Sallie Mae

tommytommyives

Hi, I'm posting for the first time and I'm sorry if I there is a sticky or I'm posting to the wrong thread or whatever. Hopefully someone can lead me in the right direction, basically, I've come here to seek some guidance and hopefully reassurance with regard to my Sallie Mae loan.

I took out my Sallie Mae loan around August 2007 for around 10,000 gbp. I wasn't eligible to pay it back until a year after my MA had finished. I went off to South Korea to teach English and I stupidly put this issue on the back burner. I eventually got in touch with them and asked if I could them a cheque for any overdue payments. They said they could not accept cheques and a direct debit would have to be established. When I came back to the UK a few months later I set up a direct debit for 200 ppm which I had been paying. Until last week I was under the impression that this was the contribution I was making. I emailed Sallie Mae to ask if I could increase my loan repayments to 300 ppm with a view to increasing them further in the very near future. I received this email:

"Hello,

Current balance is £11,546.17
Current Past Due amount £2,507.72 to cease default


Your direct debit has currently been turned to OFF status as the loan is currently in default. Once a loan is in default bills cease to be issued. In order to claim a direct debit we must give prior notice of the debit amount this is usually done via bill issuing. As bills are not issued we can not provide this notice, therefore your direct debit is turned to OFF status.

In order to pay the default amount in full at £300 per month, it will take you 8 and half months to pay this in full. Once a payment plan is accepted, bill issue will resume, so you will have to take this into consideration also. For example if your monthly bill is £179.73 this will be paid first, secondly what ever portion is left from the £300 (£120.27) will be paid towards the past due amount, resulting in the length of time to pay the default amount being increase.

Currently interest and charges are frozen on your loan, and a credit report will be submitted shortly. The submission of the credit report will affect both you and your loan guarantor.

Payments can continue to be remitted to us via cheque to reduce the past due amount. Cheques are made payable to Sallie Mae and mailed to our usual correspondence address.

Kind Regards"

I don't know anything about finance and so I don't know why they suddenly stopped deciding to accept my payments and why they won't accept any more payments. I have sent them a few emails following this about what the advisable actions were and they sent me this response.

"Hello,

You can arrange to send cheques to us, however we can not determine if your file will be sent to collections. A credit report will be submitted however.

Once all the past due amounts are paid in full, we can arrange to reset the direct debit.

Kind Regards"

What the bleep is that? What does that even mean? You can send money to us but that doesn't mean collections won't get your file!?
I am sorry if this is all a jumble but I don't know what to do... please give me any info or assistance that you can I would be really pleased and forever grateful.

Eonel

I am sure it is not what you want to hear, but their communications seem pretty clear to me. It is good of them to have frozen interest & charges without you asking.

There last mail effectively says they reserve the right to pass your debt to Collections until the arrears are fully paid. You have defaulted on the loan and this is their perogative.

In your position I would send them cheques and try to clear the arrears as quickly as possible. They will cash them & it would contribute to any decision to refer the account to Collections or not.

tommytommyives

Ok thankyou for responding, I have already offered to send them a cheque of 800 pounds this month. Which I will do once I can establish their address, I don't understand why they cancelled my loan repayments though. It was a small amount but at that point in time it was all I could afford.