes credit cards for student loans (and utilities/mortgage/car loans) and if your provider is one of those listed, you can pay with credit card. It's easy, but they charge a fee (2.5% or so for mortgages) that will negate most rewards. Good to use for meeting spending requirements though
Have you personally used Chargesmart? If so has your CC posted Chargesmart transactions as regular transactions? My SL's are listed there and I want to make sure there is no additional fee.
Yes, have used it for mortgage payments and utilities, with both Chase and Citi cards (to meet spend requriements). Both cases went through as normal purchases rather than cash advances. Other posts around saying the same thing.
Uh oh....might have found a way to get more rewards!
One more question, is there a fee for Chargesmart? What do you do, put a certain amount of money into your account from your CC and then pay from that?
culture wrote:
In CVS to buy gift cards? do they count as goods towards the rewards ? if you have any threads talking about this instead of taking your time to explaining it here feel free to link me
Search for Vanilla Reloads as a starting point, and threads on Walmart+gift cards with pin. Before doing this, people need to research to avoid surprises and understand the risk.
@longtimelurker wrote:
@Rhaeny wrote:Uh oh....might have found a way to get more rewards!
One more question, is there a fee for Chargesmart? What do you do, put a certain amount of money into your account from your CC and then pay from that?
No! Not a good way to get rewards. This is a commercial company and charge high fees, as I said in my original post, negating any rewards.
One complaint about the Chargesmart site is that the fee structure isn't very transparent. For a mortgage for example, they show a very reasonable 4.95 fee
But, on the last page, they add a fee for "large charge insurance" or something, and this is where the 2.5% comes from. So in my first case, it went from $4.95 to $60, which is very different.
But there isn't an account, you just enter the credit card number and they charge it. If you need to quickly meet the minimum spend to get a bonus for a new credit card, or to reach a particular mileage level say, then the fee can be fine. But certainly not for monthly use, unless you have a credit card with an extra good cashback on everything!
Okay gotcha....I had to go back and read everything. Thanks for explaining it again...LOL!!!
I was so excited thinking that I found a way to get more rewards that 
.