Great Lakes Educational Loan Services Reviews

Original Review: June 18, 2018

I was on an income driven plan that would require me to reapply for yearly. It was only in June (mid year) that I called in to ask about how to pay off one loan at a time, focusing on the loan with the highest interest rate. Because the total payoff amount is usually different from what we see, I wanted to know what would be the total payoff amount for just one single loan (I have at least 8 to 9 loans with different interest rates). That was all the conversation was about. And yet, I received an email a couple of days later saying my application for forbearance was approved. That customer rep put my loans in forbearance WITHOUT my permission, NEITHER written nor verbal consent. How can they do this? This must be ILLEGAL!

Just because they think I may pay off my loans, they put me on forbearance for 60 days so that by the end of this time, my 10K interest will be added to my principal and any additional interest will be capitalized. I was doing perfectly fine on my income driven plan, no late fees because my minimum payment is 0! I was only thinking my family may help me pay off some of the high interest loans but it doesn't mean this will pan out. I am so ANGRY right now. I saw that email but didn't quite understand what forbearance mean until now, 2 weeks later. I am calling them to have this forbearance removed. I am praying they will remedy the situation or I will file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

I want to sue that lady rep. That was devious and horrible of her, to do something completely against my benefit and without my express permission. I want them to remove the forbearance and reinstate my old plan, but I don't know if their procedures allow them to do this. I'm so worried and anxious I cannot sleep and just waiting for 7 am to call them right away to fix this problem. If anyone knows how these things work, please advise! Is what they are doing illegal? Can a forbearance be canceled or removed without capping interest? Why the hell would I want to be in forbearance when my income driven plan monthly payment is 0? If this was done on purpose, then they are scam artists and need to be sued by the CFPB. I will update on the result.

I asked about moving the due date to alleviate that issue only be told that whatever the due date was would be the end of the billing cycle and that all extra payments must be made on the SAME DAY as your due date to count - and they only counted if they hit the bank on that day. I'm beyond irritated as I thought I had paid off a $200 balance about four times before figuring out what was going on. I'm waiting for a supervisor to call me back on Monday but I don't have high hopes for anything being allocated as I stated. If they don't reallocate or return my extra payment, I'll be calling my bank and reporting the misallocation of funds and asking them to retract the payment for me.

I wanted to make an extra payment today, but couldn't find the daily balance of accrued interest (yep, your interest is calculated and accrues every day. Mine is $7.21 a day). They don't make it easy to find that information. So I called them. While I had them on the phone, I asked them to explain how they distributed my excess payments. The lady was real nice, but the logic they use is convoluted, hard to follow, and seems to be designed to bamboozle the customer. After several frustrated minutes of trying to understand them, this is what I was able to figure out. I'm trying to make this as generic as possible so you can figure out your own situation.

I made a payment on the 14th of one month. This was counted as the payment for that billing cycle (due the 7th of the next month). Then I paid again on the 4th of the next month. Because that was before the 8th, that counted for a fat overpayment (after they took the daily accrued interest of course), but somehow doesn't count for the new payment that comes due the 8th, yet at the same time I am credited with being an additional month ahead (*shrug*). But when I paid again on the 2nd of the next month, that payment is credited to the previous month’s billing cycle, which somehow puts me an additional month ahead, but the extra monies I paid (about $120 per month) now only counted for $30 against my designated loan.

And if I try to make an additional payment today, to, you know, pay down a loan? It's not additional. I'm paying the payment for this cycle, due the 7th of next month, because the payment I made this month on the 2nd doesn't count for this cycle, it counted for the last cycle. This cycle I owe another $584 before anything I pay is considered an "extra" payment. So to pay $100 towards the principal on any loan, I have to pay around $700. Oh, and don't forget the proportion that is principal is reduced every day because the interest accrues every day. Got it?

Confused? Me too! After noodling it out, I finally understand their logic, but it is definitely not transparent. And I still have no idea why they claim I am paid ahead by three months, but my payments still only count for the billing cycle I'm in. When I asked, the lady said "that's in case you didn't want to make a payment for three months" which makes no sense at all as the daily accrued interest would total $650 after three months, which, incidentally now that I calculate it, is the same as the amount the claim I am paid ahead by. So, go figure. "Paid ahead" to them means how much interest you are allowed to build up before they come looking for you.

This is why people say dealing with them is like dealing with the Mafia. It is not possible to call them up and pay $100 towards a particular loan. They will not let you. Not until you have paid everything for the month. Then you can pay $100. After we take out the daily accrued interest of course. At $7.21 a day I'm no expert, but it seems to me that the rules are set up to make it as difficult as possible to pay off your student loan while maximizing profits to the loan servicers. A few months ago, I paid off a loan held by Nelnet. I found a place to lend me a small about so I could get Nelnet and their high interest rates and terrible customer service off my plate. Today I found out Nelnet bought Great Lakes. I expect the customer services to sink to a new low.

When I redid the application, I was told that my monthly payment would now be $166 instead of $91. You would think with the same exact answers, I would get the same, if not similar, monthly payment. But no, my payment went up by $75. When I asked for the reason why, the representative simply stated that this was based on the information I provided. 1 + 1 equals 2 today and 1 + 1 will equal 2 tomorrow as well. Which leads to my point – if I provide the SAME EXACT ANSWERS to the questions as I did previously to the SAME EXACT QUESTIONS asked previously, why would the two results be staggeringly different? Anyway, this company has got my life strapped down for the next 24 years since my loans won't be paid off until I'm 48 years old.

No matter how much I pay the loan keeps getting bigger. They have changed the due date of my loan multiple times but never send me statements. I may get a statement once every couple of months if I'm lucky. All I get are letters saying they can help lower payments and help regain control of the loan but when we call they say there is nothing they can do. If you get a loan through them switch it ASAP. I am trapped by this loan and can't get a job I want or give my son the life he should have because I can barely afford anything with this loan! They will not work with you at all and will just keep taking more and more of your money!

So, yesterday on 11/22/2017 I talked to their representative and she gives me this lame excuse saying they received it but claim they cannot read it. So, I sent in my entire income statement from the Post Office from my employment account which has my employee identification number, income, and name on it also the original. Then This morning on 11/23/2017 around 1:00 am, they claim they cannot read the pdf document once again which this document once again was generated from my employee account from the epayroll section from The United States Post Office. How is it that I send in two documents verifying my income that everybody else can read but not the staff at Great Lakes? Also, they acknowledged they have received both my income statements but want to raise my payment plan higher because their staff cannot read documents.

This company I believe is pulling unethical behavior due to the fact that they want to raise my plan even though they know my income is not the same since I served in the Army a couple of years ago. All their advertisements about helping the veterans is a lie, they draw up this image of or have commercials/websites with sections claiming to help the military but all they are known for what I can see is unethical behavior.

Anyhow, when I defaulted, I learned very quickly just how powerful these Mafiosos are. They threatened to garnish my wages and I quickly decided to just make a deal with them and pay them. However, it seemed like no matter how much I paid them, my balance never went down. Somewhere along the way I was not able to make the payments anymore. Then next thing I knew, Great Lakes had my loans. I seen that they were reporting to my credit. I sent them a letter asking them for the proof of indebtedness. They can't provide it in its entire form. All they have is a signature page with absolutely no details on it. I told them that I did not sign that and I want to see the entire contract with my social security number, address, phone, and etc on it. They can't provide anything other than the signature page. I've been afraid to challenge this in court because it appears they are under an entirely different set of laws than normal creditors.

If this wasn't a federal loan, this would have to be deleted due to lack of evidence, since there isn't any pages with the details of the loan or personal information of the recipient of the loan. Anyhow, I am still looking into litigation but I am not certain how this will turn out. I am also fighting this from an identity theft angle since I don't believe the signature on the one page is mine.

It was explained to me by a Great Lakes representative that I could make an additional payment, after the initial monthly payment was satisfied, and the additional payment would go entirely towards my principal if I mailed in a check and included a note earmarking the check for PRINCIPAL ONLY. I am now in a financial position to make an additional monthly payment in December, so I called Great Lakes just to be sure that the additional payment would go entirely towards principal - to my dismay, the representative told me that the additional payment would NOT go towards my principal, it would be applied to the next billing cycle and autopay would not recognize the additional payment so essentially I would be making 2 payments for 1 month though both would go towards a percentage of interest and principal.

The representative told me that the Federal Government changed the rules and they have no control. I asked where I could view the "updated" policy and information on the Great Lakes website and she said nowhere, though if you try to make an additional monthly payment online, it will tell you that the payment is being applied to the next billing cycle. She said that if I did want to make an additional monthly payment, I would need to make it on the due date of my current payment and then it will be applied to principal only - but she cautioned me that the Federal Government could change the rules at any time (and I assume that the new policies would not be made available to view online).

I will NOT make an additional payment, as I DO NOT trust that Great Lakes will apply my additional monies as I intend. I will instead continue saving the money and as the loan get closer to being paid off and I have saved enough, I will apply the entire savings towards completely paying off the loan in a lump sum. Working with Great Lakes has felt like a dishonest experience - ugh.

Of course we called GL and they gave us four different agencies and banks they were supposedly collecting for. We called every agency and surprise they had no record of him or any loan. Again we contacted GLHE demanding they send proof, a week later there was a typed letter from them with the name of this school he supposedly attended back in 2007. We called the University and they had no record of my husband, BECAUSE HE NEVER ATTENDED COLLEGE IN 2007!! And yet, because we live in a state (Wisconsin) with laws that protect these predatory collection agencies, (thank you Scott Walker), they're allowed to garnish wages, Social Security and SSDI checks without needing to provide proof of debt or even a judgement.

Great Lakes Higher Education has stolen money every month since March of this year from a disabled citizen... And my family are not the only ones affected by these scam artists. What is most shocking is GL has a contract with the DOE and there's absolutely NO oversight, NO regulations, complete lack of due process. Those of you who were trying to better themselves by getting an education and have fallen victim to these scam artists, my heart truly goes out to you.

This company has stooped to such a level as to steal from those on Social Security and Disability, prey on low income families who cant afford legal assistance. What's worse?? They're shielded by the very legal system established to supposedly protect and uphold the constitutional rights and safety of us, the working citizens. I know it's hard, but don't allow yourself to be intimated and fooled... Record every correspondence, demand records, keep and make copies of those documents, research state and federal law regarding student loan debt collection. We have contacted those in the Senate and Congress who do not take this matter lightly and are presently investigating the matter. Contact advocates, local officials, even news outlets. Enough is enough.

A person by the name of Yolanda ** was the person I worked with. They just took out $150 this month. I am 65 years old and make 10,000 a year. What they are doing is not right. I have had no medical insurance for 10 years. What am I supposed to live on! I got a degree and the only thing I can do with it is drag it to my grave. All I can see in my dreams is a pile of student loan invoices in the night stand beside my bed at a shabby nursing home because this company is so greedy and ready to hurt instead of help!!!

Remember my 2 and 4% interest rates? Well out of a scheduled $85 payment, $21 dollars goes to interest. And they fight to justify it (failingly and pathetically). And if I pay extra, even though I've allocated to have it directed at principal, it just 'pays ahead" and apparently disappears. And for some reason I can't get them to supply me with an itemized statement with Loan totals so that I can see why my end principal loan hasn't decreased. But that $60 still should have applied right? Heck if I can see it. At what appears to be a 25% Student Loan it would be cheaper for me to pay off the entire thing with a Credit Card. What sort of place has this become???

Seriously, I have had more problems with this company than I had with any other business. Additionally, the staff seems to be trained differently because they do not seem to agree on the information they give you. I would call and get different answers of why something happened to my account and honestly it is a true headache and very time consuming. I cannot tell you how many hours I have spent dealing with this. Most of the personnel is nice and tries to help, but it does not seem as though they are trained properly to apply money to the loans. They have no trouble taking the money but there are extreme problems on reading emails and representatives notes on how to disperse the money. Plus, there is no way for them to pay me back from their mistakes like other business. If I ever take out another student loan, I will make sure it won't be from this company.

Now a year later these ** are sending me a loan renewal email, the whole system is a government scam. It's the crooked Rothschilds who own these banks and our country is in debt to them, college is a scam to charge us all with the country's debt. Don't go to college. It does nothing for you but make you a slave to debt. You're never going to pay it off. They find a way to charge you the rest of your life. And there's nothing you can. They're all thieves.

I found the response sent back to her to be beyond belief. Great Lakes stated that they "learned" of her enrollment and it was their practice to place students on automatic deferrals. They also stated the complaint about not wanting to pay interest was met with the response that not much interest would accrue. Finally I was told that their practice is to automatically Place students on deferrals. She now has to file a request to "opt out of this service". I also now have to wait for them to return the form to do so.

The practice of receiving information from an outside source where and when she was attending school is of great concern. I find the practice of sending an email saying that "your deferment has been approved" when no application was made quite deceiving. She was in graduate school two years and this is just occurring. This makes me think that this a relatively new practice. Despite their claim that the there is not that much interest, the company's spending the money to track borrowers and make set up deferments would suggest there is significant profit made from this practice.

In my opinion, as long as servicing federal student loans is a for profit business with little oversite by the government, these types of abuses will continue. Now there is talk of getting rid of any consumer watchdogs for this business. Given the number of complaints on the internet by people who are ACTUALLY MAKING ALL PAYMENTS on these loans, I would strongly encourage borrowers to carefully monitor their loans and all website correspondence so they can "opt out" of unrequested changes in their payment status before they accrue additional interest. AS for Great Lakes, I am deeply dismayed. After surviving the Sallie Mae fiasco I considered Great Lakes one of the better service providers. All I can say at this point is BORROWER BEWARE!

I would never again use Great Lakes as a servicing agent for college loans or any loans. When I called customer service and asked for an estimate refund date they kept saying, "It is pending call back next week." I did this for 3 weeks before I could talk to a supervisor that told me that they would hold my money for 30 days because this is the length of time a bank could wait to cancel their check. No customer service is better than the joker I spoke to. They simply do not care about their customers!!

I get it, they have a track record of sucking. After I graduated and my loans came out of deferment I continue to be on their website and track my daily interest and payments on an excel sheet. It's just become part of my morning routine now. Because I track daily, I know about how much my account is accruing (or should be) and if the number isn't in line I know they are screwing with something. In my last year with this company on separate occasions my account has gone to zero randomly, they have added 100k to my balance for a day, and wiped the principal paid off all of my payments. I had some freak out moments but the issues were resolved in a few days. I knock on wood I don't have any issues in the future trying to pay these off way early but as of right now I just recommend you all get used to getting nothing from them... Do the work, log in online daily because you have to police the account yourself.

Meanwhile the time is coming for me to make another monthly payment so I said "well I'm not making a payment until this is fixed." I can't afford for my payments to go up as high as the company wants them to. The website said that if I renewed my IDR it'll only make my payments go up to about 122-125 a month. If I don't do anything at all, then the website said my payments will go up to 188 a month. That may not be much difference to some people but when you have a crappy paying job that's a huge difference. Their solution was to put a 60 day hold on my payments while they got their crap together for my IDR plan thing. So I said "Fine. Whatever."

I call back in 60 days (which is the end of August 2016) to see the status of my IDR deal. The girl I spoke to said that it was rejected. I never got so much as a call or an email or anything about it. I had no idea it was rejected. I asked the girl if she could tell me why it was rejected and she told me they claimed they didn't get my spouse's financial info. Yet she could look it up in her computer and tell that I sent it in. I said that makes no sense. She said "I will resubmit it, call back in a week or 2 to check on it." I asked the customer service rep why in the world it was taking months to complete this process and she literally laughed and told me she didn't know.

A couple weeks pass and I get an email that says it's finally accepted. LITERALLY 5-6 MONTHS AFTER I STARTED THE PROCESS. So frustrating. My payments ended up going up 50 dollars. I was told that it would only go up 20 bucks. I truly regret taking out loans from this company. Their customer service is IGNORANT AND UNEDUCATED.

I currently have to work part time 5 days a week to meet my expenses. I have filled out their income based application and the payments come back more than I can afford. They will not listen to this. They only look at your income and do not consider your expenses. I have tried to explain this with no luck. Every time I contact them they send me the income based site which starts the circle all over again. I told them what I could afford and they ignore it.

I finally got a 60 day forbearance, whoopee. I only took the first year which were all core classes except one. The education has not benefited me in any way as employers don't even look at the one year. I have several expenses and I will lose approximately $1400.00 a month income in July 2017. I can only afford what I can afford unless I can begin manufacturing money. They don't listen they don't care. They rush you into the loan then once they got you there is no way out. On top of it all interest keeps accruing. There is no way out so beware!

I would have to say my experience with this company has been little to no help. When I ask questions Via email I do not receive a response until three days has passed and I do not get direct answers. When I ask specific questions about my student loans they always refer me back to my school student loan office which will not discuss it with me and tells me to talk with Great Lakes, so basically I get tossed around like no one cares. I would definitely suggest keeping them if you do have them but make sure you are specific with your questions and do not expect a response in a timely manner.

I've called many times and had conversations that always turn out the same. (1) I explain the situation and remind them that I have provided them with the documentation they need to illustrate the payment. (2) They tell me that they need time to "investigate" the matter further. (3) I never hear back from them, and when I call back to find out the status of their "investigation", they have no idea what I'm talking about, and I have to resend my documentation that shows the payments having been made. (4) They tell me they need time to "investigate" the matter further. (5) ...Rinse and repeat. They are holding my account open for approximately $10k on a loan that was paid off by the US Army in 2013.

Looking at the balance this did not appear to be happening so I had to request the information multiple times in order to get a history of exactly which loans the payments were being applied to. What I found was that even though I had paid ahead and had $0 due, the payments were going to the principal of the Subsidized loans with 3.5% less interest!

Think about that! They are making 3.5% interest on all of the loans they deal with like mine! No wonder why they make it so hard to access the information on their website. I wonder how widespread this practice is and wish someone would write an expose. I just spoke with customer service. They admitted as such and said that in order to achieve what their policy stated they do automatically, I have to make a call every month and specify exactly what to pay. All the online payments will not go to the highest rate loan even though it says they will in their policy!

I have to go through this issue every couple of months. I've used the same bank account for payments for the past 2 years. The account I use for autopay is the same account I use to make the additional payments. For some reason the autopay payments go through fine, but not the additional payments. I've gone back and forth about this with them for months. I've contacted them about 6 times about the same issue. It's almost as if they are mad at me for trying to pay more than the minimum payment. Their customer service is awful.

I am willing to make payments on my student loan, unlike a lot of other people. And yet this company gives me a hard time and doesn't apply my payments correctly. I have been making payments to them consistently every month, since I took out the loan, even when I was still taking classes. I am very frustrated with their unhelpfulness and their lack of ability to handle my payments correctly. I just received an email over the weekend, saying my payments weren't applied in Feb. Yet when I check my bank statement, both have been cashed. Half of the time I don't even know what they are talking about and why I am getting emails. It shouldn't be so difficult to send a company money!

When I challenged this, they claimed it was the rules from the department of education, insisting the government didn't consider the balance paid off it wasn't made in a single payment. That's a complete lie, it's just another example of Great Lakes online payment system being buggy and them ignoring it. The best they offered was to refund half the money in 45 days, which is unacceptable when they're the ones who caused the issue.

I called and spoke to a customer service agent named Lakeshia who apologized for the error. She advised that I would be refunded in 45 days. Unacceptable to me because essentially I just gave Great Lakes a interest free loan for a month and a half. Ironic! Lakeshia advised her manager had left for the day but she put a note in the system to have someone call me back. Knowing how this could drag on I asked for an email confirmation that she would have someone contact me. She advised they do not email confirmations like that. I politely agreed and awaited a phone call the next day that never came. I called again to speak with a manager and this time I was told the money would be back in my account 7-10 business days. We are now on day 13. If you want to borrow money from a lender, think twice about having to deal with Great Lakes and their headaches - still missing my 450 dollar payment.

When I started residency, I brought deferment forms to my program administration. The program secretary took the forms but did not fill them out or send them appropriately because I started getting harassing phone calls from both servicers about 6 moths later about my loans going into repayment status. So at that point, I approached the program secretary and asked what had happened to which she stated that she did not recognize the forms and she was pretty sure I hadn't given them to her previously (bold face lie. okay though because her and the majority of the lousy department's contracts were not renewed a year later and they have for all intents and purposes, lost their residency program and affiliation with UCLA. I ended up transferring residencies to UT-Houston as a result but an entirely different story altogether).

Bottom line is, these were not trustworthy people. Anyways, I tracked down the program director (who was also let go shortly thereafter) and got him to sign the deferment forms for my loans and (finally) got them sent in. Unfortunately by then, they had entered repayment but Sallie Mae (Navient now) took the deferment forms and kindly placed them back in deferment status. Not the case with Great Lakes. Instead, Great Lakes used the 1-2 moths of lag time as an opportunity to mercilessly harass me and ultimately DESTROY me (or my credit, anyways). They continued to call me incessantly, none of their employees had any knowledge about the particular situation that I or my loans with them were currently in and they repeatedly shamed me for not paying my loans. And when I attempted to explain that a deferment request had been filed, they repeatedly disregarded it and endlessly berated me for not paying my loans.

My favorite comment by one of their most ignorant employees was "You're a doctor. You have plenty of money so why aren't you paying back your loans?" I didn't even bother explaining the situation or that resident physicians make significantly less money than the kind of physicians she was obviously referring to because I had already dealt with so many ignorant and idiotic people before her that I considered it a waste of my breath. Irregardless, this volley went on and on for several months at that point (them telling me I was nearing default if I did not pay my loans, me telling them that I had sent a deferment request to which they would reply "we don't have anything on record" to which I would reply "that's interesting because I sent virtually the same form to Sallie Mae 5 moths ago and my loans with them are back in deferment and doing fine. The problem appears to be on your end." blah, blah, blah).

Meanwhile, I am being abused and demoralized by people who would prove themselves to be most likely the worst residency program in the country (UCLA-Kern Psychiatry). It's not like I was sitting around on my ass doing nothing but dealing with these moron loan people... I eventually spoke with someone who was willing to at least send me a forbearance form via email to fill out and see if I qualify for which I quickly filled out (even though the deferment form sent SEVERAL moths prior should have sufficed) only to be told ANOTHER 2 moths later that I did not qualify for it and that "oh by the way, your loans are being sent to default". I actually have the impression that a default status is what they wanted all along because they never accepted my deferment form or the follow up forbearance form.

If I had known about the income based repayment policy, I would have opted for that. However, I did not and they certainly did not let me in on that information or option. So, now they are in default with no hopes of getting resolved. My credit is crap and I will probably never qualify for a home loan even though I've done nothing but work my tail off through med school and residency serving mentally ill patients who ironically, by comparison, have been lovely. What is most incredulous to me at this point is that I have been a resident physician for 4 years now and have every proof of that. That I need (pay stubs, certification certificates, letters from program directors, etc) which should be enough to prove that I do and have for the last 4 years, qualify for in-training deferment. But this does not seem to matter to anybody, anywhere.

I called them recently to discuss options for loan rehabilitation and all the "supervisor" could tell me was that there was an '"awful lot of activity" on my account. Well duh, you threw it into default, moron. She could not even tell me the basics of loan rehabilitation. I had to go online to find that out for myself and of course when I logged onto my account with them, the only option I was given to get my loan out of default was to pay over $1000 a month which is a completely ridiculous notion on my meager resident salary.

I feel as though I am destined, beyond anything in my control, to have crappy credit and defaulted loans because that is what these moronic, uneducated, ignorant slobs who work for places like Great Lakes want for people. I am astounded at not only the complete vacancy of customer service (the term in conjunction with Great Lakes is ridiculous) but even worse, the complete lack of any human element whatsoever. These "people" are evil, soulless animals.

I received an email today (11/7/2015) stating that the forbearance is accepted and applied to my account and that the amount of loan interest that is now added to my principal balance. This is completely wrong! Great Lakes is not allowed to do the opposite of what the loan borrower approves. I did not approve a forbearance. And not only did I have to withstand the pressure of this customer service representative but am now distressed by their actions.

I just pissed and flushed away $11,000.00! If the school won't hire me for what I am qualified to do what are my chances outside the school? Slim to None and Slim not only left the building, Slim took a flight to Belize on a one-way ticket! Now I have this loan company wanting me to pay them the loan! I keep telling them to get it from the school as the school won't even hire me with a 3.75 GPA in their course. I did all that while homeless and sleeping in their lower parking lot at night for 1 1/2 years. The loan company needs to forgive my loan!

I even went to go into the next level in Computer Graphic to bring me from certification up to Associates Degree. The day and night students had a fit. I asked the teachers why? I was told that they can't compete with my skills and the grade curve would be a straight uphill climb. I never needed extra time to complete my assignments and always showed up for class. I have the letter I sent to loan company in an email if you would like me to forward it please let me know.

When I first started talking with the supervisor she told me that the majority of the money were going towards the loan with the highest interest rate (just like the website says), but after I told her the calculations I made she changed her statement and said that the majority of the money was going towards my unsubsidized loan, which obviously has the lowest interest rate. They do this because it is on their best interest that our money goes towards the loan with the lowest interest rate, that way they make more money out of us. At the end of the phone called, she didn't give me any document that says how my money is being allocated and she said that I won't ever get it. I wonder if there's someone I can talk to about this, because being my money I believe I have every right to know how is it being distributed.

So now I am faced with the prospect of having delinquencies reported to the credit bureau. Their online system reeks of scam -- I think they are purposefully trying to scare people into overpayment. Not knowing whether I can trust the online system, which claims I have a payment pending, but also claims that I am past due on loans, I make a payment for the total amount due before midnight on 7/27/2015. I fully expect them to double bill me. There is no reason for this confusion in their online system in 2015. I am a registered nurse and sleep during the day and work nights. Therefore, it is difficult to keep logging in to mygreatlakes.org to check if my payment processed properly. If you read more information such as complaints on the Better Business Bureau, you will find egregious treatment of consumers who do not fit the typical mold of the delinquent deadbeat.

In fact, there is even a story about somebody in Germany trying to pay off their $20k+ student loan in full, and having to incur hundreds of dollars of pain and suffering including cross city travel just to get the check to them while Great Lakes was refusing to accept payment. Great Lakes basically doesn't help out until you start going ballistic and get authorities and others involved and start making federal complaints. Worse yet, the few times I have called for typical day-to-day operations such as in-school deferment and income based repayment (IBR), customer service has ALWAYS - WITHOUT FAIL - been either incompetent, or rude, or both. Because of this new Federal Student Loan charade... you cannot choose your servicer. Thus certain cohorts of student loan borrowers are automatically assigned Great Lakes. Like all modern student loan servicers, Great Lakes claims to be nonprofit.

However, as you already have inferred, I would find it hard to believe that there aren't several people within the organization commanding disproportionately high salaries. Once I had a serious complaint about a customer service representative blatantly ignoring my question and answering the one that she decided was my question (even though she wasn't actually answering my question). When I complained to the Omsbudsman, they didn't help at all. I just called Great Lakes until I got a rep who could actually answer my question. Great Lakes is the type of organization where you simply have to keep calling and cycling through customer service reps in order to get a favorable outcome. They lack communication, unified policies, or anything else that is required for delivery of good and consistent customer service.

One time, when I simply referred to the national student loan data system (NSLDS) as the federal government, a woman got haughty on the phone with me and condescendingly asked "What do you mean when you say the federal government?" I quickly quipped back that I meant the NSLDS which is a subset the federal government. Apparently it is a stretch to call a dog an animal by her standards. As I have stated, I am a registered nurse with a bachelor of science. Due to my horrible experiences of being treated as a criminal despite not even being delinquent, I am in the process of working on immigration to Europe. I hope to not have to deal with them soon. :)

After a dispute over this issue, they agreed to apply a financial hardship to this loan and prevent it from going into default. The next month I returned to school, only to find out that Great Lakes placed that loan in default two days before I started my classes. My FAFSA, which I was awarded, has not been revoked. I have called Great Lakes and their collection agency, have spoken with numerous 'supervisors' only to be told that they have no record of the financial hardship being applied. Everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else and telling me that either someone else or no one can solve this issue.

They will do nothing to help me, and are now aggressively pursuing actions to get payment on this loan. Additionally, I am now accountable for my tuition for the classes I am taking, as my financial aid is no longer available. Great Lakes does not care about furthering education or assisting their customers. They are strictly about their profits and, in a very mafia like way, will wreak havoc on your financial well-being until they get every dime they can out of you. PLEASE DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO AVOID BEING INVOLVED WITH GREAT LAKES 'HIGHER EDUCATION'!

I called them up, explained the situation. The woman on the phone was very helpful and explained that I had to renew annually, gave me a 1 month hardship forbearance extension and help me resubmit my IBR/ICR paperwork. It was all taken care of before the original bill was due. Now I just have to remember to get my paperwork into them by December for my renewal in January. For those that have had a hard time communicating with customer service, I would suggest going to the Dept of Education website and downloading all repayment options offered (it's about 4 pages) that way you can be informed of all your options before you speak with them.

For all federal loans, they have to offer all the same payment plans (private loans are a different story, they are like credit cards). I'm on my 5th year of IBR/ICB out of 25, so only 20 yrs left to go before they are forgiven! I don't pay anything because I make less than 20k a year with 3 dependents, which is ridiculous I know but I just don't have the income. Of the $156,000, I have paid nothing. It's up to $176k, but that's what I get. Just remember that even if you get the IBR or ICR plan, after that 25 (or the new 20) yr plan and your loan is forgiven, you WILL HAVE to pay income tax on your original loan amount.

After I was told by their representative that they had the wrong address and they could not make any changes to the account with the incorrect SS, they did so anyways to file against my credit! They later removed the negative remarks because of their 'errors'. However when I moved for them to dismiss the interest that accrued while they mailing out info to the wrong address, they blamed me after their investigative 'review'. The wrong address all of sudden got updated when I asked for fraudulent papers to be mailed even when the SS was still wrong, breaking their own policy that was stated to be. I have complained to the ombudsman and the BBB. They need to be investigated and held responsible for their actions!

I'm not paying a dime of those loans that were obtained fraudulently. These people are crooks, white collar criminals. They have no remorse or regard for the student, other than how much federal aid we are worth. I am furious and am going to be made whole. I have 31 useless credits that no college in the 5 boroughs of NYC will touch or recognize with a 10 foot pole. For over $60,000 I have nothing, except humiliation, embarrassment, sexual discrimination, intimidation, derogatory insults, defamatory accusations, and my registration papers ripped up in my face.

First thing to pop up was the "Capitalized Interest" of $3,500. Unbelievable. I make LUMP sum payments ($5,000 or more) on top of my monthly payment and it takes them DAYS to post to my account just so I can be done with this satanic company. I call and ask what the hold up is once or twice every time and get a different answer so my reply is "Why does your company suck?" This place is just unreal.

Confused, I called the company and spoke to a representative that said I had requested to change my payment plan. No, I did not - I looked at different options and decided to stick with what I had. "Yes, you did," she said. If that's the case, I stated, "shouldn't there have been some documentation from you - an email, a letter, a phone call - stating the change in payment plan?" She had no answer for that, was rude, and basically said give it time to sort out. So I did. Last week, I spoke to another representative that could see there was something weird going on with my account, but said she needed a different department to help her understand, and would get back to me within 48 hours, and if I hadn't heard from her by Friday to call back.

Of course I had to call back last Friday (as I didn't hear from her), and spoke to another representative who said they hadn't had enough time, and she couldn't put me in touch with that representative because I didn't have her extension. I told them they had until today, and I would be calling again because a week should be plenty of time. The rep I talked to today still didn't have a good answer for me on why it was generating a new payment schedule for me, and why it still hadn't generated one when I supposedly (though I did NOT) requested one back on April 7.

She has people looking into it, and when I asked her for her extension, she said they did not have extensions because they're in a call center, but she did offer her badge number. I also recorded the entire conversation, with her knowledge and consent. She said she WILL get back to me, but I'm not holding my breath, and will give it another week before pursuing further action with the US Dept of Ed and my Senator, who just introduced legislation about student loan reform. I think his office would be very interested to hear my story, and the other stories on this forum.

On two separate occasions, two different representatives dissuaded me from paying more on the high interest loans, asking "why would you want to do that? You would save money by applying the extra payment to the higher balance loan." This is absolutely untrue but they tried to sell me this line (and were pushy about it) not once, but twice. In addition, they have applied the funds in whatever manner they see fit, against my wishes, and they require that I call after each payment so the funds may be "reallocated" to the higher interest rate first.

This is very time consuming and difficult to track what actually happened to the money because the records of the reallocation on the website account history don't make sense. The website is terrible and you have to dig through multiple screens to get a history of payments on each account. I believe they are intentionally misleading borrowers to pay higher balances before paying higher interest rates, regardless what they have printed on their website. I have had two reps verbally tell me NOT to do this.

I was required to pay something around $63 a month, but knowing that my interest alone was $98 I knew that I should pay at least that amount to avoid my loans gaining a lot of unwanted interest. In October, after paying 10 months of $100 payments (all on time and never missing a single one), I called to see when I would be hitting my principal, since my statement continued to maintain their original balance (and don't even get me started on how confusing it is to find a statement showing recent payments, the amount of each payment that was attributed to the interest versus principal etc.).

The woman on the phone told me that I could keep paying $100 a month for 10 more months and in the 11th month I would FINALLY hit my principal or I could pay an extra $50 the following month and my principal would be affected the following pay period. So either pay $1000 interest on top of the $1000 I already paid in interest over the last 10 months, or pay an extra $50. Obviously, this was a no-brainer. I felt angry and cheated by this, but really it was my own ignorance to blame and I decided not to allow my accounts to go into forbearance again. This year I actually make less money at my current job and was forced to reapply for the same Income-Based Repayment Plan. This has been nothing short of a nightmare in itself.

First, I didn't get more than 2 weeks notice that this plan was going to expire and they require 6 weeks to process the request. So my plan lapsed and I was forced to pay the entire $218 payment. I turned in everything and routinely checked on the status of my account. I waited 3 weeks and received no notifications that my paperwork was being reviewed or anything. I called in and the rep said it looked like there was an electric signature (I'm positive there wasn't) and needed me to turn in the forms again. I did so and this started the entire process over- so I waited for another 6 weeks.

About 2 weeks after this they received my paperwork and sent me a notification to put my accounts in forbearance for the 90 days as my application was reviewed. I immediately alerted them to tell them NOT to put me in forbearance and that I would make my routine payments while my application was processed. They then took this as a message to retract my payment plan application. At this point I had waited about 8 weeks with nothing.

Enter 2nd full payment of $218. Then they finally approved me and I set up my April payment. But their systems reboot themselves and that caused my loans to be thrown back into a "frozen" status while the system refreshed itself- accruing interest for an additional 30-45 days while this repayment plan was put into place. I called, beyond furious, and explained that I wanted to make my April 2015 payment on time to avoid more interest to my account. I manually made the April payment and am now minding my May payment to make sure it comes through on-time and without additional fees.

The practices that these companies use are very devious and underhanded. For someone who is unaware and not as knowledgeable about financing this could seriously impact the amount of money they owe. Their website is very hard to navigate and their personnel are not empathetic to their customers or knowledgeable of the policies they have and you are often given the run-around. I feel that they are not forthright with their lending practices and are dishonest to an already vulnerable group.

It is crazy to me that a country that basically requires Bachelor's degrees to even have a slight chance of getting a decent job makes it almost impossible to pay for the services they receive. Something needs to change and students need to be educated and lenders need to be more open with the fees and how they stack up. I am just one of the graduates who understands financing from the past and voluntary research. Others are not so diligent and this should not be a secret or rocket science. The system is very much broken.

But wait. You might wonder why I didn't just pay my monthly payment during these last few years while I was waiting to get GL to confirm the balance. The reason? Before GL took over my loan I paid $500 a month to the government and $100 a month to another lender. They then took over my loan. I was overseas at the time. Months passed and I found out that my repayment plan, among other things, had been changed without my request. I now owed $2300 a month. "This was all," they assured me over the phone, "in my best interest."

So I said to the customer service, "I wish I was wealthy enough to make $2300 a month payments, but alas, that was not in the cards for me." I requested that they return my monthly payment to $500 which is what I could afford and what I had originally spent many hours to get settled. After a year of trying to get them to do this, they finally did not. Instead, they offered me $600 a month. They de-consolidated my loan into two separate loans, and they had me paying the lower interest loan off at a faster rate than the higher interest loan. Coincidence? My balance is still wrong. The repayment amount is still unaffordable for me. And nobody there is terribly helpful. Now back in the States I'm considering consulting an attorney. I give them 5 stars! GRRRRRREEEEAAATTTTT job Great Lakes!

Today I received an email stating that my student loan interest was being capitalized. This came as a shock since I thought everything was finished. When I spoke with an agent of Great Lakes I was informed that the reason my interest was being capitalized was because my renewal was still being processed. They then proceeded to tell me that the paperwork has to be PROCESSED by the due date not submitted. This was never communicated to me even though I have spoken to them at least 5 times between now and when I first received the date.

So as it stands now I have had $4000 added to my loan amount and will now be paying 6.5% interest on this amount for the next 20 years. Needless to say I am furious and am not sure what I can do (if anything). According to their logic if my landlord does not check the mail on the 1st and my rent sits in his mailbox for a few days I should now be responsible for any late charges.

Based on what I was told by these liars, I thought I'd have two years to pay off other debt so that I could focus solely on my student debt later. Well that's not the case! I'm screwed. Don't believe anything they say until you have it in writing. Make sure you have full names to the people that feed you their BS, dates and times of the whole conversation! Don't leave out any details. Then get a lawyer!

Of course as a loan payer I had several questions. Who wants to just choose an option without even looking into them and being sure what option best fits you? So I started asking more questions and requesting more information and the employee started getting frustrated. He asked me multiple times if I understood and I told him I wasn't quite understanding all the details. He was very broad and didn't provide specific details. I kept asking again and he reached a point where he said "Sir, you're really not understanding me, how about you get a pen and paper and write it down so you can understand me." I didn't think anything of it and I said “Sure, I'll grab a pen and paper.” I thought to myself, "Maybe it's a good idea, since I'm more of a visual learner anyway".

I grabbed a pen and paper and the employee was still very frustrated. I was born in the United States and speak fluent English. The employee then started being very offensive and rude! He started saying "Sir, maybe you need someone in your language to speak this to you,” and he said "Habla espanol?, I can transfer you to someone who speaks Spanish.” I took it very offensive and racist! It was clear to him that I am very fluent in English as we were already communicating.

Immediately I was FURIOUS! I do not appreciate someone talking to me like that and saying very rude and racist comments. I asked to be transferred to his immediate supervisor immediately and he said he wasn't allowed to do that, and that he was only able to transfer me to an account manager. I asked him to transfer me and asked him for his employee number and he said it was **. He told me my call was recorded and I told him I was GLAD it was recorded! To top it off, when he transferred me it was a Hispanic woman. I AM VERY DISAPPOINTED AND ANGRY AT THIS SERVICE! This is a form of racism and I DO NOT appreciate it!

I do not wish to do business with this company and never will. I've worked in customer service almost my entire life and I know for a fact that it is not okay to discriminate someone in that manner! Maybe he isn't in the correct field of work and should do something else. I WILL NOT DO BUSINESS WITH GREAT LAKE HIGHER EDUCATION CORP EVER!

Turned out they had the wrong address (some pencil pusher somewhere put Street instead of Avenue, so someone somewhere had my confidential information). Because it was obviously their fault, they told me that if I paid $10 a month for 10 months that everything would be alright. (I didn't have a job at the time, so I couldn't afford more than that.) I tried calling them 10 months later (April 2014) but never heard anything. They were still taking the $10, so I figured I'd goofed and was calling early.

In September 2014, I received notice that I qualified for President Obama's loan forgiveness program and went through the forbearance process with the help of Student Assist Plus, which had me paying $29.00 per month for 25 years when my loan would be forgiven. I was told to continue paying my loan until I received approval from Great Lakes, which I didn't have to worry about because I got approval 2 weeks later on 9/23/2014.

Starting in October 2014, I made the $29 payments, which were put on autopay. Then, on January 16th, I received notice from my bank that my account was overdrawn, which was confusing considering the fact that I had over $900 in there on the 13th. When I checked my account, I noticed 2 charges from Great Lakes, totally over $700. I could understand being overcharged by $1, but by more than $600? Nope.

Because I work during their hours or operation, I emailed them to find out what was going on. Within a day, I received a response from them saying that my payment schedule had expired, which was news to me because unless someone threw me into a time machine and I unknowingly landed in 2039, 25 years had not past since signing the paperwork in September. I emailed them back and explained that it had not in fact been 25 years, so my payment schedule could not have expired.

They responded 24 hours later, claiming not to have any documentation of a new payment schedule. This email was extremely sarcastic and condescending as well as egregiously false. After putting out the fire shooting out of my nose, I penned an email to them befitting their position, attaching documentation provided to me by them, approving my payment schedule. I haven't heard from them since. I will end up calling them tomorrow to try to straighten things out and get my money that they stole from my bank account back, plus the fees associated with my overdrawn account. Over the weekend, I closed my bank account and opened a new one, so they will no longer have access to my account and I suggest that anyone currently on auto-pay do the same thing, lest they find themselves short of funds.

I again requested Forbearance the following years (2013 and last year) and still nothing changed. Though I have struggled to do so, I have made each (full) payment as a result... and they are still claiming there's some past due (non payment) amount every month, even though all my records (including bank statements) indicate that they in fact were paid and each month on time, fully! I have already gone through the DOE once, may find I may have to again... perhaps higher if necessary. Something just doesn't smell right with this bunch!

When I called, to ask why this happened, their response was "people don't read them". Confused, I stated the payment coupon has a spot on the back specifically for special allocation of funds and contact information changes. I asked, "So, this information is not addressed or recorded, it's just thrown away?" No answer. Makes sense why they never changed my mailing address even with numerous attempts. Calling and trying to talk to someone is maddening. No one knows anything about anything. You're better off smashing your head against the wall, then trying to have a conversation with it. As someone stated previously, document EVERYTHING. Because they "edit" everything and pretend what was previously shown on their website never existed.

On top of that, I have submitted my IBR request 5 times now. I started in March 2014, and still nothing has been processed. I even have a confirmation email that all paperwork has been received for IBR from a Great Lakes representative named "David". My husband and I have sent in 3 certified letters, a fax, and 3 emails in regards to my IBR (including form, W2s, current W2 and taxes). We still continue to send in monthly payments, but don't get any acknowledgement from Great Lakes.

As of 12/11/2014 (starting on March 18, 2014), still no IBR processing. When I do speak with a representative, all they ask for is our bank account information or a credit card. GREAT LAKES HAS ABSOLUTELY NO LISTENING AND RESPECT SKILLS WHATSOEVER. All I want to know is how I can get a job like these people have "with no accountability." It is a joke how this company manages loans. Great Lakes representatives and VP are not managing accounts correctly. Again, watch out for this company because there is something seriously wrong with it.

GREAT LAKES AND ACS DO NOT WANT TO SUPPORT THE IBR. They just want you to do forbearance or defer making it effective for the past 12 months to collect 89.00 more on interest a month from you. HOW IS THAT ETHICAL???? Again, watch out for Great Lakes and ACS. My husband and I have been battling with them since March 2014. THEY REFUSE TO COOPERATE AND SUPPORT THE IBR. It has become a full time job managing my data with this lender. I highly don't recommend Great Lakes, ACS or Sallie Mae (Navient).

I deducted one star for this: I would prefer Great Lakes offer the option to auto-pay bi-weekly. Instead of accruing interest for 30 days and paying, it would accrue 2x at 15 days. This is a lower interest payment overall, and would save me $20 a month. Instead, I have to manually do one payment and let auto-pay pull one payment (so I still keep the .25% savings). Understandably, they don't offer this - because GL would lose money.

I think there should be a CLASS ACTION SUIT against this company. I am baffled by the inactivity of the people most affected by this company which are the students, people that have been educated. My only assumption is that they are so busy, that they don't even have time to write a complaint like this much less get more involved in their own rights. This is a way to slave them. Luckily for my son, I am like an eagle and try to be on top of issues like this. Today I wrote a letter to GL asking for a statement. I will see how long it will take them to respond. I will also call them on Monday.

The website is clean and easy to navigate, I will be returning to school soon and they have documents about my different options (such as deferment) for when I do return to school, and you can even request it online for simplicity. The company is actually really easy to work with, and it's frustrating to see such poor reviews from people who apparently thought taking out over 50k+ in student loans at a 6%+ interest rate was a good idea if they were going to work part time jobs after graduation. Loans that large are hard to manage on any budget, but that's not the loan companies' fault. It's the borrowers fault. If people aren't responsible enough to go through loan exit counseling, figure out who has their loans and how to pay them, and what payment plan to select, then they probably shouldn't have taken out a loan in the first place.

I asked for my original agreement with Sallie Mae. I was sent a copy of my 1989 agreement with the interest section scribbled with Sharpie and stamped- "Assigned to Great Lakes". They refer to some fine print that I cannot read. I do not believe this organization is truthful or helpful when I try and sort this out. I really do not care at this point. I have paid $37,000 in principal against a $36,000 loan. I cannot get rid of this organization. I cannot be the only one this is happening to, where is the US Attorney General?

I am starting to get suspicious about Great Lakes Higher Education Corp, the more money I am throwing at them the higher my loan total goes up. I did not choose to have my loans go through Great Lakes and I'm not saying that my loans should be forgiven, but when all that money is going towards accrued interest and not towards the principal, it makes me think that this company is operating illegally. At this rate my loan will never be paid off.

To date, they have sold the larger loan under my name which was placed in default but accepted the active duty military status for the loans with lower balances, which remain in good standing. We previously sent letters of dispute to Great Lakes, Bank of America, Dept of Education and former senator, Evan Bayh, and the Indiana Atty General's office, with little success. This type of loan discrimination is disgraceful, especially when it targets members of the military serving under active duty orders and their dependents.

When I checked the accrued interest for the month of July it is now at $253. When I was with ACS education I never had this problem. I always make my payments on time and I pay extra each month even though I'm on the lower payment plan.

Great Lakes, I DID contact you directly and even went so far as to ask for a supervisor and my issue went unresolved and I was threatened with loss of repayment status.

Is this resolved?

I won't know if THAT sort of behavior is resolved until the next time I make a reasonable request and see how Great Lakes handles it.

Original Review: June 9, 2014

My student loan payment recently tripled because of their error calculating the original payment. Great Lakes granted a short forbearance, I believe it was a month, while the new payments were set up. When I found my payments were going to triple, I asked for and **was granted** an additional short forbearance of a month or two to help budget this new very much larger payment.

I received a message from them that despite their approval of the second forbearance, I had to start the larger payments early, on the date they specified. When questioned, they threatened my repayment status unless I dropped the issue and paid when they wanted. I asked to speak to a supervisor and he reiterated the threat.

There was no reason not to go ahead and let me have the second forbearance that they had already approved and that I had counted on. I believe they were simply entertaining themselves by denying me. I believe that there may be a quotient of employees who, like those at Abu Ghraib, harm people because they can, just because they have a captive group who are particularly susceptible to private injury because no one sees.

There site specifically states that any additional payments are applied to principal. I paid $50,000 ahead on my loans... which means over $3000 that was applied to interest on that $50,000, even though I had already paid it! It should be applied to principal! They need to fix this. I've contacted the Ombudsman and am waiting for a response. Horrible loan services! I also think they screwed me over when the loan transferred to them.

If that does not provide a satisfactory resolution, then I will be filing a formal complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The end result may be that I transfer my entire student loan amount to a credit card for a 3% balance transfer fee, and pay 0% interest for a year, and continue to transfer the remaining balance to credit cards charging a 3% balance transfer fee with 0% interest for a year. I get these offers in the mail continuously, and it would be a feasible alternative. The interest charged would be significantly less than the interest I am paying now to Great Lakes, and my risk would be greatly reduced.

Finally, on 02/04, I received a response to the second email stating their records indicated they already responded to the first email. REALLY??? If you had, I would not have emailed you the second time. If there was anyone there with even a hint of a brain, they would have realized this and if they in fact did send a response as they claim (and I simply did not receive it), logic would dictate that they should go ahead and address my original email instead of just saying it was already answered. One would think this does not require a genius level IQ to figure out, but alas, it obviously does.

I responded to that email letting them know - because apparently they couldn't figure that one out for themselves - that I didn't receive the response to the original email and to please forward it and of course, they haven't responded. I went ahead and filed my taxes. I figured if the IRS comes after me for Great Lakes' mistake, if it is a mistake, I'll just sue Great Lakes for all attorney's fees, fines, costs, back taxes, etc. I made a good faith effort to do the right thing.

To sum it up, lousy customer service and when they do FINALLY respond, their responses are ridiculous. Wish I'd had a choice in who my loan was sold to. Those of you that do have a choice as to whether or not to use this lender... RUN! Run as fast as you can in the opposite direction and find a reputable lender out there for your student loans. Stop laughing... they're out there somewhere, I'm sure of it... Seriously, quit laughing.

Are you serious!!!!! He left for basic almost 3 months ago and this letter just arrived! I asked what could be done because the payments were not going to get made since he has no idea they are even due and no way to contact them. I explained that I didn't want his credit to go into the toilet due to this. They said again that he could call, email or fill out forms that they can mail to my address (which means they have to come to me to then forward to him, and by the time he gets them, the payments will be due). They refused to offer any type of assistance.

It is really sad that my son is off in basic training and his credit is going to be affected negatively because he has no idea about any of this and their steadfast "call in or email us" is completely unrealistic since he has no access to phone or email. DO NOT SUPPORT THESE PEOPLE BECAUSE THEY DON'T SUPPORT OUR MILITARY.

While talking to them on the phone, they said it was my fault for not checking my junk email box to catch their emails that I didn't even know that I was supposed to be anticipating. Seriously? When I asked why they didn't automatically deduct since that is what I had been doing with the feds, she said "sometimes they send it, sometimes they don't, and in this case, they didn't." Give me a break.

I called to speak with a representative today about having a letter sent to my college to state that my loan was no longer in default and that I was now eligible to receive financial assistance again. They informed me that faxing a copy of my student obligation statement should be sufficient, but if it was not that I should call them back. I faxed a copy to my school and called to confirm that they received it. I was then notified that it was not, in fact, sufficient and that I would need an actual letter in paragraph form that stated I was eligible to receive title for funding. I called Great Lakes again to inform them of this and was promptly informed that they do not have any such letter available to fax.

At this point, I was absolutely speechless. After having been told twenty minutes before to call them if there were any problems, I was now being informed that there was nothing else that they could do. I asked them if it was possible for someone to type one up and fax it, but apparently, something so simple is beyond their capabilities. I asked the representative who would be able to assist me in getting this taken care of and was once again informed that they do not have any letter like that they can fill in and send.

I ended up calling the Department of Education and was informed ten minutes later that they would send something to my college within twenty-four hours. I'm sorry, but how is it possible that the DoE, short staffed because of the government shutdown, can manage to take care of something so simple, but a company that's sole purpose is managing student loans and repayments can't?

This is the first time in my life I have had to BEG a creditor to take payment from me, only to be refused so they could sell me more forbearances. What a joke. Document every one of your conversations with their clowns. Report to Dept. of Education, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Federal Trade Commission.

I'd stop using auto pay but I want the interest rate reduction and the one-time online payments are horrible to do each month. It takes them about 10 days to process a one-time online payment. That's absurd since the money comes directly from my bank account and no other company takes 10 days to do that. So I've reset the auto pay amount to $200. I don't have high hopes of this going well. I really wish the government would not allow this company to service loans. If I could get them transferred to any other company I would. My theory is that they do this because I'm paid ahead and they want me to pay less so they'll get more interest. Or maybe they just suck. Either way, they should absolutely not be changing my auto pay amounts without my consent.

In August, my interest rate supposedly ballooned to 6%. I took a look at the payment history on the website and all of a sudden it all changed overnight!! All of a sudden, all of the payments I made since January of 2012 had approx $40 going to principal and $260 going to interest!!!!!! MYgreatlakes.org actually changed my history and monthly account statement to reflect this change!! Absolutely unbelievable. I can understand interest rate changing moving forward and all of that, but retro.. going back to Jan 2012???!!! If I know that interest rate is 6% instead of 2% for example, then back in Jan 2012 I would change my lifestyle where I could pay much more per month so I don't killed in interest...

I've called them many times for 6 weeks and I still not have any answers.. I was supposed to be called back by now but it hasn't happened yet. I told the one person they would hear from my lawyer, and they basically hung up on me. It's really sad how this country charges an arm and a leg for a freaking education and then has the audacity to do this for its own people... Thankfully, I've saved hard copies of my previous monthly statements... Imagine your July statement saying your principal outstanding is $40,000 and then your August statement reading $44,500. HAHA. Anyone seeing Ford or GM getting away with this? HAHA

Oh and by the way, I'm currently accruing interest like crazy for the time being. You can't make this up. Has anyone ever heard of something like this? Similar experience with mygreatlakes?

Everything was fine until Great Lakes took over. I used auto pay for the interest rate deduction and to prevent delinquent payments. I am not impressed that I had to discover their error through reviewing my bank account and instead you just increase my balance without any notification. After setting up an account through your site it states that I am on auto pay so what's going on? I've received two letters overall and neither of them state a failure to pay or that anything is a miss. I know most don't but if you have an option of where your loan comes from I would apply elsewhere. The service provider with the least amount of effort is always the best. At least creating the online account was an easy process.

I was informed by email (not in regular mail) that some of my DL were transferred to this company. Oddly enough, the company then started sending me email with an incorrect last name. I called them and informed them that the name was incorrect - they seemed blasé about it. I corrected the name and it is now my name incorrectly spelled (instead of a different last name) and another piece of correspondence continues with the original wrong last name.

This is only the first problem with them - they also lied on the phone about something else. Since the student loan bomb is about to fall on the decrepit business-model educational system, I think it's in the best interest of the country so dependent on credit and consumer purchasing power to find better servicers for their trillion dollar debt but then again who am I to tell it, I'm not its co-dependent.

I NEVER EVER asked for any discretionary forbearance and they only ever have forms that indicate internship/residency.. they are supposed to NOT capitalize the interest and use that forbearance. To top it off, what they do is tell you, "Hey, you need to submit this form but don't worry, we will wait on it for about a month during which we will put you on forbearance." (This at maximum should mean I use up one month each year of the 4 years when I've been in residency.. NOT 27 months...) Better yet they don't tell you that anything you submitted was disregarded and interest capitalized. Finally, I told them that I would like to know how they knew to put me in forbearance and they claim I submitted forms. I told them I have my form showing its residency and NOT discretionary. They play dumb and get off the phone. Then they say, "Oh before 2010, there was no form." It was based on a call and I can't prove I asked for one or the other.

They basically want you to have your interest capitalized and use up any forbearance they have to give you. It's blatant when you systematically trap them and have proof of what you and they know to be true. I wouldn't write this review but today same exact scheme they ran on my wife and it's like a 4-hour horror show. They even try to purposely get you angry and antagonize you or tell you things you never said. Whole convo recorded and it's disgusting how this guy was behaving and speaking even after it's quite clear they are running a game where they hate to give you forbearance and try to get your interest to capitalize without you knowing all through 4 years of residency. I need to gather all my documentation and go after them.

1. Your servicer does not own/buy/sell you student loan. The loan itself is owned by a commercial financial institution OR the department of education (aka the government). You servicer handles payment processing and paperwork processing/administration. The only way your servicer might buy your loan is if you default, they would take over the loan and put it in collections. Which is bad.

2. If your loan is transferred from one servicer to another, it is at the behest of the department of education (aka the government). Notification of said transfers are mailed to all borrowers. It is the borrower's responsibility to stay abreast of the loan so the borrower is aware of the loan at all times. Because a borrower didn't see or threw out the notification letter is not the problem of the servicer/lender/department of education. Formal notice is given.

3. Quite simply, you, the borrower are 100% responsible for the loan. It is a loan, no different from a car or home loan. It is as important to take care of. If you do not pay on your student loan, based on the terms that you, the borrower, agree to, there are financial consequences. Try not paying your home or car loan for 9 months and see what happens.

4. Your servicer is there to help you understand your student loan. If you have problems, issues, can't make payments, it is your responsibility to take action. Your servicer will help you with various options like deferment, forbearance, income based repayment. If you fail to pay and fail to talk to your servicer in a timely manner, the consequences outlined in the terms agreed to do commence. Same as any other loan. By not taking responsibility, and putting it off, you are setting yourself up for failure.

5. Interest. A student, like any other loan, has interest. Just like any other loan, you, the borrower, are responsible to pay that interest as part of your monthly payment. You pay interest because it is a fee for borrowing the money, just like any other kind of loan. When you make your required monthly payment, you cover interest and then principal, however, depending on what kind of repayment plan you, the borrower, elect, you may only be paying interest (see Graduated repayment). When you apply a deferment or forbearance to your loan, just because the payment is suspended, does NOT mean the interest stops collecting. If you do not make payments to cover the interest while on a payment suspension option, the interest that collects then becomes part of your principal balance through 'capitalization' when you go back into repayment. You are always responsible for the interest. If borrowers use many many months' worth of suspension options, their balances can grow significantly and become a nightmare of affordability down the road. Best advice, use those options as rarely as possible.

6. Your servicer has to follow all guidelines set forth by the department of education (aka the government). There are rules and laws in place with regard to payment suspension or reduction options that your servicer must adhere to. So in regards to complaints about your cost of living expenses not being considered, that is because the department of education stipulates that, not your servicer. That is another reason why a person's gross income has to be looked at when exploring payment suspension or reduction options. The department of education stipulates it. Not your servicer. Your servicer has to follow the rules and the laws set forth by the department of education.

7. Truth: there is a serious lack of education when it comes to learning about your student loan, and how to manage it, and the bloody awful importance of paying it when you are required to, based on the terms you agree to when taking out the loan. Fortunately, there are a plethora of valuable resources for people who need to learn about their loan(s), have questions about their loan(s) - the internet and more specifically various websites via the department of education and the various servicing companies.

8. No, your servicer is not trying to screw you. You need to consider your student loan as important as any other loan you may have. You also must learn to live with the financial choices you make. Be responsible. Don't let your loan fall behind or default. It will ruin your credit. This is a good place to remind you that your servicer is there to help you. It is the terms of the loan you agreed to that make these negative things happen. Today, there are MANY different options to help people with affordability issues, payment suspension options, consolidation, etc... If you put off taking care of your student loan, the fact is that it will come back to haunt you. You, as a borrower, have great resources available to you. Take it upon yourself, as a responsible adult, to take care of the obligation you signed up for. Putting it off, then blaming something else isn't logical.

9. Complaints. If you have a legitimate complaint, then pursue it. If you find you are getting nowhere when talking about a problem or issue you may be having, ask for a superior or manager. Don't be rude or swear. If there is an issue, it can typically be resolved but it may take time, and remember, in the end you are required to pay back the entire loan as well as the interest, according to the terms agreed to.

10. Seriously. Go and spend time researching the various DOE websites that are out there. Research your servicer's website, familiarize yourself 100% with your online accounts and how you are making your payments. Learn learn learn about your loan. Do not let it get the best of you.

11. This is not a complaint about any specific company or organization, nor is this to place any specific company or organization on high. It is more to address the way in which people need to better understand their student loans, and just how important they actually are. More important, in face, than your smartphone bill. Cheap home phone still exists. Plan your budget, account for your responsibilities. Like ALL things, student loans have a process. And sometimes that process is slow. And you, the borrower have to accept that there is no magic wand. You have to take charge and put in the effort of responsibility.

12. Lastly. I write this because I once had student loans, and like a lot of people, I had my fair share of problems. It was in dealing with my failures, my financial issues, and learning from my mistakes that I can share these things. Hopefully this will help some of you understand how important taking care of your student loan obligation really is. You are required to pay it back. You have options (depending on your situation and factors like how many options have you used - they are LIMITED). You have a vast resource of information online courtesy of the department of education.

When I responded that there was no way I could do this that I am barely making ends meet he replied by telling me I needed to move and get a new job and leave my friends and family behind like he had done. I was not happy hearing this statement especially when I had called for help in filling out a form that was sent to me and in bold letters it said "Call If You Need Help!" I did stay calm and told him I appreciated his advice, but I actually have a job in the field I went to school for and I like what I do. I also said that I didn't mind my payment increasing by a reasonable amount, but triple the amount was a little much. I am unsure where they are taking their income based rates, but every city and state has a different cost of living! I am doing everything I can to find a different loan provider. I am very disappointed that I was not given the opportunity to choose my loan provider. I would definitely avoid this company at all costs.

The lady I talked to was of no help and said, "It shouldn't hurt you." Shouldn't does ease me. Shouldn't means you don't know a damn thing and just don't want me mad. I wish I could do more because they suck and I question their integrity, period. It's their fault it's overdue and they should have fixed it in their system to not say overdue. Student loans aren't something to ** around with and neither is someone's credit.

Today, my first payment was received by Great Lakes. I was then promptly called by their outsourced collection agency to let me know that my pending payments + my initial payment were not enough to cover the current outstanding past due amount and immediately suggested a loan modification even though I told them I would have them paid off before defaulting (which is apparently only 6 months). Watch out for this company as they will try to sabotage every opportunity to make you default or take more of your money.

Read quite a number of reviews. I wonder why the US government allows this company to continue to have the contract. Will try to keep this updated.

Five days later, my account has not been updated and I am told the fax has not been received. I asked for a particular person whom I can address the fax to and/or send PDFs of the paperwork and was told, "We have thousands of borrowers. We can't give you the name of who will be receiving your fax." I can assume thousands of borrowers are faxing Great Lakes everyday for various reasons since they are not able to see faxes for at least 48 hours after you fax them. When I added that my credit could suffer, in addition to my fear of consequences from the Federal Government when one is late on student loans, the woman went on to state, "Faxes are lost everyday and I know this has happened to you in your life before, where you have to fax many times."

Without a contact number and not knowing if my fax will be received or not, as the woman also said the confirmation number on the successful fax means nothing, I am left to call them every 48 hours after I fax the documentation. I am left with frustration and loss of valuable time as I play into a system set up by an institution without redundant checks when dealing with people's money.

Issue 1: The company refused to send me paper statements in the mail. Customer service rep on the phone refused to send paper statements.

Issue 2: They split a payment between two loans to prevent one loan from being paid in full. I requested the payoff amount of my two loans being serviced by Great Lakes. They provided the payoff amount and said that as long as I paid before 4/11/13, I would owe $5000. I wrote a check on 3/15/13 for exactly $5000 (the payoff amount given to me by Great Lakes). On 4/1/13, I checked with the Bank and realized the payment was split between the two loans being serviced. When I called to correct the issue, the customer service rep refused to fix the mistake and instead said that I owed an additional $100 because the interest had been accruing during the processing time. Frustrated, I called the next day and spoke with a supervisor. I was required to fax a copy of the original check, a copy of the cleared check, and a copy of the original quoted payoff amount. Thankfully, I keep a very close eye on my documents and could easily provide this. The issue was then resolved.

Issue 3: There is a lack of a complaint management system. As noted in issue 2, the split payment seemed to be a very unfair and deceptive practice. I thanked the supervisor who helped me and then asked how to make a formal complaint so that this issue would be brought to light. The supervisor had no idea how I would file an official complaint which I found very troubling. I searched the website to find details on their legal name and/or ways to file complaints. I was unable to find anywhere (via phone or website) I could file a complaint. I have since decided to take action by posting on here and filing a manual complaint with the FDIC.

I work the exact hours this company is open for live assistance so the only time I can speak to a person is when I'm past due on my account. I have sent emails and only received automated responses with no follow up. This company is preying on students, not helping students. This is the only company I have ever held a Stafford loan through and I would never recommend them to anyone else, use them again, or get any other type of service from them. When attempting to recover an account, they make you sign up for even more of their faulty web utilities. Great Lakes makes me feel that they are trying to push people into a past due scenario so they can extract more money from their customers.

This is an email I sent to Great Lakes they have not yet responded: 1) Be open when I'm not at work; 2) Let me create my own password for my account so I can actually remember it; 3) Get a better phone payment robot that can understand words like "make a payment"; it's a critical feature; 4) Tell me how to log in to my account; 5) Quit your job, the company you work for has been the worst, the absolute worst company I have ever owed money to. The only time I've ever been able to talk to a person is when they call because I'm past due because your website is worthless or your robot doesn't understand words; 6) Pull the help robot's call from where a payment was charged to my account. Listen to my stress. Laugh if you want; 7) Send me a good complaints department email instead of this useless catch-all email; 8) Pull my call and get it to someone who deals with the phone robot and tell him it's broken. I work at an inbound call center and your robot is pathetic.

I emailed Great Lakes to see why and was informed that I was signed up for IBR and that my auto payments won't be taken because of this. I never signed up for IBR but Great Lakes says I did on February 3, 2013. I was told I could change my auto pay amounts online and was given instructions on how to do this, but since they still have me signed up for IBR, I can't make auto payments work. I never signed up for IBR; I can't get it off my account myself (I've emailed Great Lakes to have this removed). I can't get the .25% interest rate reduction, and I'm not impressed at all. In the past, I've been upset with this company because it takes 10 days for them to process a one time online payment. I figured auto payments would fix this issue but I'm having more problems the harder I try to pay off my loan.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this was done intentionally. I don't say this lightly so I will explain why I feel this way. First, everything you do with this company makes them send you a confirmation message. Ex: if you sign up for auto pay, you get a confirmation message; make a change to auto pay, you get a message. Make a payment, you get a message. Defer payments and you get a message. I never received a message saying I was signed up for IBR because I did not sign up for it. I think Great Lakes thought I would not notice that my auto payments were not being made, which would result in them receiving more interest.

I have been aggressively paying my loans and I believe Great Lakes did this, because they know they will not get as much interest from me as they would if I only paid the minimums. I didn't even log into my account after I signed up for auto payments on January 10th until after February 5th when I realized the payment wasn't going to go through. So how did I sign myself up for IBR on February 3rd? If I could change my loan servicer, I would in a heartbeat, but since I don't have any say in who services my loan, I will be watching my account like a hawk until these are paid off. And I will continue to pay aggressively so Great Lakes gets as little interest as possible from me.

This is my pathetic attempt at a small victory against Great Lakes. I'm currently waiting for a response to see if they will help get the IBR off my account since I see no way to do this online so maybe they can redeem themselves slightly, but I have no faith or trust in them at this point.

To give prospective, I also have loans with VSAC and I have never had a problem with them. If you make a payment online with VSAC, it goes through by the next day. Great Lakes should learn from them.

I called and spoke to Kurt, who continued to tell me I was late. I explained to him that I keep all records and dates, and payments were made electronically through my bank. When I told him to give me the payoff amount since I was going to pay it off and be done with this horrible company and their scam, he went to his supervisors. He said that they would investigate my account since they could not see where I was ever late. Duh? It does not take a genius to see that this company is taking advantage of many people. I am not one of those people as I am fighting back.

With Sallie Mae (who I've attempted to call without success), they gave me an automatic 1% interest rate reduction for starting the repayment process; I'm waiting to be accepted for the auto debit deduction of .25% and they also forgive the last 9 payments of your loan. In addition, when you use their payoff calculator, they offer up to 2 years to show you what your payoff would be which includes limited interest vs. the 120 days with GL. And the last benefit is, Sallie allows you to choose an interest only payment which GL doesn't.

The scam is obvious with Great Lakes. They have every program available to defer, forgive, delay, etc., etc. in order to gain more interest money and extend the term but only 1 incentive to actually put a dent in the principal. Nobody can tell me what type of loan these student loans are (i.e., simple interest, amortized, etc.) - there is no financial "name" or label for how these work. It's all smoke and mirrors, so you don't really know how to attack the debt.

Meanwhile, my interest is now up to nearly $1,000 and growing. They aren't even trying to take my money, and they do not even tell me the scheduled transaction didn't go through. Their automated phone service says, "I'm sorry, I can't understand the amount you are saying" even though I'm very clearly articulating over and over again, "ten thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars! No, I don't want to pay $200; I want to pay $10,000!" I even tried a lower amount which still didn't work. They are going to receive a very angry call when they're open. They are a horrible company. It should not be difficult to pay off your student loans, and I'm sure they're doing this just to rack up more interest!

I sent it in and didn't hear anything until I got a bill for my payments to resume. I called Great Lakes and they told me I was denied because my letters didn't state "what the school considered half time and just make sure someone initials it". So I did it again. And the same thing happened. When I called, they said, "We can't tell who the person who signed it is. We need you to do it again and make sure it's legible." So I did it again. And the same thing happened. So this time when I called, they told me, "Oh it's because the forms have to say what the school considers half time and what they consider full time."

The company has never told me the same thing twice when I call, even when calling to find out about my account balance and why my two loans were combined without my approval. I am currently still trying to get the matter sorted and in the process of getting the information that they have requested from me again. I have had nothing but problems with this company. At one point, my minimum payment was structured so that my balance was actually going up! Do not borrow from this company! I was an uninformed college student that needed the money. They have taken advantage at every chance.

To make a long story short, I did not know what to do with the refund check since I had never been in the situation before, and $10,250 seemed like quite a bit, so I was under the impression it was for both the fall and spring semesters. So I was going to hold on to it until I was sure my company paid my spring semester. In December, my company paid for my spring semester so I called my financial aid office to find out what to do with it. Of course, my counselor was on maternity leave; therefore, I couldn't get a response from anyone. Therefore, I called Great Lakes to ask them what to do with it and they told me not to worry, that once I got in touch with my financial aid office and the refund had been issued, that the interest would be retroacted. I continued to call my financial aid office, and finally found another counselor I could contact and by then, the office was closed for two weeks for Christmas.

The day it opened, I called and they said I needed to contact Great Lakes because they had issued me a check; therefore, it had to be worked out between myself and the lender. I called Great Lakes and they said, "Correct. I needed to deposit the check into my checking account, and then just make a payment in the amount of $10,250," which would work as a credit of $10,250 against the debit of $10,250 therefore equating to zero. Great. But what about interest? They then had the nerve to inform me that I was now out of my 120 days, so all interest accrued even if I did not use the money, could not be retroacted, and there was nothing they could do. Mind you, I missed the 120-day period by 19 days due to incorrect information received from Great Lakes and not being able to get in touch with my financial aid office. All in all, this has cost be about $300 in interest on an unused loan amount, which is now being added back to my principal to accrue more interest. Seriously, beware all students before you apply for a loan with them!

Well, my payment on August 4 (At this time, my loan was serviced by ACS.) was transferred to them on August 10, and the Department of Education has also spoken with Great Lakes, confirming that they have the money in their possession. However, I'm still classified by their system as being "delinquent." To be incorrectly classified as delinquent for a payment they received a month ago is extremely stressful and disturbing. If I could leave them, I would.

I was confused and shocked! I told him I was on deferment and about the faxes. He said he was sorry, but that his fellow employee made a mistake and that I never should have qualified for that payment plan; therefore, I owed right this minute or default! He also said that no one could help me. I was never informed about the Department of Education and how they could assist me with my difficult situation! But now it’s too late for them to help me because as of tomorrow I would be in default and they can’t help! I don’t have any income other than my little girl’s Social Security and public assistance and he said they will garnish my little girl’s Social Security! Sick! Even after he admits that they made the mistake, I still need to give him money right now! I offered him the only $20 I have and he said no. I am so upset! I thought I did the right thing back in January and replied to the letter, made arrangements and now I find out with no notice that my loan is default!

In 2009, Great Lakes was made aware that I was no longer working and waiting to for my judgment of disability. During my waiting time with no income, Great Lakes took it upon themselves to intercept my income tax return in 2010 and 2011 for over $2,200.00. When I contacted them, they gave a song and dance but ultimately said they would return the money. They did not. Finally in October of 2011, a judge found me 100% disabled and awarded full disability. My payments started in Dec. of 2011.

Up until this point, I had been in contact with DCS, the company Great Lakes Higher Education appointed to harass me in any way they saw fit to get more money out of me. They knew I was not employed and knew I had extensive prescription costs every month. They were also aware that I had to move from PA to GA to live with my daughter because I could no longer afford to live on my own or even pay for my monthly prescriptions. Two of which are life sustaining medications.

My monthly disability payments are $820. Great Lakes is bluntly aware that I am disabled and instead of discharging me from my loans, as their contract says will be done in the event that an individual becomes disabled and returning the money, they have intercepted as they said they would. They have now gone so far as to put a hold on my disability money every month and taking over $300 of my $820 each month. They know I don't have any insurance yet and that I still need my medications.

I finally got a statement from them this month April of 2012 but only after I leaned on them through the school that was paid by Great Lakes. This is the first statement I am receiving since my school loan has come due. Previously, when I would ask for a statement showing what I owed, what money they had taken and my current balance, I was told through DCS that I was not entitled to that information since I was not paying my student loan willingly. What actually was the reason is that when the school looked into it, neither DCS nor Great Lakes had updated my student loan file for over 3 years and my account was not showing that any money had been received. Once the school got involved, it was updated and sent to me. But, can I really rely on this being accurate since nothing had been done to my account for 3 years?

I need someone to help me with this situation. This is the most disgusting form of business I have ever been in contact with and needs to be addressed immediately. A contract is a contract. They need to be held to their contract.

They never want to transfer calls to a supervisor. They said, "I can't transfer you to escalations department, since you already spoke to them already." You need to wait for the call. Every representative has a different summary to say. So overall, my end date of school is a much later time than they have in their file and it did not go over 272 days. And they gave my account to DMCS, and now, they are garnishing wages to me. They are so rude and unhelpful.

I suppose this is legal and contractually binding. After all, debtors signed on the dotted line and agreed to the terms. Why not? As an aspiring graduate, we all thought that we were nobly pursuing an American icon--the diploma and subsequent prosperity associated with bettering ourselves and society. Well, that idea runs aground when the monthly payments made on time barely dent the principal and usury kicks in. If we are playing fair and making those payments judiciously, that principal just doesn't reduce and Great Lakes makes a huge profit.

Something's not quite right in this calculus but I'm guessing these practices are legal. I hope the federal government takes a long look at predatory lending in higher education. I know I'm not the only one who looks at the balance sheet--interest accrues daily--and scratches his head.

Four or almost five days before posting to the balance makes a big difference in the amount applied to principal while the interest clock ticks. I cannot believe this is ethical or legal. Normally, you need to make an online payment before noon for posting that day. Fair enough. But my money is "floating" doing nothing. Multiply this by the class of thousands of other people like me and Great Lakes is raking in a lot of extra money with this. I sent them an e-mail but prior contacts on other things don't encourage me.

Common sense would make it obvious that if I receive Medicare under the age of 50, I am disabled. If I receive Medicaid, I am living below the poverty level. If I receive a Social Security disability check, then maybe I am disabled. Since I live on less than $600 a month, I have no choice but to move back into my car so I can make payments. Since my disability is progressive and degenerative, I cannot live without my only source of health insurance.

So first issue is, why is the payment I made three days ago not posted? That's why I waited three days to call you in the first place, now I have to wait three more?! Then I have to argue with someone who tells me I did not successfully change my payment because they don't see any record on their end. Except the problem with that is I got to a confirmation page that says my new date is the 22nd, and this has happened more than once! Then they claim they have no record of it! Not sure that's what I'd want to go with GL, at the very least that makes you extremely inept (and highly corrupt seems more likely).

Additionally, they are very pushy that I should call to make this change, not to do it online. One girl came right out and said it doesn't always work, then the next one I talk to says they have no record. Something very sketchy is up here. If I can switch loan handlers, I will, and highly recommend everyone and their mother, brother, father, sister and etc. to do so too!

I wanted them to cancel my automatic withdrawal so I could just make a manual payment with my new account. They again insisted that this was not necessary and to just change my information online because they don't deduct until the night before. I thought that sounded odd, but had already asked 'are you sure' about 3 times, so I foolishly believed them and did as instructed.

Not unsurprisingly, it didn't work and they over drafted the account that I had begged them to close. I was furious so I called. Then, I was told eventually that I would be credited the money and that they would pay my overdraft fees. The following day, they called me and told me that 'they had changed their minds' and stated that they were not at fault. I pointed out to them that this happened because of the misinformation they gave me, and they basically said that when this happens, 'it's their word against mine.' Apparently, they scam people like this a lot.

At one point, the dumb customer service lady told me, "it says here that I'm not supposed to argue with you." Genius. I bet in high school plays she also said "exit stage left" out loud, too. Like any good scam, of course, there is no hope of ever actually speaking to a manager. I still can't tell if their customer service's tactic is to play dumb to frustrate you or if they really are idiots that need the same thing explained to them over and over again. A loan is a contract two or more parties enter, it is not a license for one party to make up whatever they want one day on a whim and then change their minds.

My second question was to ask why I had payments being made where 100% of the payment went to interest and none to principal. On an installment loan, even if a payment is late, a portion of each payment must go to principal in order to pay down the balance of the loan. The woman rudely responded that I had chosen a 25 year payment term, so not much of my payments would be going to principal right now. Obviously she didn't fully understand loan amortization, so I explained to her how at the beginning of repayment of an installment loan. Very little of the payments go to principal, but some of the payments go to principal.

Her response was "What's your point?”. When I attempted to respond to that rude question, she cut me off and yelled "I can't talk to you if you don't stop talking!” Then she explained that interest accrues daily and my payment was just enough to cover the interest, which again showed her ignorance of amortization of installment loans. Even though her explanation did not accomplish anything, I said "If you would have taken the trouble to answer my question in the beginning of the call, I would not have gotten upset". Her response was "Well, it's a two-way street".

This woman showed a total lack of respect for the customer (worst trait of an employee in "Customer Service"), zero professionalism and in the end did not satisfactorily answer either of my questions. The only result of my call was that I spent 10 minutes being yelled at, interrupted and talked down to by an ignorant customer service agent.

Great Lakes is a horrible loan service with a terrible customer service department. If you call their customer service line, be prepared to argue with a degenerate who will treat you like an enemy.

If a customer's payment hasn't arrived and been processed by the due date, they start calling. They have a set late date that is on every payment stub in their repayment booklet. This obviously shows the late date and the fees that will be required if a payment is late. However, shortly after the due date, they will proceed calling the customer as well as anyone else who may be on their file, in my instance my parents cosigned looking to scold and berate them for failing to be on time.

While I understand paying bills on time is an important lesson to learn in life and one that will benefit everyone involved. There are simply some days where things are sent out after they should have been for various reasons. I have made every loan payment to each lender that I owe, often making larger payments than are set to lower my interest and balance as soon as possible. I feel harassed when Great Lakes calls me before something is late to demand the exact date. I mailed my payment or for electronic billing information rather than waiting for the check to arrive.

Not only did they intimidate and scare me the first time they called, they willfully deceive their customers by telling them that their only option is to pay double the amount due. One month when I realized I had forgotten to mail my payment, I called them to request that they take it out of my account electronically so that it would process faster. I did not have my paperwork in front of me, so I naively agreed to pay double the amount I was due. After realizing that they were to be withdrawing more than normal.

I called back to request more information as to why I was being punished in this way. They informed me after several minutes of questions on my part that the payment was for two months. The individual whom I spoke to was very helpful and told me (almost secretively) that I did not have to accept this. If in the future they called, I was to remind them that they could include a late fee, but that I was not required to provide the next month's payment at the same time.

He also stated that they did not typically tell people that it would cover the next month's payment so that Great Lakes would receive additional money without the majority of customers questioning anything. There have been times where I have waited until a day close to the due date and have called Great Lakes myself to set up an electronic payment to ensure that I had a paycheck coming in before they received my check and because it can be easier to do than sending a payment in by post. When I do this, they typically try to make me pay the next month's payment as well. Some of their employees are kind enough to point out that it is an advance payment, but others will not.

Additionally, they will occasionally say that I can make an electronic payment for the correct amount only if I agree to have the next payment in on or before the next due date. While I understand the value of paying things on time or before they are due, as a recent graduate there are times when I feel the need to take advantage of those days in between the due date and the late date. I am responsible, but I feel that I should not have to jump through hoops to make a payment in the amount agreed upon.

I hate to image any other graduates who may have not taken the time to ask questions suffering financially or emotionally from these harassing phone calls and attempts to manipulate additional money from them. I have student loans through Sallie Mae and the Department of Education as well and I have never received phone calls from them and if I call to ask questions I never feel manipulated or that I am being scolded for being negligent when I am not. I now make a point to mail my bill to Great Lakes on time, but I am sure I will be receiving a phone call due to the holiday mail slowing down the post. When they call, I will be firm and clear that I have a payment in the mail and I will not accept that I need to pay additional funds to make up for something.

I don't understand after paying all this money for so many years they say I still over $30,000. My loans were only $27,000. Where did all my money go to? Now the DCS collections want to set up payments that are out of my budget. I have talked to 3 different people to get this taken care of & as of today 12/22/10 no one has returned my call to talk about this so-called income based payment plan they want to set me up on. All I'm asking is where all my money?

Since this, I have made many phone calls to Great Lakes and was told that the rep who set up the payment no longer works for the company and that he screwed up and that is why my loan defaulted. He should have set up the payment to come out on the 21st and not the 24th. Great Lakes basically told me that this is unfortunate but there is nothing they can do, that this happens. And to beat it all, my $700 payment was still cashed and nobody can tell me what is going to happen with the funds. This has to be illegal!

I am now in default status with over $2,000 in extra fees attached to my defaulted loan. I was told by a Great Lakes rep on the 25th that the payment would be voided and not come out of my account. I used this money to pay bills and then the payment come out on the 6/29 and caused hundreds of dollars in bounce check fees. I now cannot make my mortgage payment which was just modified and I was current. I have panic attacks and on medication and this has caused my problems with my health.

Their attitude has been anything but helpful, saying it is their policy to do this and so sorry, that is the way the phone system works. What really got me is when they said the federal government has no control over them on what they use for a status. I would like other college students and parent co-signers to know the reputation of this company and that they ** with the co-signer credit availability. How can we proceed to correct this as Great Lakes says I am the individual account, even though if you inquire their system, I have no open loans with them.

Thinking everything was fine, I was shocked when my father emailed me in mid-December saying that Great Lakes was calling him saying that I hadn't made a payment in over 60 days. I called, explained my current situation and was told that my fax was never received. Finding it strange that all my other faxes to the other companies went through at the same time with no problem, I re-sent my deferment forms to GL with my email address in case of any problems.

I kept the fax confirmations because this happened to me 3 other times. It wasn't until I finally faxed the documents to my mother in the States and had her try her luck with them that GL 'finally' received my documents; only when she called GL directly after and waited on the phone until someone confirmed that they had received everything.

I find out a few weeks after that there was a problem with my documents. One of the pages was written in Spanish (Well, I am in Spain?). GL told me that they couldn’t put my deferment through until this page was re-sent in English signed by an administrator from my school. I understand that the official language in the US is English but almost half of our population speaks Spanish. GL even offers loans and information in Spanish. I couldn’t believe they were using that as an excuse especially since the most important information of these documents was in English. Well, I spent almost 2 weeks trying to find some administrator in Spain that was capable of writing this document in English.

To make sure there were no more problems, I had emailed GL asking for an alternate fax number in case this document was also surprisingly not received. I would have mailed in everything if I knew it was going to be this much of a hassle. But I wanted to do it the quickest way so the phone calls would stop. Anyways, I sent the document to both numbers and kept the confirmation pages. It was now early February. During this time, my father was still receiving calls but now from US Bank loan collectors. I called GL after I sent the document and a very nice lady told me that it took a few days for the deferment to process completely but that everything should be fine and updated in their systems.

Next week, I received an email from US Bank asking me to call them. I did and was told that their records from GL didn’t show anything about a deferment. I explained my frustrations over my dealings with GL which the agent was very considerate about and immediately got a hold of someone from GL. We had a 3-way conference call where I again asked why my faxes keep on disappearing on GLs end. I asked US Bank if I could send these documents to them directly but was told no. They gave me yet another fax number to try at GL and told me not to worry that they would help me figure this out. They then said to give them a few days after they received the document and email GL to confirm that it was finally completed.

I sent an email on February 26 and the next Monday, I received a response saying that they were no longer handling my loan and I now had to go entirely through US Bank. Confused to no end, I called the number that I was given to US Bank in the email. I talked to a young guy that, yet nice, didn’t know anything about loans and told me that my name came up nowhere in their systems. He put me on hold and checked GLs which also didn’t have me in the system. So his only response was, “Wow, that’s odd. It must in transit or something; I guess uh, why don’t you call back Friday to check?” I reminded him that I was calling from Spain and every single one of these pointless phone calls was costing me a ridiculous amount of money. However, I knew I had no other choice.

I couldn’t even wait until Friday because I received a very upsetting email from my father once again saying that he received a phone call but this time is was really bad. He gave me this lady’s number to call at US Bank. I did Friday morning expecting another run-around. This time it was not the case. She rudely told me that GL turned my loan over to them at US Bank because I had run out of time and they now required me to pay the entire sum of my loan immediately. I told this lady about my situation and the extensive problems and delays I encountered through GL. She told me to tell it to my lawyer because she didn’t want to hear it. I was told I had no other options. Either come up with the settlement of $13,000 or meet them in court.

I explained to her that I was in school and didn’t have that kind of money. I asked her why I wasn’t given notice about this when I had called 3 days before or any of the other times. She said that I was told that I had until the 28th of February which was a lie. She then told me that being in school was not an excuse because I didn’t even qualify for an in-school deferment. Adding to my already massive disbelief, she told me that I was faxing my documents to the wrong office the entire time that I should have been dealing with some office in Cincinnati for my deferment.

Nothing she was saying made sense to me and nothing about any of this was ever mentioned to me in my dozen conversations with Great Lakes or US Bank. I honestly have no idea what to think now. I am currently contacting my lawyer to figure out my next step should be. I luckily have majority of my emails and fax confirmations to show my struggles. I have never in my life felt so deceived and manipulated.

Apparently, the "processing time" it took for the automatic payments to start surpassed the due date of my first payment. I would never knowingly have missed a payment, particularly given the consequences, and have not missed a payment since (I have been in repayment for about 4 years). I am suspicious that the processing time to initiate automatic payments is purposefully long enough such that the first payments are missed.

My complaint is that even though, as Craig put it, "This is a government organization and things take time," I do not accept the fact that Great Lakes did not carry through the process effectively and now my credit is in jeopardy. And Craig, in my opinion, needs to find other area of employment because he acted more like a collections representative than a solutions counselor. When I called back after Craig put me on hold, I waited for awhile then redialed. I got Elizabeth who took care of me very nicely. Thank you, now I sincerely hope this will go on to the next person and my request will be properly processed. Please note, previous phone calls (June and July) with representatives were fine, people were polite and helpful. It was the follow-up that didn't proceed.

Majority of my student loans are applied to the interest and not the principal. I have been paying for 10 years on this loan, and it's still in the 6-digits. I may need to foreclose on my house because I can't afford both. And my mortgage is less than my student loan payment.

The government needs to adjust this problem and allow us lower middle class Americans to BE ABLE to put money back into the economy with that excess we pay in loan interest.

We were advised that it would be quicker if we paid by phone - quicker indeed, for them!!! We also had NUMEROUS problems when trying to pay off our son's loans, we never received any notice of the accrued interest even though he requested to pay the interest all along. To this we were told that WE should have contacted Great Lakes to make sure we received what we were looking for since we NEVER received anything to begin with (since he was in school, he would not be billed) how were we supposed to contact them. When we were told that they were acting on behalf of a lender we asked to have that lenders phone number, we were told to look it up ourselves!!! How are we supposed to do that because when you Google Student Loan Express there are numerous lenders along with several articles about investigations in some of these lenders which didn't make us feel any better. It was much easier to apply for these loans then to pay them off but then of course it would be since they're collecting the interest.

We also asked as to how the interest rate was arrived at and were told that it was the interest rate at the time that we applied. Interesting that the loans were applied for at different times and they appear to have taken the highest one to bill at. We and our son were not given a choice of what lender we would be given, and why are we being penalized for paying off these loans early perhaps because they want the interest????? Also, we were told that on our son's loans that statements of accrued interest were sent out every three months - NOT- yet when I finally spoke with a supervisor we were told these statements were sent our YEARLY!!!!

I would NEVER recommend Student Loan Express/Great Lakes to anyone for student loans. After being on the phone for over 15 minutes each time and NEVER getting a straight answer on ANYTHING and then on top of that being told that the 3% that was deducted would be added back on because we were paying these loans off early!!! Why should we be penalized for this, you would think that they would be glad that we were paying this off. Not that we would EVER do this, but would they have been happier if these loans had been defaulted on???? What a way to do business -----NEVER again! I have also contacted the Attorney Generals of our home state of New York, Ohio the state where he attend school and Wisconsin the state where Great Lakes is located. We truly don't believe that anything will come from this, but it does give us some peace of mind to that at least we could get this off our chest.

Two days later I received a break down and a Promissory Note stating that they sent a check to my creditor to pay off my loan. I emailed and called the company IMMEDIATELY telling them to CANCEL the Promissory Note, but they refuse to cancel. I could never pay this debt off. I want them to resend this Promissory Note due to false information. It was only three days...I feel that I was trapped into accepting this Promissory Note. I don't agree at all with those numbers.