Never have I been so angered by a company as I have been over the years by the National Student Loan Service Centre, which for anyone outside of Canada or lucky enough to not have Government Student Loan debt within Canada is the evil entity that you have to deal with when paying back your student loans.
They are ridiculous.
The amount of times they have made errors when dealing with my file that have negatively impacted me and instead of correcting the error, or even just saying sorry (and meaning it) I have to redo a bunch of paperwork I already properly filled out and resubmit it even though I submitted it on time originally aaaaand then I have to hope they decide to be lenient because now I am submitting paperwork late and they could decide to penalize me for it.
Seriously, ridiculous!
The latest in the saga of my dealings with NSLSC started a couple weeks ago, well, I suppose it actually started a month or so ago but I didn’t know about the screw up until a couple of weeks ago.
See, I can’t afford to make the full monthly payments on my student loan so every six months I fill out a form for Repayment Assistance. Basically I am telling them I am still too poor to make payments, they counter with a demand for proof of income, I send them pay stubs, they grudgingly agree and lower my monthly payments, and for six months things are ok.
The last time they assessed me I unfortunately had a month where I racked up a lot of overtime at work so the pay stubs I sent them showed my monthly earnings as far greater than they normally are. When they sent me my letter saying what my monthly payments would be they were waaaay higher than anything I could hope to afford so I called them and tried to explain that the pay stubs they had showed overtime that I don’t normally get. I told them my hourly wage and how many hours of work I get a week and requested they please base my monthly payment on that information, I even wrote them a letter explaining this in detail. They were less than helpful…which is my nice of way of saying the lady on the phone was a bitch who wouldn’t let me finish a sentence, constantly talked down to me and basically said I was on my own.
Where they find these people I don’t want to know!…Actually, yes I do, so I can cut off their source of staffing!
So I tried making the stupid high payments and couldn’t. I called in again, got a different person who said I could request to be re-assessed and that might mean I get a lower monthly payment so of course I said I wanted to do that. I had ten days to fill out the appropriate form, fax it in with supporting documentation, and hope they decided to be nice. I faxed the paperwork the next day but didn’t hear anything from them so on the tenth day I called to confirm they had it and the guy I spoke with said it wasn’t in my file but if I faxed it in that day it would still be there on time and I would be ok. So I faxed it immediately and made sure I got a copy of the fax confirmation print out. I breathed a sigh of relief and then waited to see what they would do.
They are not always the fastest moving organization so it isn’t like I was expecting to hear from them right away, and while they prefer people upload things to their site or fax them they choose to send snail mail to student loan borrowers so I knew I had at least a week before I’d get a letter.
I didn’t forget about it exactly but since I knew I had to wait for a letter from them I stopped having the situation be at the top of my mind. I went on vacation, did my normal stuff, then randomly a couple weeks ago I get a letter saying I owe them over $400 dollars asap, my credit rating is being screwed up because of this and blah blah blah.
What the hell??
I called them and asked what was going on, I explained I had faxed in the paperwork and had been waiting for a letter saying what my new payments are and never received one and all of a sudden I get this letter and I didn’t understand what was happening. The lady I was speaking with said they never received the paperwork so my file reverted back to my owing the original monthly payment amount and I was actually owing them over $600 now.
Luckily I keep all my paperwork so I said I know they got the paperwork because I have the fax confirmation print out and they received it on such n such date and such n such time. I wanted to say “so there!” and stick out my tongue but I was trying to be polite lol So she then puts me on hold to check my account and when she comes back she is all “we have the paperwork you faxed in”, then she said some mumbo jumbo and asked me a couple questions and informed me I could resubmit the request to be reassessed with new proof of payment for the previous month and basically we can start the whole freakin process over again!
Sooooo, they got the paperwork, on time!, didn’t do anything with it, didn’t send me a letter saying what was going on, adversely affected my credit rating because they show I am late on over $600 worth of payments and now I am the one who has to redo everything, in the hopes they actually do their job this time??
How is this fair?
Of course I did what they wanted, not like I have a choice, sigh. This time though instead of faxing I did everything on their website, theoretically it is supposed to be faster.
So I go online, fill out the form, I have to upload the pay stubs which I can’t do for 5 days because I have to scan them at work and email them to myself first but once the form is started it will stay in the system for 30 days waiting for the additional information. It says this right at the top of the screen, 30 days! So not even a week after I fill in that form I go to upload the pay stubs and my form is gone, disappeared from the system, as if I never did it, wtf?
Filling out the form isn’t a huge deal but why did it disappear? What’s going on here?
I redo the form, upload the pay stubs and figure finally this madness will start coming to an end, well…no…because I went to check on the process today and my form is still there but somehow, magically, the pay stubs I uploaded to my file are gone…so the file is incomplete because the system is waiting for the pay stubs.
I swear I am about to rip out my hair!
I uploaded the pay stubs, again, and have absolutely NO faith it will matter or that my file will be processed or that they won’t screw something else up.
How oh how does this organization still get to operate?
Sorry for the ranting, I just really needed to vent about this!
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 
Hi time you contacted the local CBC or Global TV station – they must have a reporter who looks into government screw-ups. You can’t be the only one with problems. Better yet – have you put anything on Twitter? I hear negative comments about anything get dealt with lots quicker if twitter is used.
Good luck and keep us updated