Lending

I gotta tell you... I have such faith in my law school loan lender.

Let's start from the beginning. The due date for my payment was February 1st. The check was sent out at the end of January, albeit not as early as I usually send it because of the vacation and sick thing, but definitely before February 1st. I checked my bank account a few days ago and there was still no debit. I started thinking something was wrong, but it was after their customer service hours, so I couldn't call. I decided to call in the morning.

That very same day (as seems to so often happen to me), I got a statement in the mail from my lender stating that the payment was past due and that I should pay as soon as possible.

But I paid the bill! I had the check number, the date of the check, the amount, I could have given them any of the information they wanted to know. So here's my question: should it be the fault of a borrower who pays in good faith that the lender doesn't receive payment? I'm sure there's something in the loan documents that says they're not responsible for payments not received, but is that right?

I had no problem paying it immediately, but I was worried about a few things - late charges and borrower benefits (specifically the reduction for on-time payments). Could the latter be jeopardized even though I had done everything I could to make the payment on time and it just wasn't received?

Supposedly if I made payment within 2 days of receiving that statement (15 days after the due date), the benefits are preserved. So say Dan and Peter on the phone. I hope they're right. It just doesn't seem fair that if someone had really paid their bill, they could lose the interest rate reduction because of a mail mishap. I'm sure people could lie about this and there's no way to differentiate between them and people telling the truth, but still, it was extremely frustrating to think this could happen through no fault of my own.

So that prompted the second question: if they don't have the check, who does? Is it floating out there? Will someone else try to deposit it? (I had thought that once someone takes money from your bank account it's gone; I didn't realize you could actually contest improper debits. I also asked my dad whether they could do a fraud alert type thing like credit cards and just call me if someone tries to deposit the check). I thought about putting a stop payment on the check but then wondered what would happen if 2 months from now, it turns up at my lender. If they deposit it, will I then not only have paid for a stop payment, but would I have to pay for a bounced check fee?

I asked the people at the lender and the guy told me that was "a very good question" and he hadn't really been asked that before. (I'm sitting there thinking, good questions, that's kind of my job...). Eventually I got to someone else who had to check with their supervisor, and blah blah blah, no fee waiver if this should happen. Although I bet we all could agree that stopping payment on a check when it hasn't been received for over a month is extremely reasonable, they wouldn't waive the fee. It's a business, I get it, but don't they care about fairness and justice and don't they have a heart? (Amusing... this makes me think of law school...)

I asked her about that today, and you know what her answer was? "We deposit every check that comes to us, whatever company it's addressed to or anything."

Now the addressee wasn't really my point, but that made me think. They just deposit every check that comes their way? Seriously? Can they do that? What if they get something that's addressed to like ConEd and when the person mailed their bills out, it accidentally stuck to the back of the lender envelope? They would deposit the check to ConEd? (Too many hypos, I know).

I thought it strange that she mentioned the "whatever company" thing, because I could see if she said something like "no matter if there is a special note on your account" (I asked for that yesterday) or "no matter what the date is" or something like that. Maybe she messed up and meant "no matter who it's from" or something. Who knows.

Anyway, all this slushy dirty snow is getting disgusting. And it's too cold to melt. I want to go someplace warm and sunny...