Finally, a live one!

So, I have been struggling with the student loans.  I have one autopaid every month and one that I pay by phone every month, which I've kept up with fairly well.  Then!  Right about when I tried "consolidating" a new mystery loan shows up, sometime around this summer.

Well!  With all of the scammers out there, I did not believe this loan company was legitimate.  I did my due process by calling the numbers listed, googling the company name and "fraud," and even going to the website of the company directly (even though I immediately scanned my computer for viruses and spyware afterwards).  

The phone numbers led to automated dead ends.  In order to find out ANY information, they first require my social security number!  But so does that African prince that wants to give me a million dollars!  I press 0 even though it isn't an option - repeat "operator" "representative" and any other customer service buzzwords that I can to try and find a real person!

Luckily, my expensive education leads to me finding the student loan clearinghouse - one of my federal loans was sold to this unfriendly, mysterious loan servicing company.  Direct Loans, a heads up on your end would have been nice!  Unfortunately, I never had the 250ish bucks to pay this loan back regularly.  I would scrape together $500 every other month or so, send in late payments, all kinds of things that get reported to the credit bureau.  With Christmas and a bad set of earnings for November (paid vacation turned into unpaid vacation that I wasn't notified about until after I took the personal time), I was like 700ish behind.  THIS brought about a phone call from a real person! 

I essentially told the man on the phone that I was poor, that I had submitted the paperwork for a forebearance, and I did not have any money, and infact my adjusted gross income for 2009 was NEGATIVE!!  Yes, that's right, because of tuition payments, the government says I made -355 dollars in one year. 

This 15min conversation with a real, live person has resulted in my 250ish monthly payment being adjusted down to income-contingient, and more realistic $25/month payment!

Success!  I will be able to autopay that, your company will get payments each month, and my credit score should recover!  Now, why oh why didn't I have the option to speak to someone back in July?