Can't buy me love

[austin_dern]

I would like, just once, an interaction with my student loan people to start from the problem and not three rounds of them saying ``you owe us'' while I say ``do not.'' My consolidators were upset that I was several hundred dollars behind; since I was sending checks paid in full every month and got e-mails from them acknowledging receipt, I argued I could not be behind. They said, repeatedly, all would be forgiven if I paid them, and didn't grasp that I had.

The problem? Because my refinancing took two steps, I had two accounts and payment booklets, one for partial and one for the full amount. I paid both. This was wrong, says their telepathic instructions; account 1 was paid when account 2 was created. How could I be behind when I paid one and a half times my bill? Well, they sometimes took the check for account 1 as the only payment and didn't count the other check, though they cashed both.

It's only taken two weeks, but they finally agree, they received my overpayments and should have deducted what I did pay from what I owed. They'll write me back when they figure out how much I paid them. Meanwhile, could we have legislation that customer support people, even the lowest ranks, must pass the Turing Test? Please?

This week's Plaza Singapura marathon: 72 hours of watching movies. They hope to get in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Trivia: Pioneer 10 crossed the Earth-Moon distance in 11 hours. Source: Far Travelers: The Exploring Machines, Oran W. Nicks. NASA SP-480.

Currently Reading: Quest of the Three Worlds, Cordwainer Smith.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Ugh about the loan people hassles. There is, unfortunately, sometime great difficulty involved when one pays too much on a loan: Loan companies like steady monthly on-time payments, and anything else gets cpnsidered an abberation. Mom'goose had some difficulty moving from one monthly $950 payment to two bimonthly $500 payments- which will save her thousands over the mortgage costs- because it took some ,months to beat it into the mortgage people's heads that all the money was coming in and should be immediately applied. Bah. Contrawise, my most recent loan was technically a line of credit, and I was able to fling cash at it as often as I liked- and once I signed up for online banking, I flung spare cash at it quite often.

This week's Plaza Singapura marathon: 72 hours of watching movies. They hope to get in the Guinness Book of World Records.
For most goofy record attempts in one place?

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I can certainly understand them being confused and frustrated by me -- if nothing else, because when there is a problem it gets mailed to my parents, who will not accept my request to ``open letters from my student loan people and e-mail me what they're talking about'', so I only get my mail when I go back home or when there's enough mail to forward to me again. I've given up any hope of getting anything done by a deadline.

As for the movies -- four Singaporeans broke the old record, set in New York City in December, of 66 and a half hours of continuously watching films. One dropped out at 70 hours; the other three made it to 72 hours. They were allowed a five-minute break between films, and a fifteen-minute break after three films. I ... got down there after the whole thing was over, so only saw them taking the sofas and TV sets back to storage.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Ooof! I had somewhat similar things with my parents while I was at college, but they'd usually be fine with opening needed mail and writing out checks while I was distant. It was just when things got waylaid that problems occured.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I didn't have these problems with college -- of course, back then I had fewer bills, and utility bills and such went right to my apartment anyway. This ``no, we won't open your mail'' stuff was annoying when I first moved over here, and I had a lot of miscellaneous clean-up bits, but now it's just a rare abnormal glitch like the student loan stuff here that needs particular attention.

Naturally, I didn't find out about the glitch by forwarded mail; I found out by them e-mailing me because they couldn't contact me any other way. Makes me wonder why they didn't e-mail me first.