I received a letter from my Sallie Mae telling me that I am behind on my payments. This, in and of itself is not a strange occurrence. Except that I don’t have any loans currently with Sallie Mae. So I ring them up and ask WTF.
They said that my loans are past due for repayment. I told them that I don’t have any loans and they said that I did. They told me that they were for the last school I attended, which was Westwood College. Erg.
For those of you who don’t know, I was royally screwed over by Westwood College in early 2006. I was attending their online courses for 3 months when all of the sudden they called me saying that none of my student loans were approved and that I owed them $12,000 (yikes). I asked why the didn’t see fit to tell me this when I enrolled in the school, and they said that they were having issues with their systems and they were just getting to my screwed up record. I told them that 2 months was quite a long time to be caught in an error and they said “Tough shit, pay us and continue or pay us and leave”. So I promptly un-enrolled myself, saying that since it was their grievous error, that they can suck up the 12 grand as a loss since they are not only a school, but a business; and loss is a part of business. I also instructed them to return to Sallie Mae the moneys they received for classes that I was not going to take anymore.
Fast forward 2 months, and I get a letter saying that I still owe them money. This time it was for $7000. I hocked a loogey on the letter and FedEx-ed it back to them (Priority overnight no less).
A month later, I receive another one saying I owe them $4000. A month later, it was $1800. Its been about 4 months since I heard from them last so I’m hoping that they realized that I was not going to pay for their mistake and decided to cut their losses (I was going to wipe my bum on the next one they sent me, so that was a wise decision on their part).
Then I get the Sallie Mae letter. It seems that Westwood only gave back about a third of what was given to them and I was to pay the rest. Well, thats not likely to happen, so it looks like I am going to get to have a nice long (and probably loud) chat with the finance folks at Westwood. Hopefully, after I get through yelling at them for their near illegal business practices, they will pony up the dough. If not, then my lawyer can have them (and she is quite vicious when it comes to schools, having been screwed over by them herself).
If I can, Ill record the conversation and post the audio. It should be worth a laugh at least to hear what they have to say.
-Cheers
The EXACT god damn thing happened to me as well! I am opening up a Class Action Lawsuit if anyone is interested in joining on in…
khusror@gmail.com
-Rafi
I’d be interested if I think it would actually do anything. Westwood should not be allowed to do this to its students, but getting a lawyer to do the case pro bono may be difficult.
Hey Paul–
How did things turn out with Westwood? I’m a freelance journalist and I’m doing an article on them.
Turns out that things did not go in my favor.
I had to end up paying $1600 to the school itself through payments. About 8 months ago they sold all their collections accounts to a 3rd party that started charging me interest. I promptly told them that isnt going to happen and eventually they gave in and took my no-interest payments.
For Sallie Mae though, Westwood would not give back the money that was owed to them. So I am stuck with $6000 in debt for them.
The whole process is fucked regarding Westwood. You cannot get a hold of their finance people when you need to (most times not at all). I had to go through Bud Rockwell ( then president of the school, he was replace about 6 months ago) to get them to even call me back.
This whole long ordeal cost me not only the money I needed for the down on a house, but also the credit rating I needed for same. Does that cost seem fair considering I only attended the school for less than 3 months?