I just wanted to update everyone. I have been reading lots of posts regarding defaulted student loans and the CA asking for LARGE down payments and unreasonable monthly payments that would leave me broke and they didn’t care. Well after the CA not being very reasonable and giving me many, many different answers not to mention the runaround I called the ombudsman office on Wednesday, someone here suggested this. They said it takes 3-5 days for my complaint to be assigned to someone for investigation then they will get back to me. They understood the urgency on my end because the CA waited 21 days into the 60 days (then garnished wages) to call me so I was in a HUGE rush. Well I decided to call the CA and keep trying while to ombudsman office was doing their thing, I spoke with a woman and explained that I understand that everyone working there (the ca agency) needs to pay their personal bills so they are dependant on commissions they receive and those commissions are based on what they get from large down payments and high monthly payments from people like me. I told her that I have no problem making a small down payment so someone there gets some commission but by law I am not required to make any down payment. I told her that I also am willing to make a payment in X amount but by law they have to offer me a reasonable payment they cant force me to make a payment that would leave me with $10-$20 a month to live on. Let me tell you all that I really was BS’ing her, I had no clue if the commission part was true but I figured it probably is since most people that work in collections earn commissions and I have no clue about the laws of down payment s and laws about reasonable payments but I figured I would give it a try because if I am wrong she will correct me and the actual truth will come out. Well either I was right or she was sick of fighting with me because I am now in a rehab program with 0 down and I now am going to make monthly payments that I can afford and wont leave me very broke. I am not one to really offer advice but if you want any and feel comfortable following my advice here it goes, call the CA agency a few times and if they wont budge then call the ombudsman office and file a complaint (did I mention that when I told the lady at the CA agency that I filed a complaint with the ombudsman office her tune changed to be in my favor hmmm didn’t really think telling her this would have mattered but it appeared to have) Now don’t depend on others to clean up the mess you made so while they are reviewing and investigating your complaint you need to keep calling and calling and calling the CA agency and demand a manager, chances are when someone gets on the phone it wont be a manager I worked in a call center and I know the trick, someone asks for a manager and you put the person next to you on the phone, well ask the person if they can confirm if they are a manager because if they aren’t a manager they cant say that they are one, once you get a manager on the phone tell them what knowledge you have about doing a rehab program and that you don’t want to play games, you are willing to fix the mistake you made you are being reasonable and don’t understand why they refuse to work with you especially since you know there are options. Just keep your tone of voice very nice, when I worked in customer service we wouldn’t help people if they were rude but the nice ones we gave the world to. Hope this helps.