Credit Reporting Assistance

[$$only4ever]

I have been a member of this forum since 2005 and now I need some help.

My DH and I filed Chapter 13 in 2005. One of the loans was a Career Training Loan with Sallie Mae which is joint; DH is the primary and son is co-borrower. In 2006, Sallie Mae reported this account correctly, meaning that they did not report my son as filing bankruptcy. Now they are reporting my son as filing bankruptcy which is incorrect. They are also saying that this is an individual account and should say joint account. I have pulled his credit report on Experian and sure enough there it is. I have already done an on line dispute, and can pull Trans-Union and Equifax after March 4th, but need some input as how to avoid this for the next 3 years. Some ideas that I have are:

1) I will contact Sallie Mae tomorrow. ( I have a contact in their Executive Complaint Dept. and will request that they report the loan correctly) I also want a letter from them explaining that the co-borrower has not filed bankruptcy for futher reference.

2) Once I have received all the credit reports, I will send a letter of explanation to all 3 credit reporting agencies advising who filed bankruptcy and who did not and request that it remains in my son's file.


Is there anything else that I should do? Unfortunately, my son has all of his student loans with Sallie Mae. They all have the same prefix account number, then the loans are designated with (ie) 02-1, etc, etc. I think that this is part of the problem. My son graduated from college in December and his student loans are now in their grace period and they are being reported correctly. Should he consider consolidating his student loans with another finanacial institution to avoid further confusion?

Also, we plan on this loan being paid off when the bankruptcy ends in 3 years, but that doesn't help me now.

Any suggestions or ideas would be great! Thanks in advance for everyone's help.

[lrprn]

Sounds like you have a good plan in place, $$ - I hope everything works out for you and your son.

I hate to even mention this, but I want you to be aware that you need to be prepared to fight an uphill battle with SallieMae around getting them to report the loans correctly and also around consolidation of your son's loans with another lender. SallieMae is notorious for causing problems in both circumstances.

See the following websites for a litany of complaints and horror stories by debtors trying to get SallieMae to resolve problems or correct inaccuracies around their loans:

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/sallie_mae.html

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/12/26/8364649/index.htm

http://www.portlandphoenix.com/features/other_stories/multi1/documents/03358356.asp

One good thing - Sallie Mae is getting incredible pressure lately through multiple court cases filed along with lots of bad publicity to force them to correct their outrageous and unfair practices, so I hope that your experiences will be different, $$. Their stock price is dropping like a rock, so maybe the corner has been turned. Keep us posted about what happens, ok? Good luck!!

[$$only4ever]

Thanks Irprn for you informative response. I think that my son needs to consolidate with the direct loan consolidation program and get his loans out of sallie mae. I read all of your links, and sad to say most of what I read is true. Sallie Mae is horrible.

[Gauche1967]

Good Luck getting Sallie Mae to do anything and if they do do something it most likley will not be to correct your son's credit report. And more good luck getting the credit bureaus to update anything correctly. You will likely file a protest and be told 30 days later that the status has been updated from "CHPT. 13 Bankruptcy" to "Bankruptcy-Wage Earner Plan."

It sounds to me, although I am not an attorney, that Sallie Mae is violating your son's rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act as well as violating the stay on your bankruptcy by taking action against a co-signer. Your attorney may want to file a motion for contempt against Sallie Mae for violating the stay or your son could feasibly sue them for damages--although finding a lawyer to take the case won't be easy.

Once again, good luck with that!