Read through the entire thread. Going to start posting my journey here.
OC was Sallie Mae. Lots of original loans, consolidated in 2005 or 2006. Laid off from my job in 2009. I stopped paying on my student loans first.
Was expecting a nice 20111 tax return (for no kids, no mortgage, single) this year, and filed early. It was intercepted -- yay tax offset. 
Called Sallie Mae immediately. They would not talk to me. Was passed to USA Funds. They would not talk to me. Was then passed to Allied Interstate (collection agency).
They went through my income and expenses and set a reasonable monthly payment. Asked if I could pay 50% of my debt. I laughed in their face and said no. Asked if I could pay 25%. I told the woman on the phone I couldn't pay ANY percent, especially since my tax return was taken, and she backed off.
Paid two months in February. I've made 5 payments so far. Not sure if this will be a 9 payment program or a 9 month program, but I'm not too worried. I received a letter last month that I'm no longer on the tax offset list. Awesome! Everything they've said so far has been true. Even though Allied Interstate has some really nasty reviews online, I've yet to have a problem with them.
We'll see what happens toward the end of the year. I'm not expecting miracles, but it would be nice to have the negatives removed. They are my most recent.
Both Sallie Mae and USA Funds are reporting the debt on my credit report. I'm not going to do anything about it until I'm rehabbed.
A ton of (non-student loan) late payments hit the 2 year mark last month, and the rest will this month. The student loans aren't currently reporting late on Equifax, which is my lucky break. I'm planning on buying a new car in November or December, and I plan to finance through USAA. They check Equifax which is most likely going to be my best score.
Really want this ordeal to be over with! I feel better now that I'm paying on it.
Starting Score: 1/19/11 TU: 577 EQ: 541
apandabear wrote:Read through the entire thread. Going to start posting my journey here.
OC was Sallie Mae. Lots of original loans, consolidated in 2005 or 2006. Laid off from my job in 2009. I stopped paying on my student loans first.
Was expecting a nice 20111 tax return (for no kids, no mortgage, single) this year, and filed early. It was intercepted -- yay tax offset.
Called Sallie Mae immediately. They would not talk to me. Was passed to USA Funds. They would not talk to me. Was then passed to Allied Interstate (collection agency).
They went through my income and expenses and set a reasonable monthly payment. Asked if I could pay 50% of my debt. I laughed in their face and said no. Asked if I could pay 25%. I told the woman on the phone I couldn't pay ANY percent, especially since my tax return was taken, and she backed off.
Paid two months in February. I've made 5 payments so far. Not sure if this will be a 9 payment program or a 9 month program, but I'm not too worried. I received a letter last month that I'm no longer on the tax offset list. Awesome! Everything they've said so far has been true. Even though Allied Interstate has some really nasty reviews online, I've yet to have a problem with them.
We'll see what happens toward the end of the year. I'm not expecting miracles, but it would be nice to have the negatives removed. They are my most recent.
Both Sallie Mae and USA Funds are reporting the debt on my credit report. I'm not going to do anything about it until I'm rehabbed.
A ton of (non-student loan) late payments hit the 2 year mark last month, and the rest will this month. The student loans aren't currently reporting late on Equifax, which is my lucky break. I'm planning on buying a new car in November or December, and I plan to finance through USAA. They check Equifax which is most likely going to be my best score.
Really want this ordeal to be over with! I feel better now that I'm paying on it.
Me and you are kinda in the same boat but my loans were transffered in 2007 from Sallie Mae. I have TRIED every GW to get Sallie Mae to remove the lates with no success so far. FYI I was told I could make double payments in one month but it is still a 9 month program no matter what. I think ECMC who bought my loans from Sallie Mae said they will stop reporting to my credit report as a "KD" each month.
UPDATE!!!
Okay so I have finally receieved a portion of my tax return. IRS is really having a hard time doing their jobs this year for some reason. Anyway it was a enough to pay off one credit card and make my 9th payment to Windham Professionals almost a month early. They told me the soonest I could pay it is tomorrow, June 26th. So you can be damn sure I will be on the phone making that 9th payment with them tomorrow around this time. The rep also told me something that kind of surprised me. She said that after I make my 9th payment....I don't have to make any more payments until my loan is picked up by another lender. Does that sound right to anyone? I am not sure if she is accurate on that one. Has anyone else here been in the same situation? Did you continue making payments or were you told you didn't have to make any more until the loans were picked up?
Anyway I'm jump starting what I'm hoping will be huge positive changes to my CR and Scores. Wish me luck!!!
apandabear,
Yes, my tax return was seized because of unpaid student loans but they were my wife's, not mine. I did an injured spouse form to get back my portion of our return back and since I make way more money than my wife I got back 80 percent of the original return. Fortunately my wife is also in student loan rehab now so we won't have this problem next year. As far as the payments go I will definitely call Windham professionals today and get a couple more opinions. I made my 9th payment yesterday as I said I would to get the ball rolling faster but I have come way to far to fall back in the postion I was in before so if I need to keep paying, so be it.
So my dreams of jump starting my awesome credit future were shot down with a small bit of bad news. After a few phone calls with Windham professionals they came to the conclusion that I have only made 8 full payments and not 9. So the early payment I made a few days ago that I thought was my 9th was actually my 8th. Needless to say I am not a happy camper. Anyway I spoke with my rep to see what is the earliest I can pay this 9th payment and at first she said July 26th and then I became really disheartened. After a long talk with her she figured out a way to bump it up a little earlier for me. So now the earliest they can accept my 9th payment is July 15th. Its not quite what I was hoping for but it made me a little happier.
For those of you that might not understand why the spacing in payments is important......basically the rules of rehab pretty much say you must make 9 straight MONTHLY payments to meet the program requirements. You can't make two payments a month and you can't make a half payment for 18 months. It must be 9 PAYMENTS over 9 MONTHS. In my case They were able to tweak some of my previous payment dates here and there so it would still look like I made 9 payments over the required 9 months. Keep in mind not every student loan collection company is this flexible. For example, my wife is currently doing her rehab through DCS. To put it bluntly, they are a--holes and they are not flexible and they do not try to work with you at all on the 9 payments. If you miss 1.....just 1, you start over. Even if you can make it up in the same month they don't care. So to combat this problem and avoid missing payments my wife and I set up an account specifically for paying her rehab bill every month.
You might wonder how the heck I know this about DCS......well I'll be honest.....2 years ago I was THAT GUY. I started the rehab program with them. I missed my 5th payment and BAM! I made it up that same month and they said it will now be my first payment starting a new 9 months time frame. Now your not going to believe this but it happened again and they dropped me and Windham Professionals ended up picking up my loan. If you end up with Windham Professionals you should jump and shout for joy because they are absolutely awesome. They can take your payments by debit card so that they come out instantly the day their due instead of 5 or 6 days after like DCS (who only does electronic check). Windham professionals are also extrememly nice, curteous and they will work with you. To make things even better they send you a payment reminder each month that also has a couple lines praising you for doing such a good job and telling you to keep up the good work. I don't know about you but those fews words meant a lot to me going through the past 8 months even if they were computer generated.
Anyway I just wanted to give you all a little back story and some insight from my own experience. A lot of these posts helped me and I hope mine will help others and maybe motivate them to stay the course.
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