Attack of the phantom fees

I recently began the painful process of paying down my private loans. Needless to say, it has been a thoroughly frustrating experience. Like most lenders, my lender doesn’t actually service my loan so I have to deal with this company based somewhere in middle earth (i.e, the Mid West) that makes it virtually impossible to get a living breathing person on the phone. When I do manage to actually talk to someone, the person clearly has no idea about anything remotely related to loans.

The other day I got my statement and was horrified to see that my principle was actually increasing. I pay enough each month so that I should expect to see my principle decrease each month. After three frustrating phone calls, and three incredibly obtuse and nonsensical answers to my questions about why my principle keeps going up, I finally got a hold of someone who, in all likelihood, will probably be fired for making the mistake of telling me that the loan service company had added a “one time service fee” of over 700 dollars. I specifically remember choosing my private loan provider based on the fact that they charged zero fees for servicing the loan. Naturally, the hapless customer service rep was completely unable to point to a single provision in my loan documents that gave them the right to charge any fees much less 700 freaking dollars. Its bad enough that the interest rate on my loan is starting to look more and more like a credit card, but to tack on an additional 700 bucks from which even more interest is going to accrue is fucking killing me. I’m also pissed at how many conversations I had to have with assorted loan flunkies before someone managed to get around to telling me about the presence of this mystery fee. I can’t imagine an industry, especially in light of the massive student loan kickback scandals, more deserving of serious regulation and oversight.