I spoke with a collections agency where my defaulted student loan has been sold to. They took my federal tax return which means i now only owe them $435, and i called them today in good faith to make sure they got the money and a rep informed me that i have to pay the remainder today or they will put my account to wage garnishment dept. After speaking with my mom she told me that they have to send me a notice and with that there is a deadline which i have to reply by, so i called the collection agency back and told him this and he became very hostile and asked if my mom is a lawyer and everything she said was a lie and then hung the phone up on me. So my question to you is can they garnish my wage so soon without giving me any form of written notification and if i didn't call then i wouldn't have known at all

Your mom is right - if you have not received a notice of garnishment from the DOE, then the CA is just using scare tactics to try to pressure you into paying your bill in full.

OMG thanks a million i was holding my breath i was so scared after hearing they will garnish 35% of my check and then charge me 18% to do that. All i asked was for him to wait for monday so i can make the payment in full... can i report him for giving false and misleading information or jus scaring the hell outa me lol

OMG, even if they DID garnish you, it would only be for 15% of your 'disposable' income - after taxes, insurance, etc. You can contact the Student Loan Ombudsman and register a complaint.

I received my garnishment letter from the DOE about the same time I got a call from the CA. Through this board, I found out how to appeal the garnishment and am now making affordable (for me) payments on my loan. The first CA passed it off to a second CA who called me after I'd been granted approval on my garnishment appeal from the AWG office. They proceeded to tell me that if I didn't pay them $1000 towards my balance that day, they'd garnish my wages!!!

I understand that CAs make their money by collecting money, and that's why they use the tactics they do, but I personally could not do that.

This is not exactly right. You do not HAVE to receive a garnishment notice; they only have to make a reasonable attempt to find you. If they do not, they can and will garnish - up to 15%, not 35%.

Call back and ask to speak with a qualified supervisor. Tell them you want to set up payment arrangements - you should not have to pay more than $50/month if that's all you can afford. But since you're so close to being paid off, I would do whatever I could to just finish it up.

I basically agree with Dawn and your mom. Although the CA can certainly forward your file on for Administrative Wage Garnishment, you have to be given notice 30 days prior to the garnishment...so...if they forward your file, you are notified, and you make satisfactory arrangements or prove undue hardship before they proceed to actually garnish you're ok.

Telling you they will "forward the account to wage garnishment department" may sound scary but it won't result in DE garnishing your wages tommorrow. My sugestion: send them $100 per month for 4 months, and then call them and ask for a 30-day payoff for the remaining amount.


Edit to add: TXquiltgirl is correct in saying that a notice sent to your last know address is legally effective. I assumed that if you called them they had verified your current address before discussing the account.

thanks everyone all the answers were very helpful. the rep did not verify my address jus mu social, but when i spoke with another rep on march 2 and he verfied it everything was correct. I do want this over with all i asked for was an extention to monday and half will be paid ($217) and the other half paid in full the following week but he was insistant on gettin everything today and said he's gonna fax the paper to my job and my next check will have 35% missing thanks to my lying mom. After they fot my tax refund they didn't contact me at all i contacted them today

The "paper" is an administrative order from the federal government. Here are masters of some of the papers:

http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSFAP/DCS/Employers_Handbook.pdf


Unless he's an an executive of ED or some other federal agency of the United States Government he doesn't have any legal authority to send the orders to your employer.

What he could do is advise the guarantor to initiate the process.

Hopefully you are like me and get the name of EVERY person that you speak with whenever making payment arrangements or dealing with a bill collector. I keep a pad and pen by the phone for this very reason - I'll write the date, time, and with whom I spoke.

IMO, you really need to contact the Student Loan Ombudsman on this one. Their collection tactics are horrible.

yup i got his full name and ext #, i called back 2day but apparently their hrs of operation does not included friday, so ill call 2moro

okay i called to today and they immediately transfered me to the per5son handling my account (although i asked to speak with his supervisor) when the rep came on and i asked to speak with his supervisor he asked wat is this in reference to so i told him about the conversation we had on thursday i would like to clarify some things and i said you cannot garnish my check without notifying me in writing and OMG he started yelling at me and he hung up the phone so i called back and spoke with a diff rep and asked to b transfered to the rep supervisor and after having me on hold for 10mins she hung up on me so wat do i do nw?

Call back and record the call, even if it is not legal in your state! If you are in a 2 party consent state, it is not admissable in court. HOWEVER, that does not mean that the guarantor would not want to hear it, or the FTC, or the BBB, or the Ombudsman!