I am being contacted yet again by more rip-off artists of the Student Loan Industry. This loan is 20 years old and was discharged in bankruptcy in long before the idiot laws went into effect making it no longer possible to discharge student loans in bankruptcy. This is only the latest in a string of harrassment I have received in this matter. The original loan was for $4,000. I paid on it for 8 years, then moved out of state.
I wrote numerous letters to the Dept. Of Education, the original lender, even the last known loan servicing company trying to find out where my payments needed to be sent. No response was ever received from any of the above. My inquiries were completely ignored. Then in 1998 I started receiving phone calls at work from two-bit collection agencies demanding payment.
First of all, there is no way they could have obtained my work number through me. The only way it could have been obtained is by running my SSN and looking up the phone number of my last known employer. This is a blatant invasion of privacy to say the least.
Then, all of a sudden, the original amount owed jumped from $4,000 to $6,000. I had already paid more than $4,000 on this loan plus the interest and they were saying I still owed $6,000.
Imagine my surprise to learn that only 20% of every payment made went towards the principal. 80% went towards interest and fees. Not even high risk credit cards are allowed to charge 60-70% interest. Then there was a 10% fee for unsubstantiated "services" on top of it. Now the claim is I owe $8,777 ($3,844 in interest and $1,698 in alleged fees and costs).
This is as big a rip-off as the child support industry. No matter what you do you will always owe. It does not matter that the debt was paid off years ago, you still owe more because some collection agency says so. I could be paying on this loan for the next 20 years and still not touch the principal at the rate these usurious interest and fees are continuously charged. Such usury must be stopped!
0 comments