Sallie Mae Student Loan check placed on paternalistic hold after ridiculous experience of teller depositing it into the wrong person’s account.
I am wanting to share my outrage with Truist after my 10-15 years with the bank since the SunTrust days.
The TL;DR-
Sallie Mae loan deposited yesterday, first attempt teller deposited into a stranger’s account. Second attempt placed on a 10 day hold despite the funds being verified under 24 hours. Customer service unhelpful. Massive negative impact on my life.
I have graduated medical school after a masters degree, 10 years of continuous college. I marched into residency on the opposite end of the country, 2000 miles away from home. I receive a check from Sallie Mae, a student loan designed to residency relocation expenses and go in person to deposit it.
Despite giving my drivers license and debit card, the teller deposits the check into a different person’s account (same first and last name, different middle name and everything else). After reviewing my receipt in the car and not recognizing the account number I go into the bank and have it reversed and placed into my account. First - that should never had happened and would have been catastrophic if I didn’t catch it.
Now I’m placed on a hold until 4/23, 10 days from the deposit date. The funds were credited then removed after 1 day of processing because it’s Sallie Mae, it isn’t from some random person, the funds are readily available from their point.
I called, no response other than it is what it is and a “formal complaint” has been filed. Some good that does. I chatted and they said in a very AI method that they ‘understood’ my frustration but they are holding the check because at some point during medical school I overdrafted despite correcting it and paying the fee in a very timely manner. They then abruptly ended the chat.
Truist is essentially punishing me for being poor. Now that I’ve struggled my way through academia and have this huge ordeal of relocating and doing all the many things required to gain medical licensure, all of which require lots of money hence the loan, Truist is like sorry? Not good enough.
Residency is time sensitive. All these things need paid for in advance and time to process.
Can we just agree this is ridiculous?