lealar:When I graduated I had no job and eventually the money ran out so I could not affort to pay Sallie Mae.
You couldn't make the payments that you agreed to pay when you took out the loan. That's not the lender's fault. While I can sympathize with the financial problems that arise when you can't get a job, nevertheless, the lender deserves to get paid for the money you borrowed to get the education you wanted. When you don't pay, the creditor reports that to the credit bureaus, and your credit suffers. So long as what the lender reported to the credit bureau is accurate, there is no claim to pursue the lender for the credit woes that result.
lealar: I initially borrowed approximately $55,000 and now I owe over $90,000!
When you don't pay, interest continues to accumulate, and late penalties may get added to account, too. Over time, with no payments being made that means the account balance will continue to grow, and depending on the interest rate of your loan, it can grow pretty quickly. So long as the interest rates and other charges don't exceed those permitted by applicable law and that the loan contract provides for them, there is nothing wrong about adding these charges to your account. You will want to verify that your account balance has been computed correctly and if it hasn't, work to get that corrected. But if the charges are allowed, you won't get anywhere suing just because the balance is growing while you are not paying.
lealar: I had a perfect credit score of 780 before dealing with Sallie Mae and now I can't get a loan for $4,000 to buy wedding rings because my credit score is so low due to problems with Sallie Mae.
You want to borrow $4,000 to buy wedding rings when you don't have a job and can't pay the loans you already owe? Do you not see the problem with that? Even if a creditor never saw your low credit score, if it had the facts that you don't have the income and can't pay your existing loans, let alone an additional one, if it was smart it woudn't make the loan. There is just too much risk that the lender wouldn't get paid.
I understand that a wedding (particularly a first wedding) is a big event in one's life, but you need to budget for that event based on what you can realistically afford to pay. When you don't have a job and can't afford to borrow money, you need to set your sights on a less costly wedding. One of the biggest reasons that marriages break up are financial problems, and starting out the marriage by taking on even more debt you cannot pay will add stress to the relationship and make it that much more likely that the relationship will falter. I don't wish to sound harsh or critical, but simply point out what strikes me as a potentially bad financial choice based on the limited information you put in your post.
lealar: I went for three months without paying my loans and they called 8-10 times per day and harassed me regarding payment.
Well, sure, the lender wants to get paid. Creditors know that debtors tend to pay more when they are faced with consequences they don't like. Let's face it, many debtors would not pay anything even if they could if there wasn't any nasty consequence for not paying. Why would they pay if no one is bothering them for payment? There are, of course, things a creditor may not legally do to collect a debt. They can't send out a thug to break your kneecaps, to use the classic example. Debt collection agencies cannot, under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) call repeatedly during the during the day. But the FDCPA does not apply to the original creditor collecting its own debt. So, while the multiple calls per day no doubt are maddening and feel like harassment, under federal law the original creditor is not prohibited from doing that. A few states have laws the prevent the original creditor from doing that kind of thing, but most don't.
lealar: Keep me posted with any class action suits agains Sallie Mae...
For everyone involved in this thread, I suggest you keep in mind a couple of things. First, while the lender is obviously doing things to collect that many of you do not like, many of those actions may well be legal for the lender to do, distasteful though it may be to the borrower. If the lender may do it, filing a lawsuit, class action or otherwise, won't help you. So, you need to look at what's been happening to you and sort out first what things are permitted and what are not. For the former, you won't have any legal recourse. For the latter, you might. Consulting a lawyer can help you sort out whether, in fact, the actions taken in your situation were permitted or not.
Second, understand that class action lawsuits are designed to litigate claims in which all the plaintiffs are similarly situated with respect to the defendant. For example, if the lender was charging a certain of $X to borrowers that was not permitted, then that is a situation that might be resolved via a class action lawsuit on behalf of all the borrowers affected. It works because the evidence presented by the named plaintiff is basically the same evidence each class member would present if he/she was suing on his/her own. So it makes sense to litigate that in a class action instead of replicating basically the same case hundreds or thousands of times.
For situations that are unique to a particular borrower or that would require each borrower to present his/her own separate evidence to prove the case or establish damages, a class action lawsuit is not an appropriate way to litigate. In that circumstance you aren't saving any court time as each individual would still have to make his own case. For those situations, each person would need to litigate his/her cas separately. Those folks won't be well served waiting around for a class action that won't ever come.
Reading through this long thread, there are a variety of different complaints that people have about this lender. There isn't one big class action lawsuit that will address all those at once. The extent that there is a very specific wrong that ia experienced by a number of borrowers, that might be a good class action case. The point here is that you ought not think that just because a class action is filed against the lender that it would necessarily include you. Your might not be in the specific situation the lawsuit addressed. Also, if you think there might be a claim to make for some wrong the lender has done, don't sit around waiting for a class action lawsuit to solve your problem. Consult an attorney yourself to see if you might have a good claim, what you might get out of it, and what litigating it would cost you. The attorney should be able to tell you if that kind of claim might be one that is worth pursuing as a class action claim. If you do nothing, you may let the time allowed to sue go by and once the statute of limitation is gone, so is your chance to ever sue and get relief.
