Thursday, June 24, 2010

PSA: Nelnet ≠ Customer Service

I don't use this as a forum for complaining ... well, not usually anyway.

In this instance, however, my personal interest in lowering Tom's blood pressure makes it incumbent upon me to warn people about using nelnet for student loans. A couple of early loans we got for Hannah's college were sold to them which is how we have been flung into the dizzying world of what they laughingly term "customer service."

However, if you have the right sense of the ridiculous, then perhaps the more outrageous of our examples will simply tickle your funny bone.
  • Receiving an email telling you that in 24 hours your statement will be posted to your account.

    Really? This is the computer age, guys. Why not just send the email when it is posted instead of making us check back in 24 hours?

  • Their customer service phone number message tells you they are open from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., Eastern time.

    Why the special hours? Every message leads to a computer and they never sleep. If you try "O" then it kicks you out. This is especially annoying when you are responding to that 24-hour notice email (24-hours later) to tell them that your statement has not been updated.
As I say these are just a few examples of the extremes. On the plus side, if you finally find a phone number that allows you to speak to a human (yes, the "apply for a loan!" phone number), then they are very nice ... but ultimately powerless.

It is too late to save us, but if you're applying for school loans then save yourselves!

3 comments:

  1. GETHUMAN.com has two numbers for them:

    http://gethuman.com/Nelnet_Loans-customer-service_1438.html

    Click on "see 8 tips"

    The "give youa loan" people probably have no authority to do anything at all, but there probaly are managers somewhere who can.

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  2. Okay, the toll-free number posted will no longer work after Wednesday. The reason is because we really don't want people calling in. Honestly, we have to sit there and listen to you yell at us and tell us how we are supposed to do our jobs, and you don't get how frustrated we are because we are bound by law to do a specific task. You don't get to change that. Threatening with legal aid will not help. Lawyers know very little about STUDENT LOANS, and they are gov't backed. So before you decide to call, check online for the answer to your stupid problem.

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  3. Apparently the phone system got updated. It's a lot easier to get through now.

    ReplyDelete