A young friend of mine (Liz) has a DoE loan which she had set up to automatically pay out of her bank account every month. She has to authorize the payment monthly, which she has done faithfully since she graduated. Each month, her account on the DoE website reflected the monthly payment.
Except this month, when she logged onto the account and found that she owed five months’ worth of back payments.
Liz called the listed phone number and was asked why she had stopped making payments 97 days ago.
She replied that she had continued to authorize the monthly payments and her account had continued to reflect that as recently as last month.
The person on the phone explained that there had been a problem due to the DoE’s website switchover in October, that as a result, the website was not communicating with some people’s banks. The person on the phone offered Liz three weeks’ forbearance to sort out the issue, but told her that since they had not received payments for 97 days, they had already reported her to the credit bureaus. The person on the phone also told Liz that if Liz believed she had been treated unfairly, she could write a letter to the Department of Education.
Although my feelings on this topic might be more adequately conveyed in the Pit, I am putting this in IMHO to ask
Has anyone else encountered this problem with the Department of Education? If so, how did you address it?
Does anyone have any suggestions for appropriate recourse, besides crafting a displeased letter to the Department of Education?
I advised Liz to deal with getting the payments re-established and her credit report cleared first. I told her to document the names, dates and times of people with whom she deals, and also to keep track of how many hours she has to waste repairing someone else’s stupidity. But aside from an angry letter to DoE, about which I cannot imagine that they will care, I don’t know what else one can do.
I haven’t had this problem, but then I have my payments sent from my bank rather than allowing the Dept. of Education to do automatic debits.
Has the money been leaving her bank account, and just not been credited properly to her loan? Or did she authorize payments, but the Dept. of Education just didn’t have the payments taken form her bank account? If the former, how the heck was she supposed to know she was in arrears? If that’s the case, they should request correction of her credit report themselves with a big, fat mea culpa. Come to think of that, one might think they’d do that anyway, given that they obviously know the technical issues are on their end; they should give her the benefit of the doubt.
Either way, calling her Congressperson’s office couldn’t hurt. Maybe they can tell her whether other constitutents are having the same problem.
Yeah, I’ve been having issues with their website this past month. I make all my online bill payments manually once a month, though. I never trust automatic debitry. They completely changed the site around (including its web address) and I had a hell of a time finding the new one. Even Google wasn’t being very helpful.
Then, the first time I attempted to pay my bill on the new site, I got to the confirmation screen. I went through all the usual steps (they debit directly from my Chase checking account), and it said the payment would be processed within 2 (I think) business days–just like it always has. But the payment never went through. I went back a second time a few days later, because I hadn’t received the confirmation email that I usually get when they take the payment. The money was still owed. It’s like the first time I went to pay it never happened. And I’m sure I wasn’t dreaming! Fortunately, they haven’t debited my account twice. I don’t have reason to think they will–that first payment must have gotten sucked into the Bermuda Triangle. But yeah, that was certainly a bizarre experience for a government website.
Sorry about your friend’s troubles. She needs to be actively checking her bank account every month, though, to make sure the money comes out. Now, if they HAVE taken the money every month and just failed to credit her account, that’s a different story. In that case, she needs to print out bank statements and find out where to fax/mail them. Don’t bother emailing them, though; every time I try, I get a response 5 days later: “We have such a high volume of email that we can’t answer them all. We’re sorry for the inconvenience. Please call us!” blahblahblah. Why even *have *an email address, then? Ridiculous. :rolleyes:
Wow. Thanks for the advice (and warnings)! I passed them along.
Liz told me that as soon as the previous months’ payments are straightened out, she is going to pay off the loan.
She also checked her credit report with the three bureaus. Two of the three bureaus show the loan as having been paid off. Apparently the Department of Education is so incompetent they cannot even successfully falsely impugn someone’s reputation.
Hey thought I would post an update. The consumerist had this to say about the site issues. And then I found this site which purports that “no borrower impacted by access issues experienced during the transition will be penalized for late payments or lose any benefits to which they are entitled.”
She needs to be actively checking her bank account every month, though, to make sure the money comes out. Now, if they HAVE taken the money every month and just failed to credit her account, that’s a different story. In that case, she needs to print out bank statements and find out where to fax/mail them. Don’t bother emailing them, though; every time I try, I get a response 5 days later: “We have such a high volume of email that we can’t answer them all. We’re sorry for the inconvenience. Please call us!” blahblahblah. Why even *have *an email address, then? Ridiculous. :rolleyes: