Wednesday, March 24, 2010

"Every agency has different rules"

I had not had a good experience with DORS (V.R. or Vocational Rehabilitation) since the early 90's when they helped me pay for some of my books for college. Since then, as far as using them to try to get re-employed I have not had a good experience until about a month ago.

Here's a bit of a chronological outline. I don't have access to my journals at the moment so I'm just going to give you an overview.

I had no luck getting re-employed by using DORS between 94 and 2010

I had multiple visits.

I had a visit in Towson lsat Spring where I was put on a wait list. Then of course I moved to a different district.

Signed on with private non profit who have been helping me with some bills and such. I met with their job coach about last Sept. She required me to go back to DORS I had a bad experience with the coach and wanted another one. It took me months before I could get it scheduled. Got the appt. for one month ago. Was told by job coach that said non profit won't help me unless I stay with DORS. She said that she will work in partner with DORS.

After I had my appt. with DORS a month ago, the job coach closed my case. I'm baffled but not really upset. I've been consumed with other miserable stuff in the lsat 2 months anyway.

Have successful meetingwith dors counselor and she puts aside a large amt. of money toward helping me get re-employed. She sets up a scenario where I can take classes to get updated in computer software at the college. DORS is a federal agency.

I'm very impressed at what the feds are going to do to help me. But as per my life-the next trap arrives almost immediately. I get a threatening letter from another branch of the federal gov't. dept of education. Why now? Apparently now that I'm actively in the fed. system it triggered the following threatening letter that implies that I better not try to work or go to school or I'll be punished in a big way.

"The DOE now holds the defaulted student loan from blah blah bank to attend the blah blah blah college. for which you are responsible. The entire balance on this loan is now due. You are liable for the costs of collecting this loan. These charges can add substantially to the amount needed to satisfy your debt.

We want you to know that paying your debt by installment plan may make your loan eligible for loan rehab. or payoff thru consolidation-which will remove your loans from default status and may improve your credit rating and will make you eligible (talk about a run on sentence) for additional title 4 student financial assistance.

To remedy your default status you can pay the total amt. immediately or you can call us to enter into an acceptable repayment aggreement or to find out additional info. on the benefits of the depts loan "rehab" and "consolidation" programs.

All of the Dept's repayment opportunities are designed to assist you in remedying your defaulted student loan status.

Failure on your part to repay your debt may result in the dept. moving against you with one or all of the following collection measures:

we will report your default status on this loan to national credit reporting agencies , this may hurt your ability to obtain further credit.

we can refer your debt to a collection agency, and charge you the costs incurred by the dept. in having that agency collect this debt. These costs are currently up to 25% of the principal and interest owed on your loan. The dept. applies any payments you make first to these costs and then to your loan balance. This will increase the cost to you of paying off your loan by up to 25.%

We can notify your employer to initiate garnishment of your wages

we can refer your debt to the u.s. attorney for litigation

we can perform computer matches with other fed. agencies to determine if you are a gov't employee or recipient of other fed. aid for purposes of offsetting all or a percentage of these funds.

we can refer your debt to the dept. of treasury for offset of fed funds due you

To avoid the dept. reporting this loan to the credit bureaus as in default, you have 60 days from the date of this letter to repay this loan in full, make satisfactory arrangements to repay and actually make the first payment under this arrangement, or to request an administrative review.

To request an admin. review of this debt, an explanation of this debt, copies of documents, or an opportunity to dispute this debt you must send a written request to the following address........

sincerely

blah blah blah

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