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report scam| Country | United States |
| State | California |
| City | Huntington Beach |
| Address | 17011 Beach Blvd. Suite 822 |
| Phone | (800) 617-0078 |
| Website | http://www.studentloancounsel.org/ |
Student Loan Counsel Reviews
This is a copy of my Comment I just wrote on thier BBB.
"MUST READ" DO NOT SIGN UP WITH THESE SCAMMERS
Student Loan Counsel is an Absolute SCAM! I signed up with them 2 years ago and taught everything was great. I owed $6000 in student loans but my monthly payment with Sallie Mae at the time was very very high ($80 a month). So i heard about http://www.studentloancounsel.org/ on the radio one day and decided to sign up for their forgiveness program. I spoke to Rick Silva (Who is actually the owner of Student Loan Counsel and acting as a regular enrollment associate) and he enrolled me in the program. He said I would pay $39 a month 140 payments and the rest of the loan would be forgiven. So it sounded good to me even though it was close to the $6000 I owed but the monthly payments were less.
So I started coming across tons of student loan forgiveness scam articles online and in my local news paper so I decided to investigate and ask a few recommend questions. So I called in to speak with Rick Silva, as soon as he noticed I was on to him, he stop answering and returning my calls and emails.
So heres what you guys need to know. First, you do not need to use any of these programs. Just simply go to https://studentloans.gov/ and https://myfedloan.org/ and try to work out your loan repayment directly with the government.
Secondly, I found out the $39 I was paying monthly was not going towards my loan at all. They took the payments for them self to "Maintain my account" in otherwords, they were getting paid to update my account once ever 12 months by applying for a forebearance with the government to delay my loan every single year. this way the government would not bill you but Student Loan Counsel would still take my money every month.
Also, when they request your user name and password to log into your https://studentloans.gov/ and https://myfedloan.org/ an "Act as if they are you" THIS IS 100% ILLEGAL. This is what they are doing. And heres the big one, to qualify for loan forgiveness in the United States after they submit the request to the government after you have paid them 140 payments "You must be in a Public Service Sector" when you signed up to qualify for the program as well as after the years have passed after you have paid the 140 payments to Student Loan Counsel. If you are not working in Public Service after you have complete the 140 payments "Your loan will not qualify for Forgiveness" which means you just paid these Scammers Thousands of dollars and your loan actually went up for the past few years due to interest.
Well I requested a full refund, and they told me they can stop the payments from coming out but there is no refund. This is when i got my lawyer involved. He reviewed my complete case and found that there practice was completely illegal and when i contacted them with all the details provided by my lawyer thats when they decided to refund every last dime I had paid them over the past 2 years including the $600 down payment.
After all this they tried to scam me once more. they split the refund in 5 small payments and I only got 2 out of the 5 refunds that was sent. So now these thieves sent me the receipts for the 5 refunds and said I would have to check with my bank for the other 3 missing payments. I called the bank dozens of times over the space of 2 months until I got so frustrated I contacted thier local police department because I know they were lying. While they were investigating. I looked back on the receipts and noticed that the so called refunds were processed through www.usaepay.com So I contacted them directly with the Authorization # and Reference # on the Receipts of the missing refunds. Thats when I was told they received the request to process the refund but the account that student loan counsel used for those 3 refunds was inactive and they sent multiple notification to them and did not receive any reply.
The reason they did this is because even though the payment was not processed it still produced a receipt that was sent to me automatically even though the refund did not actually process. So at this time I was now passed on to a Erick Etherly (Compliance Officer) at student loan counsel because Rick did not answer or return any calls. Erick doesn't seem to have a clue whats really going on because he reports to Rick and Rick processes all the refunds.
Rick convinced Erick that he did send the refund which led to me arguing with Erick over and over. So I contacted Their Local Police Department, USAepay, Payment Tech (who is another payment processor that usaepay told me was involved in all this), and my lawyer all on a conference call when i called in. It was so obvious what they did, after have USAepay and Payment Tech confront both Rick Silva and Erick Etherly on the line while my lawyer, the local police listened, that refund was not processed because it was sent to an inactive account. Not really "SURPRISE" 2 days later all the "MISSING" refunds processed and credited back to my bank account.
These people are enrolling people like my self in this program that are not qualified because most of do not work in Public Service. And for your loan to be forgiven you must work in the Public service sector. They convinced me that my Customer service/ Telemarketing position was considered Public Service. This is FRAUD. Then they charge your account monthly for years and all they do is log into your student loan account once a year and request a Forebearance on your loan to delay the payments while interest is being added on. Then buy the time you have paid them 140 payments and they submit your request for Forgiveness with the United States Government, It will be declined because you do not work public service. By this time you have given them thousands of dollars and your loan payment is even higher than when you signed up because of all the interest accumulated.
So please Trust me, I would not waste my time typing all of this, "DO NOT ENROLL IN ANY OF THESE FORGIVENESS PROGRAMS, THEY ARE ALL SCAMS"