to the student loan people who demand money from people you just lost their jobs in this economy — FUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKK YOU!!! Oh, I can’t say it loud enough or strong enough, I don’t care if that’s what they taught you in your fucking training session, to act like cocksuckers to people who HAVE NO MONEY. If I had the money I’d pay. Meanwhile, I have to go to parents house to return your call (my cell phone had to be cancled) to tell you I have no money and you still ask ‘well can you send us $400 this month (!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!) YoU ARE FUCKING STUPID, YOU DON’T GET IT, YOU ARE CLUELESS, YOU WILL GO TO HELL FOR ALL THE MISSERY YOU’VE CAUSED. I will get another job, I will get back on my payment plan. But until I do FUCCCKKK YOU, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!
— broke but bitchy
This article appears in Feb 26 – Mar 4, 2009.
Ummmmm, you took out a loan and you owe money. It’s simple really.
Sorry you lost your job but you can apply for interest relief…that is what it is there for. Call 1-888-815-4514 for National and 1-877-283-1687 for Provincial. it will at least give you 6 months to get back on your feet with no penalty. Yelling and swearing at them will not solve any problems and in the meantime ruin your credit.
Amen BP!
You take out a loan, you take on the responsibility of paying it back. If you lose your job, it’s not their fault. And do you honestly think that they’re going to believe you when you say you lost your job or that you don’t have the money to pay them? Do you have any idea of how many thousands of lazy, debt dodging assholes they deal with in a week? If getting their (tens of) thousands of dollars back from you involves treating you like shit on the phone, power to them. You owe them a ton of money, what the fuck did you expect? Sunshine and rainbows? If you’re pissed now, just wait til they start garnishing your wages.
If you took the time to call them to tell them you lost your job, and were going to pay them what you could, or need interest relief, then you would be fine and they’d be happy. But you lost your job, then didn’t pay, and they had to call you, which makes you look like you just aren’t going to pay them.
I actually come off looking like this do-gooder amongst my friends because even though I’m broke all the time, and don’t have a full time job, I make sure that I pay my student loan. I don’t want to be paying it off forever, or be paying any more interest than I have to, so I pay as much as I can now. But there are so many people who don’t and I know quite a few of them, some of them are on interest relief, and have been for a long time, while others just run and hide from them.
You won’t get away with it. They tracked down a buddy of mine after 22 years.
You should have called them as soon as your lost your job and applied for interest relief.
Well, OP, what would you do if you had loaned someone thousands of dollars and all of a sudden they stopped paying just like that? You’d probably harass them too. What if you loaned money to many people and a whole group stopped paying and when you called they said “I lost my job”…well you have no proof of that.
I’m assuming you’re talking about gov’t loans. If you are there ARE options available. The government loan program definitely needs to re think their repayment policies (do you REALLY need to charge interest on a student loan? I mean at least let me claim all of it on my income tax…all 12 grand I’ll be paying you every year!), but dude, those guys are bill collectors just like every other bill collector. I’m really sorry you lost your job: it really really sucks, but the responsible thing to do (and any financial advisor will tell you this) when you can’t pay your debts is to call your creditor (whomever that might) and explain the situation and say you’ll pay what you can when you can. That shows you’re willing to work with them and is a gesture in good faith on your part. Just not paying it with no explanation beforehand isn’t going to win you any favours. If you call and make arrangements, most creditors are more than happy to work with you.
In any event: apply for interest relief if you can. Under the new rules you can also defer payments for up to a year all together I think. Call the student assistance office and ask for information. It’ll probably get them off your back.
Actually BP and NW it’s not as simple as that. sure, you take out the loan, and it’s required to pay it back, but NSL and CSL are a much bigger beast than a standard bank loan or line of credit for that matter (the banks are more reasonable to deal with). Oh, and by the way, they can’t garnish your wages, that would require court action, and that would be a shit show of epic proportions especially if they’re going after people that can’t afford to pay with degrees. What the OP is experiencing is actually what happens to most people if they get student loans and begin paying them off. Once you start paying them off, they request some ridiculous amount (i.e. 400 in this case) unless you apply for interest relief, which only lasts for 6 months, which is based upon a standard calculation using cash flow. That’s whether you can afford it or not. Also, their agents are some of the worst people on the face of the planet to deal with. They’re ignorant, I’ve had friends laughed at over the phone and called poor. I empathize, only because I’ve been in the same position, and no, it’s not as simple as “you took out a loan and you should pay it back”.
I wish the government harassed all of the countries we’ve loaned billions too to pay us back asap, or make them do payment plans haha…instead they pick on the students.
You know, Fever, you bring up a good point, and one I never considered. I’m sure the government doesn’t want to address the issue of why there are so many university graduates who are unable to earn an adequate living. Especially the Nova Scotia government with its PR campaign to convince people that there really are all kinds of opportunities back home. Very thought provoking.
Dr. Fever,
I would just like to point out that I am aware of how is works with student loans. I was unlucky enough to have to deal with the federal and provincal governments and the Canada Student Loan people. I really fucked up my credit in the beginning. But, I picked myself and up and fixed what I had broken. And, yes I did loose my job at one point and was in the same position as OP. However, I did not take it out on the people calling me. I did wrong and took steps to remedy it. I did not tell them that they will get their money when they get their money.
A loan is a loan.
DF: Actually, it IS that simple. I too had a student loan, so I know exactly how easy it is. They ARE reasonable and easy to deal with and yes, they CAN garnish your wages. It just doesn’t happen very often. And before you try to tell me again that they can’t, why don’t you have a chat with my friend who is currently being garnished $400/month for her CSL. When you sign that little piece of paper that says “we give you $XXXX and you have to pay it back” you are saying “I am an adult and want to be treated as such by you giving me $XXXX”. If/when you lose your job, it is your responsibility to contact the lender and let them know about your situation. It is not up to them to call you up every month and ask if you still have your job. There is no excuse for not contacting them to arrange some sort of payment. If they are asking for larger payments than you can afford, get a second or even third job. You want the priveledge of them lending you thousands of dollars to get an education, then you take on the responsibility of paying it back.
BP—Absolutely, however, they promote the product as something that is more flexible than a bank loan, and they work on you to go to them. I’m a financial adviser, and I need to rightfully advise you of all of the terms and conditions appropriately, including repayment terms. NSL and CSL do no such thing. If I did anything like that, I’d lose my license and the bank would be in deep shit. They show up on your door step, 6 months after you leave school (whether of your own volition or not, in my case I left due to financial issues as well as frustration over the Dal prof strike in 2002) hand in your face, requesting that payment. In most cases, students can’t afford that “minimum” payment, they’re lucky to pay rent most months. Sure there’s interest relief, but that only lasts 3 months. There is that yearly deferral program, but they out you into collections immediately when you register for that program. What is a poor student to do? Fucked credit and no way to pay it back? It doesn’t sound like a really positive reason to go to school and better myself. Guess I’ll know my station and be a labourer for the rest of my life. Please.
NW— I was down the garnished route, but they needed to take me to court, and I was able to supply documents showing I was not able to pay what they were requesting (rent agreement, bank statements showing my expenses and my pay stubs for income). They decided against it, allowing me to use the deferral program. I’d say your friend was able to pay and wasn’t for whatever reason, or isn’t aware of what she was able to do in that case, it used to be that they would force you to go bankrupt if you couldn’t afford it and they would use the proceeds of the bankruptcy to recoup, but now, you can’t declare bankruptcy for 10 years after taking a student loan, because of all the Gen Xers declaring bankruptcy in the mid 90’s.
They can only garnish your wages if you make a certain amount. They have to leave you with a reasonable living wage. If they can’t garnish then they’ll put a judgement against you, or if you have property, they’ll put a judgement against that (i.e.: if you sell your house, for instance, they get paid with the revenues of the sale). Honestly though, if I was in that situation, I’d much rather have a judgement against me (then again I don’t use any credit so it’d be less of a hardship for me) than have my wages garnished. heh.
My payments should be ~1000-1200 once I start paying them back. There’s no WAY i can afford that type of payment, so I looked into it and found that I can reduce them to $750/month if I extend the loan repayment period. It sucks that I’ll have to pay more interest, but in the end I’ll at least be able to feed myself, somewhat.
ALSO: banks (well a certain bank) is HELL to deal with student loan wise. I tried paying off my line of credit in mid August. I went in, paid off what was showing on my account and was told there’d be a half month’s interest payment I would be billed for at the end of August. Ok, cool I can deal with that. Statement came and I go to the bank to pay the amount and close the account. So all seems fine until a month later when they call me telling me my payment is late and asked when they could expect it. I told them they already got it and the account should’ve been closed. So, I called the branch and a manager said the payment was never credited to the account and the account paperwork to close it hadn’t gone through so they fixed it and the account, I was told, was closed.
Next month got another call from their collection agency asking me when I was going to pay the GET THIS: 5 cents I had owing on the account. I went ape shit on them and told them my account was closed the previous month and they said I owed 5 cents because my interest payment was late (it wasn’t, they just credited it late: bank’s fuck up, not mine) and that with any amount owing they wouldn’t close the account. When they asked me again when I’d be going into the branch to make my 5 cent payment I told the to take me to small claims court for it.
Anyway, after I calmed down I called to make an appointment at the branch in my neighbourhood and the loan officer I dealt with finally managed to fix things (I made sure I got a letter stating the account was closed). That was in late October.
So, in order for me to PAY OFF a bank student loan it took me two and a half months. They bitch at you when you don’t pay them (it wasn’t the first time they didn’t credit my account with an interest payment, let me tell you), but when you DO pay them they fuck up and call and bitch at you even more!
DF: That’s the problem, it’s totally arbitrary as to what you can and cannot “afford”. I paid my student loan (pre ’99 so it was just the bank, no gov’t) in one lump sum last year. My credit rating went from nothing to amazing in one shot. One day I couldn’t get a $500 Visa, the next day I had almost $20,000 in credit available to me.
You can’t declare bankrupcy for ten years? Shit, I just thought you could declare whenever and student loans wouldn’t be one of your debts you “got out of.”
At least that’s what the Crown Collections people told me when a certain dispensing bank LOST my schedule A from my CSL and didn’t put the apartment number on the documents they sent to me saying I was in repayment. THAT was a nightmare. A huge fucking nightmare that took almost a year to fix, and the only reason it was fixed was because I got lucky with the agent at the student loan office who sent me to a great supervisor who happened to catch the fact that the documents saying I was in repayment (demand letters) got sent back because there was no apartment number on them. If I hadn’t been “lucky” I wouldn’t’ve been able to finish my last degree because I had a restriction on my file because of it.
It’s kind of funny how the standard repayment period *is* ten years…heh.
Student loans never go away. Ever.
That’s certainly a bad situation, really it is. Tellers are stupid. Plain and simple. You need to ask for a “payout” quote. If you pay the balance, on a LOC there’s residual daily interest. Here’s a tip, whenever you have a situation like that, call the PBR that set up the loan, if they’re still there. If they’re worth their salt, they’ll give you that quote and tell you that they can arrange for that to take it out of the account.
NW: bank student loans will show up as owing on your credit report in regards to your debt to income ratio (and the total $$$ you are in debt for), BUT government student loans don’t report to the credit agencies. They’ll only report if you don’t pay them as a strike against your credit.
One final thing too— consumer law dictates that if you only give them 100 bucks a month, and that’s all you can afford (with supporting documentation, and affordability is defined in the finance world as 35% Total Debt Service Ratio, or 55% Gross Debt Service Ratio), they’re required to take it and that’s all they can expect of you, no more no less.
They went after you for 5 cents? Wow, that takes a special kind of person to make that call. Unsure of their policy, but if it were me, I’d just credit the 5 cents.
PK: I got completely fucked by the BoNS. The fat cunt teller at Customer Service put my address in wrong when I applied for interest relief the third time. She put me down as apt #12 instead of #2. Since I didn’t hear anything from them, I assumed I had qualified for interest relief again (same rent, same job, same pay), because I hadn’t heard anything from them the first two times I qualified until it was time to reapply again. Well, 3 months later, I go up to my super’s apartmet (#11) and I see in the hallway garbage a letter addressed to me (at the wrong apt #). So I open it up and yup… you guessed it. Third party collection agency. Long story short, there was nothing I could do about it. I made tiny ass payments for a few years, then dogged them for about five. 2 years ago I paid that fucker off in one lump sum. And since I sent my payment to BoNS, with my original student loan account number on the money order info line and not to NCO Financial with their account number, I got to claim almost $3000 of interest on a student loan last year. I still have about $800 left to claim on it. I checked with an accountant friend of mine and she said that since I paid on the original account, to the original lender and they accepted it, that I could claim the massive interest as interest on a student loan. Hello refund!
Stop you freaking whining. YOU took out the loans, YOU are responsible for repaying them. No wonder you lost your job. I wouldn’t hire someone like you either. I graduated in 2000 and owed $26,000 in student loans, and I paid it all back in 2 years and 2 months. Just because you can’t, don’t go looking for pity.
If you’re not in collections, you can apply for debt reduction of the whole amount up to three times.
Plastic Driver Guy: I’m sure it cost this “royal” type bank more to make that call than the 5 cents I owed. I was 40 cents short, actually on an interest payment a couple years ago because I figured it would be the same as every month and I always made a $30 payment because it was never more than 28-29 bucks. They called me and asked me when I was going to go into the branch and give them their 40 cents. I told them to suck it and put it with next month’s payment.
ALSO: if a debt goes to a collection agency, you can cut them off at the knees and make a settlement with the bank. I have a friend who had owed $2100 on a credit card in third party collections. When they called they said they’d settle for $1800. My friend offered $1050, and the lady on the phone started yelling at my friend. She went on about how my friend wasn’t the decision maker here and my friend said to her that in fact he was and she screamed at him “WELL WE’LL SEE ABOUT THAT!!!.” So, my friend decided to call the bank directly, offered $1050 and they accepted it. That story always gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling.
you know what? It’s not that fucking simple. I have always been good with my credit, could get a card or store card any day of the week but when I finished up school and couldn’t find a job that paid over $10 an hour, I couldnt’ pay my $80,000 worth of loans. It’s NOT that goddamned fucking simple. A year later, I couldn’t borrow a penny from a homeless guy and my credit is in the crapper. So don’t sit there and tell me that that’s the way it is. Why don’t YOU give me a job then? I worked my ass off and yes I’m well aware that when I borrowed money I had to pay it back. I just didn’t know that it would take 2 years to get something that makes a decent amount of money. And I still can’t pay them all back at once. JERKS.
Kelley Belly
What is simple is the terms for the student loan that you agreed to upon accepting the studdent loan. No ones fault but yours. No ones fault you have no job, can’t pay you bills etc. Gey a min wage job until you get something. Most people in todays world are in debt. Students complain they don’t get enough money from the government to go to school and then bitch about having to pay it back.
Well tough luck you can pay it back or end up with bad credit and having a lean on your income tax return (which means they will take any money you have coming to you and you will end up in collecting and they will garnish your wages…so it is that simple.
Give you a job wow you have nerve you in the hell would want to give you a job when you seem to have a problem holding up your end of the contract(to pay back the loan in monthly installments) you sounds trustworthy.
Did you ever apply for interest relief, Kelley Belly? Did you ever call student loans and tell them your situation?
If you did then your situation is kind of crappy (but not REALLY that unfair in the grand scheme of things), but if you didn’t then it’s your own fault.
Thing *is* when you signed the papers to take out the loan you agreed to the repayment terms set out by the lender as the lendee. It’s not the lender’s fault you can’t get a job. In fact, name me ONE other lender that will offer programs and even advertise them that make your payments go down or disappear all together if you can’t pay them. Of course banks WILL work with you, but they don’t simply advertise and they don’t generally offer such generous terms as interest relief (the people at the student assistance office told me I would be automatically approved when/if I apply).
And, as the lendee you agreed to the terms of repayment when you signed the contract and accepted the money. As a result of not paying (for whatever reason) the lender (in this case the government) has every right to put that on your credit report. And it’s not unfair that they did. People with good credit lose that good credit every day because of situations like job loss, for example. Not everyone with bad credit has bad credit because they simply felt like not paying their loans. That’s just the way things are in the credit world.
Credit is set up so people who shouldn’t be borrowing money don’t borrow money. It’s not just your non payments that affect your credit: the number of times you apply for credit and your debt ratio (how much money you’re already owing) is a factor as well. If you have bad credit, most likely you shouldn’t be borrowing more money in the first place. Your credit wipes clean every 7 years and settled debts or debts in good standing should disappear. So as long as your loans stay in good standing now, you should be fine within 7 years max.
It sucks, and yah, the fact that we have to take out such high loans to become educated is pretty lame (they have free undergrads in some european countries or VERY cheap tuition — Austria’s tuition for a whole year is like 800Cdn I believe), but a student loans is pretty much the same as any other loan when it comes right down to it. You borrow and you pay back according to the lenders terms if you want the money.
So yes, it really IS that simple.
Fuck you Enough Said. You don’t know shit about my life and the last 2 years of mine. I worked at Shoppers for 6 fucking years, 1 year AFTER I finished school and wasn’t able to make the payments. I’m well aware of the goddamn fine print thank you. I left that job to move back to where I’m from to take a job in my field, which ended after 2.5 months even though they told me there would be a much longer extension. I AM working now with the government and still can’t make my payments. I don’t waste me money, all of it goes to bills and debt. I’m doing my best and I have an excellent work record. Everyone love sme b/c I do my fucking job. Get off your goddamn high horse.
I DID apply 3 times for interset relief but b/c I’m married we went above the celing limit by about $100 b/c our incomes both go together. They even said it was unfair b/ cwe both have high debt but that’s the way it is. So I did try to do what I could to help myself and it didn’t help.
all I know is that they wanted me to be paying more than a month’s rent every month while only 6 mnths out of school…. that is nucking futs man.
Very few could afford 690 a month after 6 months in the work force…. on top of rent and power and all that other shit…
student loans are my bain and I cannot wait to wipe my hands. They ask you to pay… and fill this out to get it reduced… ok, now you pay this much (which is still nearly un-doable) but give you NO account to make payments to.
I asked for 7 months for a single account # and got nothing. collections comes and gives me an account # within the first 10 mins of talking and now I’m golden.
except for the crazy hit to my credit rating… which I don’t appreciate so much but better dealing with them. FYI, they take your income tax every year (no matter how much it is) if it goes to collections so be prepared for that.
I just paid mine out recently after dodging them for years. I was fully aware what I was doing to my credit and didn’t blame anyone else but myself. It is a fucked up system, however. If you graduate high school with half decent marks, you almost feel pressured to go to university (hell, some parents push their kids into it). The unfortunate thing is it costs a fortune to go to university in Canada and most students have to pay their own way, and student loans are the easiest way to do that. When you’re 17-18, you’re not really old enough to comprehend the whole crapiness of the situation and by the time you’re finished and you’re in the real world with no decent job, it’s too late.