I settled my Sallie Mae account with AllianceOne in August 2009. Before doing so I made sure they sent a fax stating our settlement agreement, which was to settle the entire loan amount for X amount of dollars. I paid the settlement amount to AllianceOne and received a balance owed $0.00 receipt from AllianceOne for my SM account. When looking on Sallie Mae I noticed the amount was applied to the balance but still shows a balance for the remaining amount owed. I waited the 30-60 days that was told it could possibly take to update to Sallie Mae and credit bureaus. Well back in January I sent certified letters and disputed this information showing settlement offer letter and receipt from AllianceOne with 0 balance to SM and also sent this same information to the Credit bureaus disputing the balance owed. I received information back from all three CRA and it said the dispute status is "updated" but still shows a high balance on my accounts. I am exhausted, I dont know what else to do. I want to sue them. Now my credit report shows deliquent 190+ days all the way until now, which before it was just left inactive/blank boxes in those months in between. This was defaulted around 2003-2004, but the date to be removed says 2012! I settled them to get rid of it, and it wont go away! Any suggestions? Should I get a lawyer? - Jokah
Who is reporting--the CA you settled with, or Sallie Mae? It seems to me that you made an agreement with the CA. They aren't reporting. They can't control what Sallie Mae does. Sallie Mae might not have agreed to settle the entire debt. And if the CA was only an assignee and didn't buy the debt, then Sallie Mae still owns and can still report. The CRA isn't going to delete anything based on something you send them. They have to report what the creditors report to them. Read that settlement agreement VERY carefully and see if there was any mention of Sallie Mae's reporting, and if it says the CA owns the debt or is collecting.
Wowm in that case, they may have tricked me and I can't blame anyone but myself. Now that you pointed that out, I re-read it and this is what it says: "This letter is to confirm that loan number xx (with an owing balanace of xx) will be settled in full for xx. Once funds have posted, we will in turn notify our client and this account will be closed in our system, with nothing further owing." After paying the settlement amount, I later received a statement for AllianceOne with the applied amount and a 0 balance. On the back it has the client as sallie mae and the amount applied with a total of 0.00 (owed?) I called them a few months back and they said they do not report anything to the bureaus, Sallie Mae does. I am hoping they really didn't trick me into paying Sallie Mae with a worthless settlement letter and worthless receipt. Also Sallie Mae shows on my credit report as charged off and late as of (todays date) but what confuses me is the balance owed continues to grow. This is the main account I want to get rid of! remains on CR until Feb2012 Should I continue to fight that this account was settled, or should I just pay it off? BTW, thank you for the reply.
Have you tried contacting Sallie Mae and letting them know what happened? You DO have the letter, try to use it as leverage. You may want to call them and talk to a supervisor. Is this a federal student loan?
No it wasn't federal. I have talked to Sallie Mae repeatedly and I get the run around. I finally got someone to look into this and asked me to fax them the documents, which I did. I faxed it and mailed it to them. Everytime I talk to someone they seem to give me the run around and then finally someone will say that it is being looked into but when I follow up, same process each time. No answers, just a waste of 1-2 hrs each time.
