topic Problems with Sallie Mae in Rebuilding Your Credit

Problems with Sallie Mae

Anonymous — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:55:59 GMT

Hi everybody,

Over the past 2 years I've built my FICO score up from the low 600's to a respectable 726. I created a budget, stopped using credit cards and automated all my bill payments to make sure everything got paid on time. Today, I received a credit alert from myFico telling me that my scored had just dropped 102 points!!!

I immediately read the alert details and found that Sallie Mae had posted a new entry to my credit report regarding my old student loan. The new entry said that I had negotiated with the creditor to make partial payments. As i said earlier, i've automated all my bill payments and hadn't made any changes to my payment plan for well over a year. So, I called up Sallie Mae to find out what was going on.

It turns out, the report entry is referring to the payment arrangements i set up over a year ago (and which are supposed to last for 24 months, I have 9 more to go). For some reason, when Sallie Mae submitted it's report to Equifax in April, they restated that I was making interest only payments and it is now showing up as a new status in my credit report.

I talked to SM customer service and they said that I could change my payment arrangements to make interest + principal payments and they would submit a letter to the credit agencies in the next reporting cycle. I have no problem doing this but I'm concerned that it won't completely undo the damage that's already been done.

Should I write the credit reporting agencies and try to clear up the issue? Or should the letter from Sallie Mae fix things once I change my payment plan?

Thanks in advance for any advice. This is my first time posting on this forum though I've been reading it for quite a while and it's been a treasure trove of useful information.

Message Edited by dima1771 on 05-12-2008 02:55 PM

Re: Problems with Sallie Mae

Scamp — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:15:34 GMT

Hi, Dima, and welcome to the forums!

You're not the only one affected by this problem; check out this thread over in Understanding FICO Scoring to get more info and perhaps repost your situation and questions there - it'll get more attention more quickly, I think:

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/fico/board/message?board.id=ficoscoring&thread.id=20744

Good luck, and welcome again!

Re: Problems with Sallie Mae

Anonymous — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:20:55 GMT

Thanks, Scapegrace!! I guess I should have searched the forums before posting my problem but as you can imagine, I was pretty upset after receiving that alert. I'm not sure if it's good or bad that I'm not the only that's had this experience, but at least I have more info to go on.

Re: Problems with Sallie Mae

Scamp — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:55:58 GMT

dima1771 wrote:
Thanks, Scapegrace!! I guess I should have searched the forums before posting my problem but as you can imagine, I was pretty upset after receiving that alert. I'm not sure if it's good or bad that I'm not the only that's had this experience, but at least I have more info to go on.

You're welcome - no worries; though I'm one of the lucky ones not affected, it sounds like something to be VERY upset about!

Just take some of the more hysterical/emotional/vindictive postings with a large grain of salt, would be my main advice when reading over there - don't jump to any conclusions or get caught up in others' emotions.

Again - good luck!