I’ve expounded here before about Sallie Mae’s collection practices. A little while back, Sallie spun off her student loan business to a new company called Navient. What the hell does Navient mean? Did you know that people are paid large sums of money to think up company names? But I digress. In my opinion, Navient’s collection practices are just as dumb as Sallie Mae’s were.
I find myself back in the business of paying a student loan I cosigned for. The economy is still tough for some people. Don’t cosign loans. Loan companies and banks are in the business of deciding who can pay them back and who can’t. If the loan company or bank doesn’t think the person who is trying to borrow money can pay it back, they’re probably right. They are, after all, the professionals in that business.
The statement from Navient says the payment has to be received by the 18th of the month to avoid late fees. That means, in case you are slow, or Navient (which I think is probably the same thing), that the loan payment will begin incurring late fees on Friday. So, why should I rush to pay it a long time before Friday? This is a trick I learned from mortgage companies when I was a tax collector. Mortgage companies generally pay the property taxes for mortgage holders and they generally do that on or near the last day of the grace period. I have instructed my bank’s automated bill paying program to take care of it on the 15th. So, naturally, I got a robocall on the 14th.
This is annoying for a few reasons. There’s no option on the robocall to talk to a human being. The options the robocall does offer don’t fit my situation. The robocall comes at a time when I can’t call them and talk to a human being because the human beings aren’t at work today. The website they refer you to in the robocall isn’t correct, so it has to redirect you to another website. It doesn’t say so on the loan statement, but the address for cosigners to pay is a different PO Box than the address for loan makers to pay. I don’t know if that’s going to be a problem, but I’ll probably find out tomorrow. I say that because I don’t have nearly enough frustration in my life, so I’ll probably give Navient a call then.
I just hope and pray that the automated phone attendant that picks up my call doesn’t tell me my call is important to Navient, because I’m sure it isn’t.
