August 18, 2006

• Processes

  We are down to the deadline on getting the loans for middle J’s college applied to his tuition and fees.  Sam Houston State University has no idea as to how hard they make this “process”.  We went through a similar experience his Freshman year.  We had done everything we were supposed to and went to the website every day to see if we could apply the money we had borrowed and every day we got the same response that the money was not yet available. 
  
  The financial aid group must be outsourced to India because any time you call their phone number you get a busy signal or an answering machine where your message is never returned.  The other way of contacting them is through a “request tracking system”.  The first year we went through this meat grinder, our online request was responded to after we had paid by credit card.  It seems that someone somewhere had not entered our information correctly so the money was not available until after we had paid.  Little did we know that the money would be credited toward Jacob’s Bearkat card instead of being sent to us as a check.  Jacob had fun spending that money the first semester of his Freshman year.  That will not happen again.  If we have to pay with our credit card, the loan money will be sent to us as a check to pay off the credit card.  I am just glad that we have no credit card debt and that the balance will not incurr any interest.
  
  I finally ended up looking up the email address of the director of financial aid.  The email responses I got from her validated my thoughts that they are in fact outsourced to India.  Canned responses to my email were all that I got and that was obvious because my questions were not answered.  After the 3rd email from her she was referring me back to pages that I had already told her were invalid in my first email.
  
  I am not so frustrated about this because it is what I have come to expect from academia.  The people that are administrating and “teaching” our children in the “higher” education system have a lot to learn about customer service.  They have no concept of what or who their customers are.  When a person gets a paycheck and has no idea as to where the money came from, there is a lack of appreciation that creates apathy and so on and so forth.
  
  Maybe I am a little frustrated because there is no hope of this ever getting any better.  I guess it is my fault by not being able to pay for college out of funds that were set aside over the years or making the student do all of the paperwork.
  
  Many thanks to my daughter in law for taking care of the oldest J’s college loans.  I don’t mind paying the loans off just as long as I don’t have to apply for them.
  

  • 11:40 am
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