Advice on my Sallie Mae Private Loan Situation

[neverrain]

Greetings,

I would appreciate some advice on my specific situation, as I am unsure exactly how to proceed at this point.

A while back, I took out several Sallie Mae private loans to pay for school (I say several because I guess they opened a new one for each semester).  These are spread out with 6 opened between 2003 and 2004 and another 3 opened in 2006.  Together, these loans totaled about $10,000. Now, after interest and all the other fees, about $27,000.  A couple years ago, I attempted to work with Sallie Mae, who referred me to a CA to try and make payments towards these loans.  Sallie Mae wouldn't even take my phone call.  The CA only offered me a settlement of something huge, in the $20k neighborhood, which I didn't/don't have.  They refused to offer me manageable payments for the loans, or if they did it was something really high, like $1200 a month, which I couldn't really afford.  Since then, I have heard nothing about these loans.  A recently pulled TransUnion report showed the Date of Last Activity on these loans as November 2008.

Since then I have obtained an Orchard Card (2 years), a secured Visa through my credit union (1 year), and more recently a CapitalOne card, and a Barclay's Apple Card.  All have perfect repayment history with nothing wrong at all.  I also have a goverment student loan (~$10000) with the DoE which is current without issue and being paid monthly.  I realized today when browsing my credit report that the secured Visa was a year old this month, so I called my credit union to see if I could unsecure it.  They did a hard pull on my credit report and denied it based on these Sallie Mae loans.  I explained to her that Sallie Mae refused to work with me on the loans and there was nothing I could do about them.  She explained that Sallie Mae is still updating these loans on my credit report and adding interest to them.  I have read several conflicting statements saying that private student loans are not treated like goverment loans in the case that they would drop off after 7 years and some saying they dont.  Statute of limitations in California for written contracts limits legal action to 4 years, which ends later this year based on the DOLA of 11/08.

I am kind of at a loss on what to do here.  Every part of me wants to obligate my debts and repay this loan, but at this point I am unsure of what could happen.  I don't want to make a payment to Sallie Mae and reset the dates if the loans will drop off my report in another 3 years.  I definitely wouldn't want to reset the SOL either.  I want to fix all the issues on my credit report and this situation is hanging over my head.  I wish I could find a place that will loan me money to pay this off.  I have no problem making payments of ~$500/month to make this right, but I don't want to screw myself even further doing so.

Any advice?

[neverrain]

Bump.

[laz98]

I don't have answers to all of your questions, but I will try to help a little

Your payments won't reset the length of time that something will report on your credit reports.  I am not sure about the private/federal loan thing, as I have avoided private student loans like the plague.  I would look up information for your state about what can or cannot reset the SOL.

[neverrain]

Are you saying that if the reporting for this drops off my credit at 7.5 years, beginning to make payments on this won't be reported after?  Do you know where specifically I could look something like that up (regarding SOL reset)?  I seem to find nothing but conflicted information on Google.  I did find this though:

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I don't think the account was ever brought current since it went into default, which means Imay already be outside of SOL.  I guess only an attourney could tell me for sure =/

[laz98]

If you start to make payments on it, then they should report just fine.  I meant if you were to just say to heck with it, & there was no activity at all on it, then eventually it would just drop off.  But if you try to make it current again, then eventually it could become a positive tradeline.

I know there's a sticky around here somewhere that gives more information about the SOL of different states, but I'm not sure where exactly.

[Anonymous]

An option might be to consolidate your private student loans and get some new terms with another company?

There aren't many private student loan consolidators out there right now, but I recently went out and looked since I graduated ~1yr ago with a private sallie mae student loan that had a 12% interest rate. The best consolidation offer I found was cuStudentLoans. 

[neverrain]

I would love to go the consolidation route, but I can't seem to find anyone that will do that with a defaulted loan (makes sense).  Plus, I have been out of school a while now.  Do you think they would still work with me?  I could probably get a co-signer for the loan if I needed.  The original amount of the loans is roughly $10k and I would love to make a payment and work something out to clear the defaulted tradeline, but I don't want to just start making payments on it and make it current.

It will drop off if 7.5 years regardless?  Positives stay 10 years no?  I don't want this to bite me in the ass in a few years when I decide tobuy a house, and if that 10 years is past even I have no idea with mortgage lends can see of my past credit.  Even if I don't see it, I don't know if they still can.

[laz98]

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@neverrain wrote:

I would love to go the consolidation route, but I can't seem to find anyone that will do that with a defaulted loan (makes sense).  Plus, I have been out of school a while now.  Do you think they would still work with me?  I could probably get a co-signer for the loan if I needed.  The original amount of the loans is roughly $10k and I would love to make a payment and work something out to clear the defaulted tradeline, but I don't want to just start making payments on it and make it current.

It will drop off if 7.5 years regardless?  Positives stay 10 years no?  I don't want this to bite me in the ass in a few years when I decide tobuy a house, and if that 10 years is past even I have no idea with mortgage lends can see of my past credit.  Even if I don't see it, I don't know if they still can.

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Yes, positives stay 10 years (or longer, if you are lucky).  That's why I said IF you don't pursue any activity at all on the account, it will eventually just drop off.  Collection activity, however, can continue, regardless of whether they can sue you or not.

I want to say that a long time ago, I read somewhere on here that if you are buying a house over $XXXX, then mortgage lenders can see more of your history, but I'm not positive, so I don't want to state that as a fact.  You could try a search for it.

[neverrain]

Yea, I can't find any mention of credit length with mortgage lenders here or on Google, so if someone has the link handy, please do share.

So I am honestly at a cross roads here.  Contact from any collection agency has seemed to have dropped off in the last year or two for these loans.  I am judging SOL based on the date of last activity listed on my Transunion report, but if this is based on the date of default (since the loan was never really brought current - how can I verify this?), SOL could have expired by now, which may be why I am hearing nothing about this from the CA.  I want to be sure that it is out of SOL though before I contact them and talk to them about settling for less and possible removal of bad lines.

I currently have a DoE loan with about $10k remaining that is current and fine (rehabbed from Sallie Fed loans) that I will likely just dump whatever I can into to pay it off.  I would like to get rid of this private business, but there is no way I am paying 250% of the original borrowed amount.  That **bleep** is theft.

[neverrain]

Here are the two trade lines that this is concerning.  There doesn't appear to be an original posted loan amount.  Also, the DOLA appears to be changing as well - I previously recorded 11/08 for these, now they are showing 2010?  How can I find out the exact date of last default or the point at which SOL begins?

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