Does anyone know how to get a hold of these people? They are wrecking havoc with my excellent credit rating. I overnighted a check to them and I have not seen it posted yet. Then they say …oh you are late.

The most pathetic incident…a letter we received today dated March 1…”This is in response to your recent request to initiate an ACH Automatic Debit for your NJ Class loan. Please contact this office at 1-800-792-8670, Option 3, within 5 business days of the date of this letter or we will assume you are not longer interested in the ACH program.” Are they kidding, today is March 4th when we received the letter…..and why in the world would they not want you to sign up for an ACH…oh, by the way this is the phone number you can’t get anyone to answer.

Anyone out there have a suggestion for these idiots….

I am extremely frustrated with them! Someone please help!!! and Provide some information/advice!!

Thank you

I completely agree their use of a third party site to process on-line payments is absurd. Such a system worked well in, oh, 1996. It’s not difficult or very expensive to develop their own system – it’s old technology these days. However, if they are going to use a system that charges some processing fee, I would prefer the users pay that fee instead of someone like me who me who neither uses nor benefits from the service. Basically, you’re insisting that HESAA not pass off the costs to you and pass them off to tax payers instead. I don’t see how that’s fair.

Personally, I think borrowers are insane for using their online payment method. Set up a bank account, use it to have payments drafted automatically through their automatic debit (not your bank’s automatic bill pay) and save yourself the costs of doing business altogether while taking advantage of a system that more quickly and more accurately posts payments to your account. Instead of having your payments posted manually each month and risking human error with each posting, the automatic draft is hands off and reduces the risk of posting errors and delays to about zero., Plus, if I’m not mistaken, their NJ Class loans that were approved within a certain date range that spans several years receive an interest rate discount as long as the borrower is enrolled in the automatic debit. So, it’s free, there’s a potential interest rate discount, and no one touches your payments resulting in virtually no posting errors. Why are you paying with credit card online again?

And the fact is that the 2.5% merchant fee that is assessed by the online payment system is a cost of doing business. Every private company in the United States gets charged a similar fee, but you don’t see a line item on your receipt after each purchase that assesses this fee. Some would argue that the 2.5% fee – when not charged directly to the consumer as NJHESAA allows – becomes a sunken cost and I argue otherwise (see: Wal-Mart). It is a fee that the private company pays in order to offer another way for the private company to take in revenue.

Of the many problems that NJHESAA has to tackle, I agree that this ranks towards the middle or bottom of the list. However, in the year 2010, NJHESAA really ought to cut into its profit to pay for this fee instead of passing it directly to their borrowers and, ultimately, negating their ability to effectively use this payment function.

I doubt you’ll need to fight to make room on that bandwagon.

HESAA is problem-laden from top-to-bottom. You picked the one gripe that is not HESAA’s fault.