Amber called Sallie Mae tonite with much dismay and spoke to Ken.  He said that we should be recieving 2 letters in the next 7-10 days one with the payoff amounts for our federal loans and one with payoff amounts for our private loans.  God help us if someone at Sallie Mae has forgotten how to stamp an envelope.

My next step is to contact my congressman, Mike Oxley, and ask for his assistance.

After that I should involve a lawyer, to communicate with Sallie Mae.

I am going to be Calling Mike Oxley’s office this afternoon to try and get that ball rolling and We are going to try and have an attorney write a letter to Sallie Mae, either one Amber’s parents know or one who is a part of ABLE, which provides income based legal advice in the NW Ohio area.

Hello,

For over a year my wife has been trying to consolidate our federal loans away from Sallie Mae in order to take advantage of a lower interest rate.  Sallie Mae has refused on many occasions to send the payoff amounts and information to Americna Education Services, who we are consolidating with.  We cannot get a contact at Sallie Mae who does anything other than transfer us and make empty promises.  We have written down many of the numerous times we have contacted them.

We also are trying to consolidate my wife’s private loans away from Sallie Mae in order to get away from a 13% interest rate on several of her loans.  We are consolidating these with Wells Fargo.  Today we received a call from Wells Fargo telling us that Sallie Mae would not release our payoff amount.  Being no stranger to this, we called Sallie Mae and were told first that the letter had been sent, then that we could not consolidate to Wells Fargo from Sallie Mae, by the same person.  After several more phone calls, we were given several different answers none of which could help us.  The call log is available on my Sallie Mae website, http://www.imjosh.com/salliemae/2007/03/14/sallie-mae-doesnt-allow-consolidation-to-wells-fargo/

So far no one can help us, we make our payments on time and are fed up with the treatment of us by Sallie Mae.  It is a disgrace that this company is taking advantage of today’s youth.

Thank you for reading this and I hope you have the time to lend your assistance.

Josh and Amber Smith

The rep (female no name recorded) just told my wife we cannot consolidate to Wells Fargo, the same rep told her before this that they had already sent the payoff letter.

Time to get back on the phone.

My Call records for the night.

Wed mar 14th 6:05
Caller: Shawn
ID:

No Restrictions on who you can consolidate loans to.

6:08 Transfer to Consolidation Dept

Caller: Renee

6:11 Transfer to Private Consolidation

loop of Voice Menus at Whisper Volume

6:14
Caller: Katie

“No idea”

6:19
1888-272-5543
Caller: Matt

Transfer to Consolidation Specialist

6:21
Caller: Mellisa

Consolidations to Federal Loans

You should be able to consolidate away.

Need to talk to a supervisor, in main department. Call in the morning because the Supervisors all go home earlier in the day.

6:31
Amber Goes back to the phone with the mission of getting a payoff amount and giving me permission to speak to Sallie Mae on her behalf.

Caller: Nadia

Transferred to Private Dept.

Caller: Ben or Bet Alfred

Sallie Mae cannot send a payoff amount to Wells Fargo because of Privacy issues.

Sallie Mae also has no ability to note on an account that another person may speak on behalf of the loan holder, according to Alfred.

Alfred was able to tell my wife her payoff amounts and promised to send a letter to her.

That ends the phone calls for tonite, tommorow I need to try to speak to a supervisor, as well as reach someone who can actualy do something at Sallie Mae, Bonus Points for grasping the English Language.

Thomas Fitzpatrick,

This letter is in response to my wife’s federal loans which your company is currently holding. These three loans are part of a group of loans which we had filed for consolidation in October 2005 and included all of our federal loans. The consolidation went through and payments were dispersed in late December. At some point in this process Sallie Mae became the new holder of three of my wife’s loans. Since these were not consolidated we filed the additional paperwork to add these three loans to the consolidation. The paperwork was received by AES (American Education Services) the company we are consolidating to on February 1, 2006. AES has since sent several requests both via fax and the USPS. I have spoken with both Sallie Mae and AES customer service reps numerous times over the past year and I am still awaiting resolution. This is why I am writing you, as well as the CEO of American Education Services, my state Attorney General, the local Better Business Bureau and my state congressman.

What I want from you as the head of Sallie Mae is to make the necessary connections with American Education services to get these three student loans consolidated away from your company. My wife’s account number with Sallie Mae is ##########, and her Name is Amber Smith . I expect to hear from you or an assistant of yours by March 9th, 2007 regarding this matter. I also expect to have the loans transferred to American Education Services or completely forgiven by April 13th 2007.

You can view more about this process at http://www.imjosh.com/salliemae.

Sincerely,

Josh and Amber Smith

salliemaeblog@gmail.com

The next time I called was on March 27th and AES generated another request for Sallie Mae during this phone call.

On April 28 I called both AES and Sallie Mae again. At this point AES had sent several fax requests as well as at least one USPS request.

On May 2nd at 2:45PM I spoke with Roxanne at Sallie Mae who told me they had yet to receive a Loan Verification Certificate request. She gave me a fax number 1-317-596-8398 ATTN: Sallie Mae for me to direct AES to send their fax requests to. She could not or would not provide a person who this could be marked ATTN to.

On May 12th I spoke with Rachael at Sallie Mae, after running through my story I was able to speak to Mike a supervisor at Sallie Mae who assured me that he would make the proper connections and get these loans consolidated.

After a busy June I spoke to AES again on July 5th 2006 and they sent yet another request to Sallie Mae for the payoff amounts.

Since this date customer service at Sallie Mae has gone downhill. I no longer speak to anyoen who has a grip on the English language and I am treated rudely because the loans are in my wife’s name, even though I have permission on file to speak with them about these.

It has been roughly a year since we filed the paperwork to get these loans consolidated so I am hoping this blog will document the rest of the process in order to get thee loans consolidated.

In the next few weeks I will be posting the results of my phone calls with Sallie Mae and with AES. I will also be writing several open letters to the CEO of AES, CEO of Sallie Mae, and the Better Business Bureau.

Please feel free to share your Sallie Mae experiences in the comments.