After ten-plus years of having my five student loans in four different places screwed up, mixed up, folded, spindled and mutilated... after years of frustration, despair, and fearing for my sanity when I followed one set of instructions only to be told the opposite by the next bank rep or collections agent... after losing my paperwork or finding that what I had disagreed with the SL agency records... I was finally diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. I thought that was why I had had such trouble. I thought it was my screwed up brain and inability to deal with paperwork and details that got me into this mess. Not exactly a comforting thought, but at least it was something concrete and better than thinking I was generally a bad and useless person.
I started treatment for the ADHD, got some financial planning help, and started trying to clear things away - it's going slowly but it is going. I should have wondered, though, why I never seemed to have as much trouble with my chequing account or credit cards as I did with my loans. If I'm really financially incompetent, it should be across the board, right?
Then someone gave me this link and I read other people's stories. I realize now that I'm not dealing with the mother of all "ADHD Surcharges" but with a system that is inherently flawed. I can't decide at this moment whether I'm relieved or angry!
The problems really did start right from day one - CIBC "lost" my very first payment on my loan ever, because I had selected to pay in person at the branch rather than letting them take money out of my account automatically (I didn't trust them even then!). So I toddled along and made my payment, but unbeknownst to me, they had tried to take an automatic debit anyway. Of course it didn't go through, because I no longer kept any money in my CIBC account, and they proceeded to hound me for six months, once calling me at 5 a.m., about this "failed" payment. I sent them photocopies of my cancelled cheques and MADE them physically count the number of cheques and the dates and compare those to the number of payments I was supposed to have made. I had to do that twice, and then one day I got a call from one of the supervisors telling ME to stop "harassing" the CSRs because there never was a problem.
That was only the beginning. I've had loans go in and out of collections so many times I got dizzy. I've had a CIBC rep take my new address, promise to send me a statement, then turn around and send the statement to the old address (and when it was returned they sent me to collections because they assumed I was evading them). I've had them tell me to borrow money from my parents, and threaten to garnishee 80% of my wages. And I believed them when they told me it was all my fault.
I think I know how I feel now. I AM angry!
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