I hate America

Today, Kelis’s song ‘I hate you so much right now’ really spoke to me. Spoke to me on a deep personal level.

You see, the lyrics, ‘I hate you so much right now! I hate you so much right now! AHHHHHHHH!! I hate you so much right now!’ perfectly encapsulated my inner monologue from about the hour of 5pm to 6:30pm.*

Over a month ago, I went through a whole song and dance with my student loan companies regarding how I was going to pay them with my GBP. They were baffled. GBP? What’s that? The world doesn’t EXIST OUTSIDE OF AMERICA! Ultimately, I was told that I could send in a cheque in GBP, that they would cash it at the current rate and that all would be fine with the world(/America).

Well, the first month, my cheque must have got lost in the mail.** They had some girl who couldn’t have been over the age of 23 call me to harass me about late payments. I belittled her and made her transfer me to her manager, who later waived my payment requirement that month and said he would at least reconcile my due dates (of which I had two, bafflingly).

He didn’t.

And so this month, my £400 cheque to Fedloan Servicing was cashed over a week ago, yet I’ve received a threatening email today about non-payment.

Shocking.

But that’s not what incited me to rage, oh no.

My other student loan company cashed a £100 cheque I sent them and, get this, only recorded a payment of $100 to my account.

So when I tried to call them about this, I spent 30 MINUTES trying to get out of their continuous call system. I didn’t.

I called another number that asked me to press ‘1’ for English, which I pressed.

And pressed.

And pressed.

But the automated voice (on five separate calls) just kept telling me, ‘I’m sorry, but I did not understand what you said.’

What I said? I DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING! I PRESSED ‘1’ LIKE YOU TOLD ME TO!

I pressed lots of other numbers in rapid succession due to intense frustration after screaming for about 15 seconds.

This seemed to work, because I got through to an operator.

Go figure.

Well, the operator couldn’t help me; she only said that my account was overdue and asked me how I was ‘going to take care of this today’. Fuck. Right. Off. My account isn’t overdue; one of your accounting monkeys cashed a cheque and received the equivalent of 100GBP in USD yet wasnt clever enough to realise that £100 on the little slip of paper isn’t the same as $100 cold hard cash in your bank account. No, it’s £100 out of mine and about $144 into yours.

The operator’s manager, Jameson, who was in charge of finance or some shit, couldn’t help me either. Basically, I was told that he’d have to look into the issue and that I could call him back in a week.

Now, before you go making any judgments, I’m particularly frustrated about this whole ordeal, because before I sent any cheques with my funny British money in the mail, I called both of my student loan companies to verify that this was all right. And it was. Supposedly.

So, yeah.

Everyone with whom I spoke today was completely baffled at my issues. None of them had ever encountered someone like me, you know, someone living in another country, a country in which she went to school with the money that the US Government Loan Machine gave her to study in said country.

‘You can make payments online with a US bank account’.

Thanks for the tip, hot shot.

In a move of sweeping generalisation, I hate America today. Fucking insular twats, the whole lot of ’em.***

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*no, Red did not cheat on me with a woman of questionable character, who wears a red coat.
**misplaced in the Fedloan Serving accounting offices out of gross incompetence
***joking (sort of)

Addendum: I don’t REALLY hate America. This statement was supposed to be read as quite tongue-in-cheek.