Consumer complaint received 2018-10-04
Product: Debt collection — Federal student loan debt
Issue: False statements or representation — Impersonated attorney, law enforcement, or government official
Company: Windham Professionals, Inc. (NY)

In 2015, I began school again, to finally obtain a degree I started many years ago. Prior to this, I had been working for a XXXX XXXX for many years, and the collection agency, Wyndham Professionals contacted me at my job claiming to be from " XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX ''. The person 's name who contacted me was " XXXX XXXX ''. I don't know the spelling of her name, or if it is an alias. She left a message for me to get back to her, and when I did, she immediately then asked me " What's your date of birth? '' I asked who she was, why she was asking me for that ( I thought I was calling XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX number she provided ). She then abruptly said " You're getting a garnishment ''. Some days later, I received one piece of paper in an unsealed envelope from my human resources department representative with the garnishment notice. No explanation of the garnishment, no descriptions of the payments I would be making, but a notice that I worked for " XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX '', which I did not. At that time, I immediately felt a sense of ironic relief, because although I was not able to make payments of my own accord, someone had forced me into doing it and I thought to myself, " at least now I'm making payments on this debt ''. Little did I know that this company was merely to be siphoning money from my paychecks every two weeks for years with absolutely not one piece of communication about my balance, my payments, or the way in which the payments were applied. It was never described to me that these garnishment payments were considered involuntary, which meant that I would not actually be making payments, and after many years of having this garnishment, found out my balance had actually increased. 

Fast forward to my decision to go back to school, and discovering through that process that a defaulted loan had to be corrected before I could enroll. Which led me to nervously calling the collection agency Wyndham Professionals to inquire what I needed to do. The process of entering into a payment agreement of " voluntary payments '' which would qualify me to have my loan rehabilitated was begun, and I spoke to a number of people, each telling me they were either my case manager, a manager, a supervisor, or someone qualified to talk to me about my case. The person who identified herself as the person with whom I would speak about my case spoke with me one time, and I never was able to reach her again, even when I asked for her, the representative would not allow me to speak to her, rather, they would insist I tell them my whole story again and that they could " help '' me. During this process, they had forms for me to fill out, papers to sign, and frankly I don't know if any of it was legal. They also asked for my partner 's personal financial information and said that without it, I would be ineligible for an agreement. I countered their statements and they finally offered me a payment arrangement without having to provide any of that information. 

I was able to make the payments and get my loan out of the hands of Wyndham Professionals and it is now in an in-school deferment in good standing with XXXX, for better or worse. It is not reasonable to believe or expect someone would be ok with someone taking money from their paycheck every two weeks for FOUR years with the assumption they were making loan payments, yet the collection agency is not lowering your loan balance with each payment ( however slight ), rather increasing it. The moment I would have known this information is the moment I would have called Wyndham Professionals to inquire how to remedy the situation so I would have not been led to financial ruin.