Sallie Mae Calling

We’ve been moving to another state, so personally there was little time to spend on writing hubs. Because of the move we had to get new cell phone numbers including area codes. Getting new cell numbers should be the least of people’s problems when moving. Not so for me, since I seemed to have inherited a phone number from Magdalena Noriega. There are probably hundreds of women with that name but I have the number of one who apparently owes Sallie Mae.

The American myth is that Sallie Mae is a government agency – which it is not. Generally identified as Sallie Mae, SLM Corporation and its subsidiaries are not sponsored by or agencies of the United States of America. According to the corporations website, Sallie Mae (NASDAQ: SLM) is America’s No. 1 financial services company specializing in education loans. Sallie Mae says they have 25 million customers, providing college savings programs, scholarship search tools, education loans, tuition insurance, and online banking. On the contrary, Sallie Mae has numerous subsidiaries including Upromise.

One of the most frequent calls I got was from (302)283-2983, which I let go to voicemail, thinking it was telemarketer. When they left the message providing me with Ms Noriega’s personal information, I decided to answer the next call. Being a rational, intelligent person, I thought telling the individual this was no longer Ms Noriega’s number and to remove it from their list should have been enough – wrong! How dumb was I, they called back until I got call block for my phone. The call count was 45 at years end 2011.

You think that was the end of the story, well you’re wrong. The next number Sallie Mae used was (800)722-1300. This time I used Internet to search the number and found many websites with several complaints. I was not alone.

Hi, this is Heather with Sallie Mae.... Call is for "Magdalena Noriega"...... It's not me. No one that I know.

The complaints were basically the same. They call seven days a week including weekend morning. They call three to five times a day at different times. People called Sallie Mae many times and they can never find your phone number or name in their system. “Supervisors” were of no help. They were probably co-workers sitting at the next desk. Well I got seven calls from that number all blocked by app for Blackberry. Great program and it’s free for limited service. Calls get dropped so my voicemail does not runneth over.

Just how does Sallie Mae recover debts? – I have no idea! To date I got

• (800)722-1300 seven calls
• (570)855-6039 two calls
• (866)359-5897 three calls
• (888)204-2330 one call
• (302)416-2973 32 calls
• (888)258-5729 22 calls
• (302)283-2983 45 calls

If Sallie Mae is calling me, they are not collecting any debts from the real debt owner. According to glassdoor.com, updated Jul 28, 2011 – salaries posted anonymously by employees and employers (take with a grain of salt), Collector 1 get approximately $5000+ bonus. I want that job to get a bonus for putting the same number on redial all day.

But then Sallie Mae has not been without controversies. 2009 NOW on PBS did a show on Sallie Mae lawsuits. There were two federal lawsuits brought against Sallie Mae over the last few years. The suits alleged that Sallie Mae employees were given incentives to push large numbers of borrowers into forbearance. Sallie Mae apparently put borrowers into forbearance to keep loan default rates artificially low. Rodriguez v. Sallie Mae Complaint was filed in 2007 as a class action suit. The suit stated that Sallie Mae used discriminatory practice when writing student loans. In February 2007, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo launched an investigation into alleged deceptive lending practices by student loan providers including Sallie Mae.

Last but not least - Arthur, et. al. v. Sallie Mae, Inc., No. 10-cv-00198-JLR. – “the lawsuit alleges calls were made to the Representative Plaintiffs and Class Members on their cellular telephones through automated telephone equipment without their prior express consent. The Representative Plaintiffs claim that these practices violate the TCPA. [court documents]

Sallie Mae strongly denies all of the claims and any wrongdoing, and has agreed to settle only to avoid the burden and cost of litigation.” This is not the end of the story.....