After spending 1500 hours representing myself, I won in an out of court settlement (terms confidential). The short version of this story is that NELA thought they had a loophole allowing them to report false collection fees to credit bureaus until I paid them. They believed no private right of action existed for me to sue them. So they never removed the false information from all CRA's (or even updated my account in their own system as late as a year and a half into the law suit...suckers). It turned out they qualified as a debt collector under the FDCPA (Brannan v. USA Funds, 9th circuit court of appeals). I had the original bill from them showing false collection fees matching the amounts showing on my credit reports. It was false credit reporting related the collection of a debt, even if they kept telling the court I had a zero balance on my account. Actually, they lied all along and a filed a motion for fraud on the court. It turned out my account was coded as PD, "Paid (not in full) Principal settled." What a crock. So...checkmate. But the important thing for people to understand is that NELA (and many other student loan guarantors) regularly overbill debtors on collection fees. It is a scam. Often they declare debts defaulted too early which is hard to prove as willful (needed to undo the 60 day statute of limitations for administrative review and dispute). However, the overbilling is easy. Frontloading of fees is prohibited, but most guarantors including NELA has done it. Student loan guarantors are supposed to assess collection fees on a per payment basis, like the Dept of Ed does...not up front. NELA would hit you at the front end and at the back end, often after the loan was consolidated. If you didn't pay they just reported you the the CRA's until you did pay. Whatever. I hammered them along with a CRA which I am not going to name. If you have been overbilled, wonder about that, or have issues with NELA, let me know. I love to give out free advice on this.
Congradulations!! I settled some accounts for student loans with a couple of processors. One was front loading all kinds of miscellaneous crap on my reports. I reported them to the US dept of Ed and they removed my account and allowed me to rehabiliatate. It seems that many of these "processors" will try. One of the worst is NCO Financial. Another is F.A.M.E... They try to get away with whatever we allow them to get away with. They are a bunch of crooks.
Mozilla, That is wonderful news!!!!!! YAY!!!! Would you e-mail me please? I'd like to ask you a few questions in private (for your reference, we corresponded briefly in e-mail several months ago re rehabilitation and ASA). I have a question about ASA and an "IR" listing on the NSLDS database. Thanks,
Mozilla, Marci referred me to you & I saw your posting. I have defaulted & want to make good on my debt. *Please see 9/28 post. I contacted the collection agency, asking them to contact the lender b/c I wanted a payoff amount. They gave me an amount I couldn't afford $24K- therefore I told them what I could payoff - $19K by end of October - and asked them to contact the lender about this. Weeks go by & I f/u w/the CA. When I inquire about the payoff, they tell me they didn't even make the request to the lender and they wouldn't b/c they "knew" it wouldn't be accepted. I'm not a crazy, but this entire situation has my so upset, confused & dissapointed w/the irresponsible choices I made years ago - that I am depressed as hell now. Anyway, CAN THE CA REFUSE MY REQUEST TO ASK THE LENDER TO ACCEPT MY PAYOFF OFFER??? I would appreciate your insight here. Tks, KR
Good job. I had a student loan for my son with PLATO (Wells Fargo). They took over 3 months to consider his request for a deferral. They told me no payments were due while the deferral request was pending. Then they denied the request and turned it over to a collection agency for failure to pay during the time the request was pending (three months). The collection agency told me they had a suit ready to be filed and charged $2,000 in "attorney fees" for a $5,000 loan. Do you know if this is a violation? Any help would be appreciated. I paid within about a week of the deferral being denied so it is doubtful the CA had the file more than a few days. Also, do they have to offer a chance to rehab the loan on a private loan? They never did. Third question. They have refused to give me any paperwork so far to show the loan paid off or to document the fees charged on the collection. Do they have to? What galls me is that I was in touch with PLATO at least once a week during the period we were waiting on the deferral request and they never once told me there was a problem. Nor did they ever notify me (the cosigner) by mail or phone that there was a problem. My email is enabled if you want to write me directly. Thanks
