Careful Student Debt Consolidation
By: Sara | Posted: 22nd February 2008
Student debt consolidation is a highly competitive industry. The lenders compete with one another to attract your business because success with borrowers offers them word of mouth advertisement and more business.
When they can get your attention and you make contact with them, the consolidation lenders will try to rope you into accepting whatever deal they come up with by making it seem like no one can offer you a better deal. You may get letters from official sounding companies that almost claim to represent the government and are stamped with deadlines.
These ploys play on the borrower’s naïveté and put you into a rush to accept anything they throw at you. You have to be careful about student debt consolidation to make sure you are actually getting a good deal.
Misleading the Borrower
Aside from trying to make their offer seem like it is straight from the US government, there are other tactics that student debt consolidation marketers use to hurry you into accepting their loans.
• Some loans that you have out are a matter of public record. They use the names of your loans to sound as if they have some official capacity to offer you deals based on these loans.
• They offer such things as a fixed rate or extended term even though these are standard aspects of all federal and most private student debt consolidation programs.
• The offer is for a rock bottom interest rate which may be the same as every other lender. You need to examine the other aspects of the loan because they can increase your payment.
• Lenders will offer you the benefit or no application fee without telling you that most lenders who do student debt consolidation also offer free application processing
• You are assumed to have no knowledge of jargon so they will throw out terms like T-bill and application deadline that sound important but have little impact on your ability to consolidate
If you are considering student debt consolidation you should do research online about these loans in general. You should remember that the US government does not solicit borrowers for student debt consolidation.
If the offer being made sounds too good to be true, it probably is no where near real. Genuine lenders will answer all of your questions and work with you to provide the best student debt consolidation loan possible.
About the Author
Occupation: Webmaster
Webmaster of student loan site that offers information for students in debt.
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Tags: us government, word of mouth, marketers, application fee, jargon, rush, advertisement, lenders, borrowers, interest rate, loans, fixed rate, rope, student debt, debt consolidation programs, public record, rock bottom, private student, free application