I got a garnishment notice back in October and successfully appealed it due to the hardship it would impose. The determination notice stated that they would review my situation in 6 months, and decide again if garnishment was an option. Wanting to avoid garnishment, I made a payment arrangement with the collection agency mentioned in my letter, and am sending my first payment next week.

When was the hearing and when did they set your first due date for?

Last night, right before 9:00pm, I got a phone call from an unknown, but local number. It was "Jason" from Premier Financial Acceptance Corp or something like that, wanting to know was I aware that I owed on my student loan from 1987 and the balance was over $20,000 and could I pay that today? I stuck to yes and no answers only until he got to the zinger:

"Well, Dawn, I'm prepared to take a SUBSTANTIAL amount off that total due if you can make a payment to me TODAY. Otherwise, I'm afraid your wages are about to be garnished."

Well I see some violations here, and some violations of AWG policy and procedure. I have a feeling they did the CA shuffle with your account, which is not uncommon. However, they cannot threaten or state your wages "will" be garnished just because you cannot take advantage of a settlement. The wording should be "refer" you for AWG. That aside, collectors do have access to the DOE system where they CAN verify your hearing information. I could flip back and forth on my computer between our system and the DOE's sytem...other collector would have to get up off their butts and walk across the office. I would suggest that you call the 1st CA back to verify. However my thoughts are, because you have not made that first payment yet, there was nothing to keep or hold the account at CA #1. If in fact the loan has been transfered, I would suggest calling CA #2 back and asking for a "qualified" manager and getting thru to the bottom of this. I went to the DOE site http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSFAP/DCS/collection.agencies.html and the closest name I could find to Premier was
Premiere Credit of North America, LLC
P.O. Box 19289
Indianapolis, IN 46219
(866) 808-7286





I then told him that I was surprised to hear that, since I had successfully appealed garnishment in November and had a payment plan in place, so what was this all about?

He replied by saying he wasn't aware I had a payment arrangement with another company, said thank you, and hung up.

What scares me is, my fiance also has a defaulted student loan but only for about $1200. He got the same type of call at work last week and sent a $20 MO to an address in Greenville, TX. He sent it certified mail, but yesterday he got a call (at work again, after he told the first agent he was not allowed calls at work) from a DIFFERENT CA, saying they had no record of any payment arrangements for him or record of payment received. He said he sent the $20 MO because they told him they were about to start garnishment, but he has never received a threat of garnishment letter from the DOE.

Did he set up a payment plan for the $20?? If not, they may well start garnishmet. Either way, they have to send a 30 notice first.

Is there some type of scam going on?

Edited to add: I just did a reverse lookup of the number, and no name comes up - just that it is a landline based in Jacksonville, FL, and the service provider is SBC Long Distance. I don't like this at all.....

He actually set up a payment plan for $50/month but said he could not start until February. The CA he spoke with first said that was fine, he just needed to send $20 Priority Mail (he sent it certified - I told him I'd have kicked his butt if he paid $4.00 to send $20!) to show his intent to pay.
Well plain certified mail costs $2.79 to send and takes forever.

Oh, and he was telling me all that he needed to provide when setting up his payment plan, and they asked for his SS# (wouldn't they have that if they have his account?),
They have to verify SSI# so this is not uncommon.

and his driver's license number.

I see no reason for the DL #
He asked why they needed that, and when she couldn't provide an answer, he refused to give it.

Thanks for your advice. I'm thinking we need to keep an eye on our accounts for the next few months for any possible identity theft.

Dawn