Sallie Mae Error Causes Credit Scores to Drop

It is tough enough to keep your credit score accurate and in good standing. You could be doing all of the right things like making payments on time and paying more than the minimum. Of course, none of that matters when your lender reports inaccurate information to the credit reporting agency, causing your score to fall 80 to 100 points.

That is exactly what has happened to roughly 1,000,000 student loan borrowers that have loans with Sallie Mae. If you have a graduated payment loan with Sallie Mae, you could be one of those borrowers who either temporarily had or still might have a real problem with your credit score. A graduated payment loan is set-up to make the payment arrangements affordable on the front-end. As time goes on, the payment gradually gets higher.

In a May credit reporting to Equifax, Sallie Mae had a coding error that made these loans appear to be delinquent, causing credit scores to be greatly reduced. Since then, Sallie Mae has reported that they have fixed the problem. However, I wouldn’t just sit back and take that as reassurance that all is well.

If you do have a graduated payment student loan with Sallie Mae, it might be a good idea to just check your Equifax credit report and make sure that there isn’t a problem. Having a drastic drop in your scores could start a chain reaction of negative credit events. If any of your credit companies were to pull your Equifax credit score and that mistake was not corrected, they could deem you a risk and turn around and raise the interest rates on your credit cards.

If you check your credit score and this has happened and it has not been fixed, you want to immediately dispute the information with Equifax online as well as contact Sallie Mae to inquire on the status of getting that problem fixed. You can contact Sallie Mae at 1-888-2-SALLIE.

This is why it is important to really keep up with your credit scores and make sure that there is not any inaccurate reporting. Many surveys have come out concerning credit reporting errors. I have seen percentage range from 50 to 75% of credit reports have errors on them. One survey suggested that 30% of the credit reports that they examined had errors so harmful that the consumer would probably never be able to get a job.

I was talking about this yesterday. I don’t think that we stop and think about how important the credit score has become in this country. The bottom line is that the lower the credit score, the more expensive life is going to be. From interest rates on debt to the rates you pay on insurance to getting a job, they are all affected by the credit score.

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