First of all, I want to say that I appreciate comments like this being left here. Contrary to what most of the SLJ people think, I do not get any satisfaction from people who are struggling to pay back loans. I really do feel for the people who become so desperate that they feel they have nowhere to turn but Alan Collinge and his P.A.C. It isn’t pity, I can completely understand how difficult life can be and how unfair student loans may appear to be when you are barely making enough money to pay rent and have enough to eat. That being said, I truly appreciate intelligent and heartfelt comments about student loan troubles and especially like hearing about those of you who find yourselves disheartened with the extreme tactics of Student Loan Justice and its founder Alan Collinge.
Thank you Mary for this comment and I wish you the best of luck with your student loans.
I agree with you Charles. I went to SLJ for support. I have struggled with my student loans for years. I realize now that I was naive in taking out all that debt to go to a school that was beyond my means and studying something that wasn’t an easy market to break into. But that was then, this is now.
I was very troubled to see all the bickering back and forth. I thought it was a support group. I regularly would write to legislators, journalists, I even interviewed with one for my local paper. I was really offended that I was accused of not doing my fare share. It got to the point where I just stopped posting because I was afraid of what sort of responses I would get.
I don’t bear no grudge to Alan Collinge, though. The student loan machine is not a fair one. I’m all for paying off my debts but to be continuously harassed and not given flexibility when it came to a fair payment plan. I was expected to pay more for my student loans than my rent at a time where I was living paycheck to paycheck.
Nevertheless, SLJ seems to have an attitude and doesn’t really offer any type of support only demands.
And I hate the word “deadbeat”. Just because someone isn’t in a position to pay off their loans doesn’t make them a deadbeat. I want to pay off my loans, I just can’t! I’m on the verge of homelessness right now.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Alan // Aug 6, 2008 at 3:44 am
Mary,
Why don’t you ask the anonymous person who runs this website what his real name is, and what his profession is?
Sorry you were unhappy on the SLJ yahoo group. I didn’t create the group. I didn’t shut it down. If you want support, then I suggest that you get with your state chapter. That’s the best I can do, unfortunately. This is a grassroots movement, and despite websites like this, undoubtedly supported by people in the student loan industry, we will be soldering on and gaining the momentum that is appropriate. The problem to big, and the number of victims to numerous.
I can virtually guarantee you that whoever runs this site is financed in some way by the student loan industry, and so by coming here and viewing this as some sort of alternative to slj, yuou are being duped, and duped badly. Feel free to email me any time. I have nothing to hide, and never have!
Regards,
Alan
2 Muneerah // Aug 8, 2008 at 11:20 pm
here we go finally! I found you on google.
I joined student loan justice. I did not expect them to do anything. I was happy to tell someone else who would listen about how citibank changed my loan illegally and then ruined my credit forever.
I have no intentions of getting involved in whatever scrap you have with Allan. Allan did do something for me and I have never donated a dime to his organization. He refered me to a lawyer who is going to do a class action against citibank. I have been trying to get lawyer for the last 8 years.
All the lawyers says is that you can do nothing and recover nothing. It is okay for the lenders to commit outright fraud and then ruin your credit and yank your bank account. Well, listen up! I am not in default because I refused to pay. I have two letters from the CEO of Citibank admitting they changed my loan and then saying “Sorry if you were inconveinanced”
What the “>>>>” is that? Also Sallie Mae is a crook also. This was not my first student loan. I paid the first one off finally after taking Sallie Mae to court after they tried to illegally capitalize interest onto my loan. It was a mere $967 but add that to the balance and then calculate interest, I dont think so. They lied and said that I did not file the deferrment papers when I was in school. Now students have automatic notification from the school to the lender when you register. I know this was part of my doing. It took me five years to coerce Citibank to admit their refusal to correct my loan. I asked them to do four things. 1. to admit their error, 2. to correct it, 3 to correct my credit reports, and finally to make reasonable repayment arrangements. What would you do if two weeks after you consolidate a $10K loan, you discover that they have changed the promissory note? Then even though you are in school full time, they start saying that you are in repayment even though you are in school deferment.
Then when you confront them, they retaliate against you and start reporting you delinquent on your credit reports destroying your $150K credit line that you worked over 20 years to build. Then they default the loan behind your back without notifying you and then they repurchase it when they realize they will get caught. Then they deny your hardship deferrment, the one you requested because you have been unable to get a real job for ten years do to the fact they have ruined your credit and no one will hire you.
Then after denying your hardship deferrment without notifying you, they default the loan a second time. You call everyone in the book. Everyone keeps telling you to call the collection agency.
No one listens, no one. So in desparation you decide you need to leave the US your country to live somewhere else and to take your assets with you or they will steal them. Meanwhile you are listening to the news on cnn and you hear that the attorney generals office in new york city is suing the living shit out of citibank for what? for student loan fraud and predatory lending? funny when I took out the loan i was not given the option to use another bank for the loan which is the very thing that citibank was sued for.
By the way all students who had loans in new york city colleges with citibank and were involved had their entire loans discharged.
Now I come to my final point. There are banks ripping off students and breaking the laws. It is a fact. Allowing these people to rip off students and the students to have no recourse is going to stop with me, Muneerah Crawford. Remember this name. I am a nobody coming back from student loan hell. I will make sure that no student ever goes thru what I have gone through. I am an American and I deserve more rights than illegal aliens who sneak into my country and scam and break the law. I am a honest person with nothing to hide. If I owe the money I will pay it but not under these conditions. The loan is now accruing a balance close to double the original amount at $19K. I have just sent certified letters to Margaret Spellings, US Department of Education Head, The New York Attorney Generals Office, My new lawyer in california for the class action, and Alan Collinge. Before you go spouting on this blog that people like Alan are just trying to get out of paying back a loan, get informed because somewhere along the way you dont know the people I know.
I have met five so far with the same problem. It is illegal to mishandle the loan.
Read the website for the dept of education on the laws regarding student loans. Also I keep hearing horror stories of disabled people having their social security check garnished. What is that? That is not right!
Come on you people on this blog site.
You are Americans? You think that is okay? Do you think its okay for the lender to commit fraud against you and then destroy your credit?
So now who is exposed?
I dare you to try to refute what I have said. I have the letters and documents to back it up.
3 Muneerah // Aug 8, 2008 at 11:26 pm
these are the facts! Its obvious that none of you on this website is having a problem with your student loan so how dare you say anything about people who are.
4 Chelle // Aug 18, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Wow. Mary is a college graduate? Hopefully she was not an English major. Talk about a bad investment. Universities actually allow people with such poor writing skills (I cringe at the poor grammar) to graduate? What a disgrace.
On another note: let’s remember that not all who default on student loans are deadbeats. The new legislation will be helpful to those who are taking out loans now. What about those who went into default because they had no other options? They will continue to be underemployed and underpaid making it virtually impossible to pay off their student loan debt. Another national disgrace. It is a scam. I was fortunate enough to be able to pay off my undergraduate debt, so I cannot be accused of being someone who just wants to avoid responsibility. Nor should we accuse those who are struggling to pay off student loan debt due to predatory lending practices.
5 XXX // Aug 25, 2008 at 9:40 am
The new NYT article is going to push fresh attention to this ass who doesn’t want to work and pay back money he took.
I am so glad this blog comes up in the Google search for “Alan Collinge”
How can I email the admin of this blog?
I have something good to send you about this topic. It can be your next blog entry.
6 MJ Rivera // Sep 14, 2008 at 11:38 am
you stupid oinker, you have a link to Nanette’s blog and it’s wrong - snort, snort - tha tha that’s all folks
7 Nanette Rayman Rivera // Sep 15, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Congress takes their bribe money from Alan Lord and pays for their kids’ education so THEY don’t have deal with Sallie the Alley Mae.
8 Nanette Rayman Rivera and Jose Rivera // Sep 20, 2008 at 2:13 pm
we know that vitriol was from you. and get this:
just because we believe that someone should get a job because they are the BEST person for the job and not because of racial quotas, does not make us racists. After all, you idiot, I am Spanish.
I am going to get you taken off the internet because of what you called me and said to me. Do you really think I would publish it? Why don’t you say it here?
JACOB WALSH, you pig.
Leave a Comment