topic Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story in Student Loans

My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

Anonymous — Sun, 15 Dec 2019 04:15:49 GMT

Hi all, I have read every student loan rehab topic in this forum, and since I recently completed my student loan rehab, I thought I'd share my story as well. Hope someone finds it helpful.

tldr: My FICO 8 score increased 103 points, from 665 to 768, reflecting all negative student loan history being deleted.

I defaulted on my student loans in early 2012. In March 2019, I finally decided to face them ($140k!) & reached out to Alltran Education to apply for student loan rehab. I'd had Treasury offsets for years, but no garnishments. Once in rehab, I diligently made the 9 payments, and made my final payment in November 2019. Within 5 days of my 9th rehab payment, they were transferred back to Navient, who sent me a statement for the following month. I called Navient & confirmed my loans were again in good standing. 10 days after my last rehab payment, I logged into studentaid.ed.gov and saw my loans still said "defaulted". I submitted a "report an issue" within the FSA (Federal Student Aid) Feedback system, stating that my loans appeared in default and by the way, when were my credit reports being updated. After a few weeks of email back & forth with a pleasant Navient rep, I logged in yesterday and my derogatory student loan accounts had been completely deleted.

Credit Report Changes:

Before the student loan rehab, i had about 20 entries related to my student loans: 10 showed Navient transfers to Dept of Ed from 2011, and 10 from the US Dept of Ed showing 90+ day late payments every month from 2011 up to the present day. My FICO score was 665, not great but not awful, probably due to my 9yr old mortgage with zero late payments, and a car loan from 2017 with zero late payments. Other than my student loans, my credit activity has been pretty pristine (the only derogatory item left is one 30 day late payment from 2 years ago on a credit card). But the defaulted student loans definitely dragged it down and made it hard to get credit for mainstream issuers. Nothing I did could raise me above the 660's.

After rehab: All negative US Dept of Ed & Navient accounts on my credit reports *vanished*. Absolutely no negative history is left regarding my student loans. 10 new Navient accounts appeared, dating back to 2011, shown as current with zero late payment history. As of now, the only derogatory item on my report is the 30 day late payment mentioned above. It looks as if I never stopped paying on my student loans, and made every payment on time. Amazing.

Strategies:

These are the tactics I used during my student loan rehab process, which perhaps can help others.

1) I called in every monthly rehab payment, and each time confirmed with the Alltran rep that I was in compliance with the rehab process. After my 9th payment cleared, I called Alltran Education every few days until they confirmed the loans were transferred back to Navient (I was super paranoid).

2) One week after rehab was complete, I logged into studentaid.ed.gov and noticed my loans were still labeled as 'in default'. At that point I submitted a "Report an Issue" in their Feedback system, stating that my loans were inaccurately still 'defaulted' and that my credit reports were inaccurate. This appeared to trigger a formal review process which took several weeks but was very streamlined and professional. As of yesterday, all issues are resolved.

3) I learned how critical credit utilization is in scoring. Every month, I make sure my statement balance reflects a ~5% utilization of my credit limit (never more than 10%). I think this helps quite a bit.

Again, I'm writing this to hopefully help others on their default journey. I considered consolidation instead, but it wouldn't have erased my negative payment history, and the collection fees would've become part of my loan balance (the fees were also removed as part of the rehab). Rehab takes a very long time, but I do think it's worth it. Good luck!

Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 19:37:10 GMT

Congrats!!
This is excellent information! I'll refer others to it.
I especially admire your persistence. It sounds like your strategy and hard work paid off.
And that score boost....whew! Your story will inspire many other people, I'm sure. Thank you for sharing! 🙂

Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 19:39:07 GMT

Is you final goal to have them forgiven?

Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 20:30:30 GMT

Thank you! I just hope it helps! These forums helped me a ton on my journey.

Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 20:33:05 GMT

I work in finance, so there's no hope of forgiveness for me. I do want to buy a second home so i needed the defaults removed from my report. So yay.

Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

calyx — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 19:10:24 GMT

Congrats on all of that progress and your success!

And thank you very much for sharing your story/journey!

Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

Anonymous — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 19:12:16 GMT

Thank you!

Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Dec 2019 22:18:01 GMT

Question for you,

Where on the studentaid.ed.gov website did you find what's the status of your student loans?? I can't seem to find it?

I just completed my defaulted student loan payment plan and my loans just got transferred back to Great Lakes on the 12/14/2019. Would I have to wait till my credit report updates to show that my loans are back in Good Standing??

CONGRATS AGAIN!!!

@Anonymous wrote:
Hi all, I have read every student loan rehab topic in this forum, and since I recently completed my student loan rehab, I thought I'd share my story as well. Hope someone finds it helpful.

tldr: My FICO 8 score increased 103 points, from 665 to 768, reflecting all negative student loan history being deleted.

I defaulted on my student loans in early 2012. In March 2019, I finally decided to face them ($140k!) & reached out to Alltran Education to apply for student loan rehab. I'd had Treasury offsets for years, but no garnishments. Once in rehab, I diligently made the 9 payments, and made my final payment in November 2019. Within 5 days of my 9th rehab payment, they were transferred back to Navient, who sent me a statement for the following month. I called Navient & confirmed my loans were again in good standing. 10 days after my last rehab payment, I logged into studentaid.ed.gov and saw my loans still said "defaulted". I submitted a "report an issue" within the FSA (Federal Student Aid) Feedback system, stating that my loans appeared in default and by the way, when were my credit reports being updated. After a few weeks of email back & forth with a pleasant Navient rep, I logged in yesterday and my derogatory student loan accounts had been completely deleted.

Credit Report Changes:
Before the student loan rehab, i had about 20 entries related to my student loans: 10 showed Navient transfers to Dept of Ed from 2011, and 10 from the US Dept of Ed showing 90+ day late payments every month from 2011 up to the present day. My FICO score was 665, not great but not awful, probably due to my 9yr old mortgage with zero late payments, and a car loan from 2017 with zero late payments. Other than my student loans, my credit activity has been pretty pristine (the only derogatory item left is one 30 day late payment from 2 years ago on a credit card). But the defaulted student loans definitely dragged it down and made it hard to get credit for mainstream issuers. Nothing I did could raise me above the 660's.

After rehab: All negative US Dept of Ed & Navient accounts on my credit reports *vanished*. Absolutely no negative history is left regarding my student loans. 10 new Navient accounts appeared, dating back to 2011, shown as current with zero late payment history. As of now, the only derogatory item on my report is the 30 day late payment mentioned above. It looks as if I never stopped paying on my student loans, and made every payment on time. Amazing.

Strategies:
These are the tactics I used during my student loan rehab process, which perhaps can help others.
1) I called in every monthly rehab payment, and each time confirmed with the Alltran rep that I was in compliance with the rehab process. After my 9th payment cleared, I called Alltran Education every few days until they confirmed the loans were transferred back to Navient (I was super paranoid).
2) One week after rehab was complete, I logged into studentaid.ed.gov and noticed my loans were still labeled as 'in default'. At that point I submitted a "Report an Issue" in their Feedback system, stating that my loans were inaccurately still 'defaulted' and that my credit reports were inaccurate. This appeared to trigger a formal review process which took several weeks but was very streamlined and professional. As of yesterday, all issues are resolved.
3) I learned how critical credit utilization is in scoring. Every month, I make sure my statement balance reflects a ~5% utilization of my credit limit (never more than 10%). I think this helps quite a bit.

Again, I'm writing this to hopefully help others on their default journey. I considered consolidation instead, but it wouldn't have erased my negative payment history, and the collection fees would've become part of my loan balance (the fees were also removed as part of the rehab). Rehab takes a very long time, but I do think it's worth it. Good luck!

Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Dec 2019 23:07:42 GMT

You can see the status of loans better on the National Student Loan Database (NSLDS) website, I think. The status might take a bit to update. You'll still need to make the required payments. It should be updated within the gov sites before it probably updates with the CBs but you'll have to wait and see.

Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Dec 2019 00:02:15 GMT

The Student Aid site is fed by the student loan database. Also, i have no outstanding items. As mentioned, all updates to the database AND credit reports are complete. Thanks!

Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

calyx — Wed, 25 Dec 2019 14:47:18 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Question for you,

Where on the studentaid.ed.gov website did you find what's the status of your student loans?? I can't seem to find it?

I just completed my defaulted student loan payment plan and my loans just got transferred back to Great Lakes on the 12/14/2019. Would I have to wait till my credit report updates to show that my loans are back in Good Standing??

CONGRATS AGAIN!!!

https://nslds.ed.gov/nslds/nslds_SA/
You will need to have an account (so if you have one, great! If not, it's easy to make one). Download your student loan data, which will be in an awful text file and it should give you all of the information you need.

And yes, you will have to wait for the CRAs to update. Student loans tend to take a long time to straighten out with reporting, so just stay on top of it, and you should be fine.

Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Dec 2019 15:11:40 GMT

Hi Coach, congratulations!

The student aid website seems to have been redesigned the last few weeks, but the loan status (defaulted or in repayment) can be viewed on https://nslds.ed.gov, as mentioned by another poster.

Here is where I submitteded my feedback/issue, and my loan status and credit reports were corrected in about 5-6 weeks: https://feedback.studentaid.ed.gov/s/?language=en_US

Good luck!

Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

Anonymous — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 19:37:52 GMT

Hi Coach, I thought I'd responded to you, but I can't see it anywhere, so I'm trying again.

To see the status of your loans, another contributor mentioned using this site: https://nslds.ed.gov/nslds/nslds_SA/

You may have to sign up and go through the process of registering a username.

Here is the site to where I submitted my "report an issue": https://feedback.studentaid.ed.gov/s/?language=en_US

I just submitted an "issue" that the status of my loans were erroneously listed as "defaulted" (I didn't mention that I'd only completed my last rehab payment a week before) and that my credit reports were also incorrect. It took several weeks, but all got resolved quicker than what other boards here would suggest. Not sure if I simply got lucky, but I'm not a lucky person by nature, so I hope it helps you too. Good luck!

Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

SedimentaryRock — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 22:24:15 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Again, I'm writing this to hopefully help others on their default journey. I considered consolidation instead, but it wouldn't have erased my negative payment history, and the collection fees would've become part of my loan balance (the fees were also removed as part of the rehab). Rehab takes a very long time, but I do think it's worth it. Good luck!

Your post certainly does help!! I set up my rehab today and was wondering what kind of jump others experienced at completion. Your "before" stats are similar to what mine are today, including the loan balance. I hope my score jumps around 100 points as yours did. Congratulations!

Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 22:50:19 GMT

@SedimentaryRock

Best of luck to you, the road is looong but very worth it. Since my post, I've managed to get easy approval for a HELOC and new home mortgage. A year ago, this was a pipe dream.

Keep us posted, please! Would love to hear your outcome. Take care.

Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 13:53:09 GMT

@Anonymous @calyx

Good Morning all,

After the long road of getting my student loans back into good standing. I was able to obtain a home loan and a new credit card w/AMEX. Right now I'm just concentrating on paying down the student loan debt. Lucky to still have a job during this pandemic so I've been paying

Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

calyx — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 13:58:15 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous @calyx

Good Morning all,
After the long road of getting my student loans back into good standing. I was able to obtain a home loan and a new credit card w/AMEX. Right now I'm just concentrating on paying down the student loan debt. Lucky to still have a job during this pandemic so I've been paying

Congrats on the progress and success after all your hard work @Anonymous

Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

quikj9 — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 21:01:40 GMT

This is a great post and just what I have been looking for. I'm going to follow all of these same steps as I complete my final payment later this month. Thanks for sharing this information.

Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 23:05:50 GMT

You're so welcome! Please let us know how it all turns out. Good luck!

Re: My Student Loan Rehab Success Story

SedimentaryRock — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 23:07:31 GMT

Congratulations! 5 months behind...