SALLIE WAS A 15-YEAR-OLD GIRL FROM NEBRASKA [UPDATE]

An update to my student loan payment woes:

After I sent my long email to the Sallie Mae Office of the Consumer Advocate, nothing happened. I waited the requisite 72 hours and then, well, just got busy and forgot about it.

Then, this morning, I got another email from Sallie Mae warning me that there was some message or another, and when I logged in, of course I was greeted with a bunch of reminders to pay my overdue bill. You know, horseshit.

I smiled and remembered what the next step was supposed to be, and then I devoted a bit of my break time to Phase 3: CARPET BOMBING BY EMAIL.

Here's how it works: you find out who the top executives of a company are, and then guess at their email address structure. So, if your CEO is named John (Jack) Remondi, you just use every reasonable combination of his names that might reach him. john.remondi@salliemae.com, jremondi@salliemae.com, etc. And you do that for each of the execs and then hit that SEND button with a wry smile. I think when I hit SEND this morning, I had about 80 email addresses in the TO: line. I found out that at least three of them got through.

I sent the email around 10:00AM. At 1:45PM, I got a phone call from Kelly, the Consumer Advocate. She was much abashed at my talent for getting their attention. You could hear her fear and exasperation. And she was somewhat amused, as well.

Kelly told me that someone in her office DID try to reach me, but the number she called was only a busy signal. "I see at the bottom of your email you said that the number in your account information was no good... I guess she didn't read that." I then told her what the number was, and she laughed her head off.

A: "It's 555-2368. That's the number from Ghostbusters. I mean, who ya gonna call?"
K: "Ghostbust--really? Oh, that's... HAPPY HALLOWEEN!"

She assured me that she'd get things sorted out, and most of the trouble is due to their implementing a new system. I was happy for the contact and told her that I trust her to figure it out. Oh, but I need your contact information.  Your direct line. Yes.

I'll post more when I have it.