Bigass story time that makes me pretty damn happy, no matter how it plays out. So, five years ago I enrolled at Texas Technical University. I signed up to live in the dorm, and had to take out a loan at a local bank to pay for it. Because I hadn't totally committed to going there, I insisted at every step of the process that I only wanted to sign up for one semester in the dorm, and take out a loan for that one semester. At every step of the process, they assured me that I was only signed up for one semester of loan. At every step of the process, I insisted that I wanted the government-issued student-loan program that wouldn't kick into payments until after I was no longer enrolled at any state school. At every step of the process, they assured me that the government student-loan would not need payment until I was no longer a student.
I left TTU after one semester to go to college back in my hometown. About a year later, I start getting letters and phone calls from this guy with a really gravelly voice, both from some place in Missouri. They were a collection agency, angrily demanding the thousands and thousands of dollars from the two semesters worth of loans I had taken out and the many many late fees they had racked up since I transferred from TTU. What the fuck...
So I argued with those guys for a while. I asked many times to explain myself to TTU's department, only to find out that there's like four or five levels of communication between me and the offices, and the collections agency refused to give me any kind of contact information. Finally, the pressure was too much, and I said fuck it, I'll pay the damn bill. Like three and a half thousand dollars, mostly borrowed from relatives. Son of a bitch.
Six months after I finished that off, they start writing and calling again, this time a very sugary woman on the phone. What do you cocksuckers want now, I asked. The payment for the other semester, because I had only paid for one. Well fuck you guys, I was only there for the fall semester, you can tell TTU I'm not paying for the spring semester that I wasn't there for. Oh but Mr. Aqizzar, you already paid for the spring semester loan, I'm calling about the fall one.
...Motherfuckers. Yeah, they lied to me about what loan I was taking out and how it would apply, they lied to me about how I was apparently taking out two different loans for one contract that I couldn't argue my way out of even when I did get in contact with TTU, they couldn't even find proof that I had signed anything (I have proof, but I'm not going to tell them that). And then they managed to trick me into paying for the semester that I wasn't there for, which I probably could have argued with, and started demanding payment on the earlier loan later.
Needless to say I was pretty pissed about all this, and just told them to shove it and do their worst. Well, since it obviously wasn't a government loan after all (or something), all they could do was send me some more letters once in a while, and leave the outstanding (about four grand) loan sitting on my credit report like an angry troll, ready to beat my advanced-level financial future senseless if I ever tried to get another loan for anything. I figured all I could do now was let it sit there, and pay it off sometime after I graduated when I actually started making money.
Well, I just got a letter, from some collections agency in Utica. Apparently, my old outstanding loan has been transferred to their ownership, under new terms. Namely, that the total outstanding value is about $1300 (the original amount), with no demand or intention for it to start being paid until July, 2012.
The financial meltdown melted down in my favor. Holy shit. Thank you Goldman Sachs.