Complain about a product or service

Great Lakes Higher Education Corp.

Diane of Middletown, PA March 10, 2010

My daughter obtained a college loan form Great Lakes and I am a co-signer. Great Lakes will not allow my daughter to consolidate her loan and will not change my status from a 1 - inidividual account to a 5 - co-signer. They said the Mark or Mike (Have the information at home) said that the Federal Government has no control over this. When I log into their system with my SS number - it says I have no oustanding loans. This code has impacted the status and the amount I can borrow on the refinancing of my home mortgage.

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 governement 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 "screw" 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.

Brittany of Chicago, IL March 5, 2010

I graduated in 2008 and spent about a year making all my payments to Great Lakes. Then I was accepted into a teaching program in Spain that will be used as my practicum for grad-school. I received documents from my school stating that I was in Spain under a student visa doing my practicum so I could have any loans deferred during this time. I have 3 different loans between Great Lakes (US Bank), FAFSA and Sallie Mae. The other companies accepted my paperwork without problems after I had faxed them in mid-October.

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 GL’s 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 GL’s 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 till 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.

Monica of SAN FRANCISCO, CA February 17, 2010

I signed up to consolidate my loans with Great Lakes in order to get a fixed interest rate and because they offered a 1% reduction in the interest rate after on-time payments. When I agreed to the loan consolidation I signed up for automatic payments. Unfortunately I later received a letter that because my first payment was late I was not longer eligible for the 1% reduction in interest.

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.

Elizabeth of Random Lake,, WI August 19, 2009

It has been 2 months since I applied for a deference of my loan since I am unemployed. For some reason the process never went through. On each occasion of at least 3 phone calls from Great Lakes I was told the problem was "taken care of." Now I am told this will affect my (over 800) credit score! I so frustrated with this process that never got taken care of. On top of that this morning I spoke to a person named Craig who rudely told me that I should have been more proactive, that I was rude to him! Sorry Craig, you took my frustration personally, but frankly, he was of NO ASSISTANCE!

I then called back and spoke to Elizabeth, who took care of me nicely. My complaint is that even tho' - 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 jeapordy. 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, July) with representatives were fine, people were polite and helpful. It was the follow-up that didn't proceed.

Kelly of Glenwood, NY March 8, 2009

Kelly of Glenwood NY (03/08/09)
I reconsolidated my loan from Sallie Mae to Great Lakes in April of 2006. After 36 monthly on time payments, which were made by direct debit from my checking account immediately, I was told I was not eligible for the 1.25% reduction in rate until June 2009. They are already charging an outrageous 7.0% on my loan which origianlly began at 137K+. According to the IRS, only 2500 is the maximum allowed to deduct for interest.

In 2008, I paid over 8300.00 in interest. I'm barely making my bills and it's frustrating to know that although the website show the loan begin in April of 2006, they will only take payments posted from June 2006. I will be about 65 years old by the time my loan is paid off. How said is that? The government needs to adjust this problem and allow us lower middle class Americans BE ABLE to put money back into the ecomonmy with that excess we pay in loan interst.

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

Teri of Chicago, IL December 22, 2008

Teri of Chicago IL (12/22/08)
They are ignoring my letters requesting assistance in trying to lower my payment. They do not deal with individuals, unless it's over the phone, and they are rude and unhelpful. They get all these government protections, yet offer borrowers no relief or assistance. Their phone calls and letters are filled with threats and misinformation. I have informed them that I do not do business over the phone anymore due to lack of accountability on their part for what they say. I want everything in writing and they are not only refusing to give me that (they INSIST that I call them) but they ignore requests for my original loan information or disbursement detail. They seem to be difficult on purpose.

I cannot pay my student loan bills (over 1,900.00 per month, more than I make!) and they are refusing to work something out with me, in writing.

Joann of Rochester, NY October 6, 2008

Joann of Rochester NY (10/06/08)
In an attempt to pay off a parent plus loan, I have dealt with numerous phone reps all of whom are rude and appear to be reading off a script when providing what they think are answers. When asked why a 3% reduction would be lost if we paid this loan off prior to making 24 payments - we never did get an answer, they just kept giving us the run around. When asked how long it would take a bank check to clear, we were told 7-10 days. When pressed as to why a bank check would take that long we were told that ANY mailed check takes that long?????

Seems a bit odd since previous personal checks mailed never took that long and when we changed to paying on line, again it never took that long. 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 sons 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 ourselves1!!!

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 sons 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.

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