Oh, CAs - April Fool's was on Monday!

[InvincibleSummer3]

Y'all may be the only people who will understand my need to vent this...

I finished rehabbing a Perkins loan 3/15. Have been waiting, with some impatience, for the loan to go back to the school, get changed on my CRs, all of that. Hadn't heard anything as of last week, so I called the collection agency to follow up. They assured me the loan was in process of being transferred, and would touch base with me this week.

So just now I get a phone call from the CA, who tells me that my loan has been transferred but they need to set up payment arrangements. I explain that I rehabbed the loan, so why would I need arrangements?Well, this debt is for tuition. This is news to me; been repaying them since June 2012 and only now do I find out there's a separate debt? Well, it's not a separate debt, it's the loan and tuition mixed. So how much is the debt (I'm thinking it can't be much, since the lion's share should have been the loan).  She repeats that she needs payment arrangements on this account, which is $1800. Exactly the size of my Perkins loan. I'm gobsmacked - how did I have an additional $1800 debt and no one ever contacted me about it? She repeats that they did contact me, that's why I had previous payment arrangements. I ask, finally, because at this point I'm just incredulous: "Did I not just rehab a loan, then? If my payments were not to rehab a Perkins loan, then what have I been paying the last ten months?" She then went to find a supervisor....long story short, somehow the loan didn't get transferred and showed up back in her system accidentally. She could not recognize the error, so was all set to just set up a payment plan all over again. Did not seem to think giving me a heart attack like that was a big deal at all.

Moral of the story - THANK HEAVENS for these forums. I find collection agents to be somewhat intimidating, and there was a time when I would not have pressed her for details. Before coming here, I had no idea what my rights were, or how to argue when a collection agency made an error.. If it wasn't for the folks here I would be in tears right now because I had just uncovered another $2k worth of debt.

Ok, now off to go have a coffee and calm down. My blood pressure was through the roof there for a few minutes.

[kjel]

I would have been pissed. Further proof that most people working in collections are shortsighted and narrowminded.

[InvincibleSummer3]

Oh, when it rains it pours! So, another chapter in the saga of this One Perkins Loan:

I was due to finish rehab in March, and right before that I noticed via USAA CMS  that I had two tradelines showing on EQ for this one loan. Very weird, same open date, same balance due, same CA listed. So I sent the CA a DV, and mentioned that I had one debt/loan (that I was in process of rehabbing) but it was showing twice. When they asked for documentation, I even sent it, since I knew via the NSLDS that there was only ever one Perkins loan.

Like the Highlander - There Can Be Only One. This, I know.

Right after I get off the phone today with the bewildering customer service rep from the collection agency, the phone rings. It's someone from the financial office of my alma mater.  She says that she received a copy of my DV letter from the CA, agrees that this is mistakenly reporting twice, and advises me to simply open a dispute with EQ. She has no idea how to go about changing the way they report, frankly. (??)  Well, okay - so I go to open a dispute, only to find that I can't tell which one is supposed to be deleted. Because on EQ, there's one from the University, and one from the CA. CA is now reporting Pays as Agreed, even though it's not actually out of rehab just yet, and the University is reporting all the delinquencies.

My options are thusly:

• Dispute the CA tradeline, which is now looking a great deal better.
• Dispute the University tradeline, which looks like hell but once this loan is transferred back to the school could actually end up being updated to something nice.
• Wait until the rehab is finalized and/or until one of these tradelines looks CLEARLY like the real, actual, fresh-out-of-rehab tradeline. Then dispute the other.

Waiting is making me twitchy, though. And I have very little faith that the CA is going to get their behinds in gear and transfer the loan back....Any recommendations? If this were YOUR Choose Your Own Adventure story, what would you pick?

[kjel]

Well from what I understand, the university as the original creditor can report it up until the time it was transferred to the collection agency. Of course, since you are in the middle of rehab which means it will go back to the school that complicates matters. I guess I would ask some questions around how the tradeline should report after the loan goes back to the university so you understand what it's supposed to look like and which one will be reporting.

If you are 6+ months into the rehab, I'd personally leave it alone and sort it out after that was finished otherwise it's kind of like changing the tires on a moving car.

[InvincibleSummer3]

I agree. After a few hours of letting it marinate in my mind - I think I'll hold off on disputing anything for the time being.

A thought though: my final rehab payment date was March 15th, and I'm thinking that this CA is a dang train wreck so the odds are not good that the loan will get transferred before April 15. Should I plan on making a payment so there isn't a missed month?

[kjel]

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@InvincibleSummer3 wrote:

I agree. After a few hours of letting it marinate in my mind - I think I'll hold off on disputing anything for the time being.

A thought though: my final rehab payment date was March 15th, and I'm thinking that this CA is a dang train wreck so the odds are not good that the loan will get transferred before April 15. Should I plan on making a payment so there isn't a missed month?

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If you get close to your next due date and haven't heard from the new servicer or been able to track down who it is, I'd make a payment. Once I got picked up they gave me a month forebearance for them to process the IBR request.

[InvincibleSummer3]

Update: so after several back & forth calls, I figured out that apparently my paperwork had gone to the wrong department TWICE. Once resulting in the statement "Well, ma'am, I don't think your student loan was actually rehabbed. Why don't we just make some payment arrangements and you can just pay it off through us?" I finally got in touch with someone who could help on Monday the 8th.

They have assured me that they NOW have the paperwork en route, the last rehab payment has posted, and I do not need to make an additional payment. The wait is killing me, though. This is my last rehabbed loan, so after this I will be back in good standing on all five of these little buggers.

[InvincibleSummer3]

Man, this Perkins loan thing just gets better and better.

I finally called the school....I used to work there, and thought I might be able to call in a "friend of a friend" relationship favor. The school got the servicer to clear me to make payments, and since prior experience has shown that this gooses the system a little - I went ahead and made my first payment to the servicer May 1.

No end in sight on the update to my CR, though. The loan still shows as defaulted, NSLDS shows a default, and the last payment to the CA was 3/15 so I am all kinds of annoyed at the wait. I'm normally fairly mild; if I order something in a restaurant and they get the order wrong? I never ever speak up, or send it back. But boy howdy, am I getting more assertive by the minute over here.