If your student loan is with Sallie Mae, you will completely understand what I am talking about.

 

My wife has both private and federal student loans with Sallie Mae. When she calls to talk about her loans, it literally takes 20 minutes just to get to the right person. She calls the main number to talk about her private student loan and always gets passed around on the phone until someone can finally speak to her about the private loan.

 

Here is the best part. When she is talking to a customer service rep about her private loan and asks about her federal loan, they have no clue. They usually respond with, “well that is a different area and I can’t see your federal loans. Huh? Are you kidding? How on earth can a company be so clueless? It begs the question, are Sallie Mae customer service people complete morons or is Sallie Mae setup in such a way that one hand has no idea what the other hand is doing? I suspect that maybe it’s a little of both.

 

Here is yet another example. My wife sent in a forbearance form for her federal student loan. About two weeks later, we received a letter in the mail from Sallie Mae. The letter stated that your request for forbearance on your private student loan was denied. What? Again, is Sallie Mae as incompetent as they seem to be? The forbearance request was for her federal loans not her private loan. Good grief!

 

And one more complaint before I hop off my soapbox. Sallie Mae is the slowest to respond to changes to your student loan account. My wife pays her private student loan on the 25th of the month. Starting on the 28th is when the automated phone calls start. Even though the account is current, we must receive 3 automated calls every single day from Sallie Mae. This crap goes on for a week until finally their robo caller gets updated. It only took 10 days for them to know the account is current, but hey it’s Sallie Mae. We all know they are clueless morons!