sallie-mae
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—>Are you getting nowhere with the usual channels at Sallie Mae? Here's how you can reach their Customer Advocate Unit, a charming oasis of competence and politeness. More »
—>Sallie Mae's 2009 study of credit card use shows that students just love binging on plastic. Kids these days have more than four cards on average, and most of them carry a balance pushing $3,000. Many don't tell their parents, and almost a fifth graduate with more than $7,000 of debt. This is how meltdowns start... More »
Sallie Mae is going to "reverse outsource" and move 2,000 jobs from overseas back to the US in order to get people, (the president?) to like them again. Will it work? HAHAHHAHAHA. Oh, sorry. That was unprofessional. [Reuters] More »
—>UPromise is a site from student lender SallieMae, and we always assumed that it was just for parents to save for their children's inevitable college expenses, but the Wall Street Journal says that anyone can join and use the money to pay down their student loans... or whatever. More »
This is Round 39 in our Worst Company in America contest, Sallie Mae vs eBay/Paypal! More »
Sallie Mae has publicly apologized for a coding error, potentially affecting around 1 million customers, that caused some consumers credit scores to drop over 100 points, and some consumers report that their dinged scores are already back up. If your score is not back to normal and you are in the middle of a transaction where your good credit is at stake, Sallie Mae said it will provide a credit reference letter. You can also call Sallie Mae customer service at 1-888-2-sallie. Sallie has pledged that the fix is in, but consumers can still take matters into their own hands by pulling their free credit report from annualcreditreport.com and disputing the incorrect information with Experian. Note, it's against Federal law for creditors to report false information to credit bureaus, and consumers can sue violators up to $1,000. More »
—>Consumers are complaining that a change in how Sallie Mae decided to recode some loans caused their credit score to drop by over a hundred points. That's enough to make a $93,240 difference in a home loan's total cost. Here's what happened. More »
—>Consolidation loans are no longer profitable for Sallie Mae, so it's saying goodbye to them. SmartMoney points out that ultimately this shouldn't matter for students taking out new loans, since the original point of consolidation—converting lots of variable rate loans into a nice predictable fixed rate loan—is no longer relevant (all federal student loans are now disbursed with fixed interest rates.) SmartMoney says if you still have variable rate loans you need/want to consolidate, check out the government's consolidation offering—"You're likely to pay the same consolidation rates you'd pay if you did so with Sallie Mae," they write. More »
Now that SallieMae buy-out deal has crumbled and they're facing much higher borrowing costs due to the subprime fiasco, the unpopular student lender will shed 3% of its workforce, or 350 jobs, mostly CSRs at their call centers. More »
—>Dodging tough questions about the student loan company's fiscal well-being and strategy in the midst of the credit crunch, not to mention his recent sale of 97% of his company stock, Sallie Mae's CEO ended a conference call yesterday with investors by cursing, reports WSJ:
In an apparent reference to investors' anger, he said: "I can assure you, you will be going through a metal detector." He ended the conference call by saying "Let's go. There's no questions. Let's get the [expletive] out of here." More »
—>Back in April, we told you that Sallie Mae was going to be sold to JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America for around $25 billion. Now JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America want to bargain, and Sallie Mae is now suing its potential buyers in an attempt to force them to honor the original deal.
Sallie Mae's potential buyers gave the nation's largest student lender until Tuesday to consider their reduced buyout offer in light of what they said was "the new economic and legislative environment that faces the company." More »
—> In a not-too-surprising announcement after all the recent bad news about student loan firms—and in an apparent "victory" for both Bush and Congress—the White House said today that President Bush intends to sign into law a bill that reduces federal subsidies to those firms, including Sallie Mae, by $20.9 billion over the next five years, and will instead use that money to increase funding for Pell Grants (which recipients don't have to pay back). More »
—>The New York Times has an article explaining some of the reasons that private loans are both more popular and more risky that they really ought to be. More »
