Sallie Mae Customer Service Review
My husband and I did a spousal consolidated of our student loans with Sallie Mae a couple of years ago. He had a loan there and I wanted to simplify our life by consolidating loans so we did. This was a good plan and seemed to work out well.
Early in 2006, we paid off the student loan and our access to the website had been cancelled. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem but we still had some student loan interest to claim for our 2006 taxes and they hadn’t sent us the paper stating how much interest we paid. If I was smart, I would have taken note of this before our website access was cancelled. I wasn’t so I didn’t.
Today, I decide to call them and ask about this.
My first complaint about their telephone customer service is that none of the options are really appropriate for anyone who has already paid off their loan. No, we don’t want to check the status of our loan. No, we don’t want another loan. No, we don’t want to consolidate. Pressing 0 didn’t work so I just chose whatever the first option was on the menu.
I got through to a representative within a minute after the automated hold voice told me that Mondays are their busiest days. (I wonder if they have a message that plays on Tuesdays saying that Tuesdays are the busiest days. Hmmm… )
I had already put in my husband’s social security # since the account was originally in his name so his is the account number (I hate companies that use social security #s as identifiers).
The first thing was that the rep kept insisting my husband log into the website. I tried to explain that we paid off the loan and now we can’t get in. He puts me on hold and comes back to tell me that because we paid off our loan, we can’t log into the site. It’s a good thing this conversation wasn’t in person. This meant I was free to roll my eyes after every word.
He was willing to tell me the amount of the taxes we paid after being put on hold a few more times but wouldn’t mail me the letter stating this without the “account holder” calling in. I had told him many times that we had consolidated our loans together, but until I finally insisted I was an account holder did he finally believe me. “Oh you did a spousal consolidation.” Again with my eye rolling. He finally agreed to mail the letter.
A lot of companies don’t mail out the tax information anymore and have it only available on their website. You would think, though, that this is not the first time Sallie Mae has had someone pay off their student loans, wouldn’t you? Do they just not mail out the letters unless you ask for them in this situation?
As we were ending the call, the representative decided to ask me if I was interested in refinancing our mortgage or get a mortgage through Sallie Mae in the next 6 months. No, thanks.
Rating: 
3.5 out of 5
I got the info I needed eventually but the rep didn’t listen to much of what I had to say and thus I ended up on hold and repeating myself a lot more than I should have. While the rep was very polite, there is still much room for improvement.
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