This morning, I decided to put in a call to student loan giant Sallie Mae.  The approximate hold time - twenty minutes.

Of course, like every other institution, they have a website where you can get account information.  As a matter of fact, your account information is spewed at you while you’re on hold.  Needless to say, I need to talk to a real person because I wanted money from them.

Getting your loans paid off and promissory notes canceled is exceedingly difficult.  I reluctantly sent them their absurdly high payoff amount, knowing they’d owe me a refund.  That model of inefficiency - the federal government - refunded the overpayment within the week.  Sallie Mae the very model of corporate greed - nada, nothing, zippo.

So, I got my tea, and made the call.  You know the message, ‘we’re experiencing  an unusually high number of calls, yada, yada.’  Free trade, outsourcing, it was supposed to make everything cheaper, no?  If you can hire a worker in another country for pennies, or nickels, or dimes on the dollar - in theory - they’d hire twice as many (at least) as in the U.S. and there would be no hold times, no hold messages.  But alas, it’s not to be.  Instead, it seems, they’ve hired the same amount or less and I have to hold, and hold, and hold.  Today I was told that Sallie Mae has a thirty day payoff policy.  When I pointed out it had been thirty-two days, the story changed to forty-five days - really - yeah, mm hm, and I believed his name was Mark.

One fine day I hope to be out from under this mess, and not on hold for a million years trying to straighten it out.