I'm getting nervous and excited at the same time.
I am making my 9th payment on my student loans 2 weeks early in hopes they get picked up sooner so I don't have to make a 10th payment. I have $100,000 in student loans. My monthly payments were a hefty $1270 a month. I am looking forward to having this chapter behind me.
I consolidated my student loans in 2003 into two loans (subbed and unsubbed). My loans have been with DOE since the consolidation. I defaulted in 2008 and have been that way since. My loans prior to consolidations are still reporting all the positive tradelines. I suspect they will fall off this June when they hit 10 years of age since being paid off.
I am excited to see what my score jumps too. From what I can tell DOE should remove all the negatives and whoever picks them up should report a good tradeline since 2003. My credit reports shows 120 days late for the past 3 years on Trans Union and as a charge off/collection on the other two reports. I am lucky in the fact that I don't have two negative lines (original servicer than the DOE when it was turned over to them). I would really like DOE to service them again but the agency said they are seeing Sally Mae and Great Lakes picking up the majority of the loans. I have heard to many horror stories of Sally Mae so I am keeping my fingers crossed they don't pick mine up.
I will keep everyone posted.. Until than I think the next month will be filled with some anxiety as I wait.....
A bump in the road less than 24 hours after making my 9th payment.
Everyone who is rehabbing needs to watch for this!!!
I got on the myeddept.com website and I noticed all my payments including January 15th payment were posted with the exception of my Decemeber payment. I immediately checked my bank statement to verify my debit card did processed it and found that in fact it did post to my bank on December 21st. I immediatly called the CBE Group who is handling my rehab and was told that the DOE computer system has had many problems updating accounts and for some reason all payments from Dec 21 did not post. He verified this should not affect my rehab. He went ahead and took my 9th payment which was nearly 4 weeks early. I called the DOE and they told me just the opposite!!! They said if the payment is not posed on their website than my rehab will not get certified and picked up!!!
I called back to the CBE Group and talked with a supervisor who confirmed that my loan could not get certified without all the payments posting. She told me it was a DOE problem and nothing could be done but sit and wait. She explained that they get a few hicups each month and the other collection agencies doing the rehab for DOE has the same problems. She said their is a batch of payments from MAY that have still not posted. I told her this was completely unexceptable. She was kind and said that since I made my February payment early I could go all the way until March 18 before my 10th payment would be due and maybe the error would be fixed. WHAT!!!! I did not make my payment early in order to have more time until my 10th payment - I made it early so my loan could get picked up before the 10th payment was made. Basically, she told me I had no choice but to sit and wait it out. Sometimes it gets fixed in a matter of days and sometimes it takes up to a year. She said 1000's of people are in the same boat as me and have to continue making payments until they get the problems of those payments posted. I suggested maybe I should contact my bank and dispute the Dec payment and than remake it and hope this one post. She suggested that could cause more problems.
I hung up and called DOE after sitting on hold for 21 minutes I talked with a nice gal who tried to find my payment before realizing she does not have authrorization to view that screen. She talked with her supervisor who advised her to have me call the CBE Group back and have them put the information including the confirmation code of the payment from December line in the notes area of my file. After this DOE can manually enter my payment!!!
I can't imagine how many people have been in rehab for over a year waiting and waiting for their loans to get picked up when the only problem is a past payment not posting because of an ongoing computer glitch!!! What a simple solution that know seems to know how to fix.
I called the CBE Group back who said she would do it but that would be time consuming to do for the 1000's of people whose payment have not posted correctly! BOO HOO for you! I have kept my part of the deal up and I think it is only fair that someone fix the problem so their deal is kept up too!!!
Tomorrow I will call DOE back and verify the payment information was added in the note area of my file and that someone will manually enter the payment for December in. I am almost fearing what they are going to say to me already!
On to worst problems......
One reason I called DOE was because my largest loan is reporting twice to Equifax. I disupted and it came back verified so I disputed the other one and it came back verified. I called DOE and asked why they verified both when it was obvious that all reporting information was identical. She said it couldn't be. So I read to her exactly what it says on my credit report. Apparently with their new computer system that is causing problems it also gave each account number a new account number. The credit bureaus were notified of the change in account numbers and somehow the the computer glitched with Equifax and reported twice instead of deleting the old account number. She told me to dispute both and they would verify only the new account number and thus the old one would be deleted. I did exactly that! And low and behold this morning I get a score watch report:
MY FICO drops 53 points!!! 53 freaking points!!! How!!!!! Each of the loans are 18 years old so I can only assume it is because of AAoA but both loans were reporting 4 years of 120+ days late and in default and placed for collections.
Geez, I am beginning to wonder if this whole thing is worth it or not. They make jumping through the hoops way to difficult. I will scream so loud the whole world will hear me if I don't get a 100 point gain once the loans are picked up and reporting perfect!
Yes, you can make your 9th payment early. You have a 20 day window on each side of your payment.
My payment is due on the 18th of the month - so I can make it 20 days early or 20 days late and still be considered on time.
True, you can't make one lump sum payment. It has to be 9 payments within a 10 month period. The earliest you can make it is 20 days earlier than your billing date on any given month. The billing date is always the same date each month.
I was able to make my last payment 27 days early because they told me it takes 7 days to post to the account so they charged my debit card a week early knowing it will not post for a week which will than be 20 days before my due date which is exceptable.
This is with CBE group. I don't know if the other collection agencies working under DOE follow the same guidelines or not. I did find the same information (except for the taking 7 days to post) on DOE website under the rehab section.
@bahbahd wrote:
MY FICO drops 53 points!!! 53 freaking points!!! How!!!!! Each of the loans are 18 years old so I can only assume it is because of AAoA but both loans were reporting 4 years of 120+ days late and in default and placed for collections.
Your score dropped because you have defaulted on your student loans. Not because there is a duplicate tradeline. I also should tell you that the 4 years of 120+ days late is accurate reporting that will probably not come off after the rehab process is complete. They only have to update the loan status by removing the defaulted status and replacing it with ok/pays as agreed. You might have some luck GW off the old accounts or the derogatory late payment remarks at least. A few people have had old accounts just removed automatically. Now that everyone has finally figured out the procedures and laws for rehabbing, this is not the regular or common case lately.
Just be happy that any payment is paying down your balance due now and that you will eventually be out of the mess that you got yourself into.
No, when the default status was reporting correctly (but twice instead of once) my score was 53 points higher. When I disputed and the defaulted student loan was removed from the mix my score went down 53 points. When I disputed they removed BOTH the original (which was correct) and the duplicate one. So, with no defaulted student loan on my Equifax report my score went down 53 points. I will assume the DOE will update and put one of them back on. I have been in contact with them on the phone regarding this and they seem to be on top of the game. Again, I am going to assume it is from AAoA going from 18 years down to 7 months.
@bahbahd wrote:That is not technically paying early. That is paying after the statement date and before the due date. You would still pay, as you said, a payment each month.
True, but in making it 20 days before the due date it gives the DOE an extra 20 days to get the loan certified and ready to be picked up before a 10th payment would be due.