Is anyone else frightened at the apparent ineptitude, lack of transparency and otherwise confusing Direct Loan repayment system in the US?

September 13, 2012 12:39 PM

My loans have been transferred and split at least twice, usually without notifying me. There used to be a fairly easy to navigate website, but now that they are shared between myedaccount and edfinancial, or not. They are unable to give me clear answers. And now it's impossible to even find my full payment history online. I'm not sure if I'm looking for advice or to be held. Is anyone else experiencing this?
posted by SpicyMustard to education (6 answers total)

Yes!

I found the National Student Loan Data System useful for seeing all the loan amounts in one place.
posted by Jahaza at 12:43 PM on September 13, 2012 [5 favorites]

Your question made me look into it and I used the site Jahaza linked to to check on all of my loans and see who is servicing them.
posted by MadamM at 12:50 PM on September 13, 2012

That is helpful, thanks Jahaza--though it kind of highlights what a mess it is. To just access a summary table you have to go to yet another website.
posted by SpicyMustard at 12:51 PM on September 13, 2012

Yes, in the 10 years since I have had student loans, the ease of getting information about them (either by phone or by web) has gone down significantly.

I recently increased my monthly payment and was trying to figure out how quickly my loan would be paid off with my various monthly scenarios. It was impossible through the website - everything is "standard payment" "graduated payment" "income dependent graduated payment" with no information at all about what any of them mean for your total interest paid or life of the loan.

I finally called, and the gentleman I spoke to could not even understand why I would care. He just kept asking me over and over again how much I wanted to pay per month. It was like dealing with a really bad used car salesman.

I finally gave up and my husband calculated it all for me in excel.

All I can think is that it's yet another scary commentary on the lack of financial literacy of student loan holders in the US - plus the same old loss of knowledgeable customer services reps we see in every sector.
posted by paddingtonb at 1:41 PM on September 13, 2012

When you pay early make sure the extra amount is being applied to principle and not just being recorded as an early payment or principle+interest. Only in the first case it will it actually reduce the amount of interest you pay.
posted by NoDef at 5:38 PM on September 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

That happened to me, and months later when I looked at my credit report, I discovered my loan was counted on there twice (thus showing I had twice as much total debt as I actually did), since they hadn't showed it as closed/paid from the old lender when it was transferred to the new one. I had to put in requests to get it corrected. Also the websites are awful. It's really irritating.
posted by citron at 6:23 PM on September 13, 2012 [1 favorite]