This post was made on our discussion boards last week by one of our mods, Amerikaner:
“I get an E-mail from Equifax Score Watch. There has been a change to an existing account, and my score has entered a new score band. I’m sitting at 665, so I think one of my CCS has reported the lower balance after PIFing. Nope.
“My score is now 558 – over 100 points LOWER! And the change? Those wonderful people over at SallieMae have added this to my accounts:
“Arrangements made with credit grantor to make partial payments , Student loan.”
“The thing is“, Amerikaner writes “This is completely and utterly FALSE!“.
Our hero, the always level-headed Amerikaner, called Sallie Mae and had an amusing conversation with an off-shore telephone operator, who knew nothing about FICO scores and obviously the scripts they had in front of them didn’t cover this information. If you want to see the (quite amusing) thread that Amerikaner wrote, go here.
Bankrate monitor first reported the problem in an article on Wednesday: Bankrate Rate Article. According to this article:
Last Thursday, May 8, Sallie Mae made an error in the way it reported some student loans to credit reporting agencies. Essentially, it reported graduated or extended repayment plans as arrangements for partial payment, causing Equifax, one of the three national credit reporting agencies, to treat them as derogatory marks. Sallie Mae spokeswoman Martha Holler says that “some of the credit monitoring services then took the interpretation one step further and labeled the derogatory mark a delinquency.”
Technically, the thousands of people who were affected could sue Sallie Mae for false reporting, but Sallie Mae, according to a BusinessWeek article, agreed to send out lenders to creditors and had the problem resolved with the credit bureaus in a few days.
Related article BusinessWeek Article.
No related posts.
I’m glad Sallie Mae rectified the issue, and I am glad it did not take a week (or longer) – never seen Sallie Mae move so fast! I suppose when you screw up the credit of hundreds of thousands of people, you tend to fix it pretty quick eh?
I wonder how many of the hundreds of thousands of folks who were affected by this were’nt even aware of it until they read about it or heard it in the news…I ( and a very small minority of borrowers) only knew about it when it was happening because we have ScoreWatch subscriptions through Equifax or MyFICO, which e-mailed us about the change to our credit file.
Also hope those who were in the middle of applying for a car loan or mortgage get taken care of as well…that would be horrible – to have your FICO drop over 100 points (mine went down 105 hard-earned points) due to something completely beyond one’s control.
Glad it’s fixed though.
They just didn’t want to get sued that all
Does anyone at SallieMae Speak English?
You can sue Sallie Mae for other violations as well. Check out http://www.suesalliemae.com
sallie mae has reported me late on my credit report for over 7 years. I was never late, never and they were well informed of any and all activities on my loans….of which they falsefied in the first place and mislead me, and others, i’m sure. i was never late, never…and for over 7 years they have falsely reported and has caused me more damage than anyone can possibly even phathom. now its OVER 7 years and they still won’t remove the late payment on my report. and Experian, the one reporting says…”that is what sallie mae is telling us to do”…..they are just as at fault as sallie mae……and i am so infuriated and Noone is helping me with any of it and they are getting away with it. they also have caused so many problems and have lied profusely, to say the least, about these loans and have not serviced them at all……In addition, they have claimed that they closed and transferred accounts, without telling me, so they are worse than fraudulent. they are trading and selling these loans and restructuring them to fit their own needs and then making the borrowers pay for it. i can’t beleive that the government is even letting them get away with it. i know that NYS attorney general Cuomo’s office has sued them, but they should be worse than sued, they should have to go through what they put their borrowers through. Its too bad, because i thought that they were the last of the respectable lenders. Over 7 years and they won’t remove the late payment, THAT WAS NEVER LATE AND I HAVE DOCUMENTATION TO PROVE IT……EVEN DOCUMENTATION FROM THEM TO PROVE IT….AND STILL NOTHING IS DONE ABOUT IT
sallie mae has reported me late on my credit report for over 7 years. I was never late, never and they were well informed of any and all activities on my loans….of which they falsefied in the first place and mislead me, and others, i’m sure. i was never late, never…and for over 7 years they have falsely reported and has caused me more damage than anyone can possibly even phathom. now its OVER 7 years and they still won’t remove the late payment on my report. and Experian, the one reporting says…”that is what sallie mae is telling us to do”…..they are just as at fault as sallie mae……and i am so infuriated and Noone is helping me with any of it and they are getting away with it. they also have caused so many problems and have lied profusely, to say the least, about these loans and have not serviced them at all……In addition, they have claimed that they closed and transferred accounts, without telling me, so they are worse than fraudulent. they are trading and selling these loans and restructuring them to fit their own needs and then making the borrowers pay for it. i can’t beleive that the government is even letting them get away with it. i know that NYS attorney general Cuomo’s office has sued them, but they should be worse than sued, they should have to go through what they put their borrowers through. Its too bad, because i thought that they were the last of the respectable lenders. Over 7 years and they won’t remove the late payment, THAT WAS NEVER LATE AND I HAVE DOCUMENTATION TO PROVE IT……EVEN DOCUMENTATION FROM THEM TO PROVE IT….AND STILL NOTHING IS DONE ABOUT IT