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You're fine as long as you don't get tangled up with Sallie Mae.
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@AngryK9: SM needs to go back to being 100% government run with no contractors or private lenders. Then take the money they wasted on contractors to fund actually running the agency properly.
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@AngryK9: I'd like to know too, although it's too late for me, since I've been paying Sallie Mae back for two years now...
@cheepers: The worst of both worlds. The bureaucracy of the IRS with private lending and collections who seem to answer to no one. At one point they tried to claim I owed $12g on less than $5g left of loan balance. I have been trying to pay off my loan balance for almost 10 years but the stupidity has made it impossible, even with talking directly to the dept. of ED. Having funds taken out of my tax return has actually turned out to be easier than any other method. Don't even get me started on the collection agency that employs prison inmates.
@cheepers: My rant got lost.
But, I \"owe\" them $4200 according to my credit report even though I paid them off several years ago. Every time I call, the person who can help me is not available.
I have no monthly min reported on the report, so it hasn't been a hassle, but I know they'll come calling one of these days...
@nbs2: I would stop trying to play nice with Sallie Mae, and go ahead and DISPUTE both the item on your credit report as well as the debt that they claim you owe. That's likely the only way that you will be able to have anyone do something about it. There are laws like the Fair Credit Reporting Act that serve to protect consumers from scummy lenders like this.
@scootinger: You are right. If I was a better consumer, I would have done that long ago. I suppose it's a lot like the green fuzz in the back of my fridge in college. I don't know why it's there, but I know it shouldn't be - but a meaningful effort to clean it is more work than just ignoring it and hoping it disappears on its own. And just life that fuzz, it will eventually explode anyway, making a bigger mess. But for now...
You're right.
@AngryK9: I've heard similar comments before on this site, which worries me as a Sallie Mae borrower. What should I be watching out for?
@jc364: Well, you probably don't have anything to worry about yourself, but the only advice I can give you is never be late one single day on one single payment. They will rack up the late fees before you can blink and they don't hesitate one second to report your late status to the credit bureaus.
To give you an example of what they have done/are doing to me (and this in no way reflects what they will/are doing to anyone else): If I were to have nearly $1000 in late fees with my $400 a month payment, and if I were to pay $800 in one month thinking I just covered two monthly payments, I'll discover quickly that my $800 actually gets applied to the late fee (leaving me almost $200 left on the late fee), that none of it went to my actual payment (which means I am now two payments behind), and that they have now added even more to my late fee. Within days I start getting phone calls at every single phone number they have on file for me, and they call no less than 3 times per day for each loan I am behind on. Someone co-signed on a loan for me and since I am behind on it, they have been calling the co-signer as many times per day as they call me.
I have had them call my house 22 times in a single day because I was behind on two different loans. As it stands now, I have nearly $2000 in late fees built up on each of the loans and can't get caught up because every bit of money I send them is being applied to the late fees. And yes, I have all but begged them countless times to apply it to the payments so that they fees will quit multiplying, but they refuse to listen.
(This is just one example from one person. You're better off researching it yourself since I am very bitter toward SMC and probably not very objective)
@AngryK9: Thanks for the heads up! It's pretty crappy that they can't work a deal with you so that you can get caught back up. Don't give up on trying to work out a solution, there has to be something that can be done in that situation.
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Keep in Mind that there are many FICOs - Auto, Mortgage, CreditCard, custom scores and the like.
FICO '08 isn't just a simple switch pull for most banks/lenders because of a number of reasons. In order to implement it, they'll have to test their custom scorecards against it and ensure that everything will still break across the same lines. This costs money and time. On top of that, credit systems will require a lot of testing and analysis just to ensure that auto decisioning based on FICO scores are still breaking along the correct lines - which means that the major bureaus are going to need to provide sandboxes that I'm willing to bet they may not have fully developed.
In all honesty, I think it's great that they drop hints like this about your score...but expecting traditional lending institutions to become early adopters for these new models is sheer crazy.
@Stephmo:
In addition FICO 08 is not an established standard in the secondary market meaning that until people can sell loans with FICO08 reports it won't be used :)