Is American Student Assistance a legit company?

Personally, I would Not send them anything

i would alert your loan provider,and file a complaint at them know a possible id theft scam involving student loans is out there.because it is a scam to get your information.

American Student Assistance is very much a legitimate guarantor or stafford and private loans. http://www.amsa.com/about/ The Access Group is a lender/servicer....ASA would be your guarantor. I would suggest you follow up with ASA...they are probably required by law to send you that notification.

the notification yes,but all of that documentation?say it ain't so.i do think there is a scam using that name.i never meant to infer that they are a scam.it's just that someone could use that name to phish.do student loans really ask for passports,drivers license,w-2,and a pay stub?again say it ain't so soaplady.

There were times when I was in collections that social security numbers were conflicting....apps are done on paper and manually keyed in by some minimum wage data entry person at the lender. Errors DO happen so we did have to collect multiple sources to correct the error. Nowadays will online apps, errors do not occur as often.

wow!!!!!!!!!! it's just with all the phishing scams it does look weird,but if you say so.then it's legit.

I think it is pretty irresponsible that the poster has been getting these letters for a few years and has ignored them. People always seem to find fault in the guarnators activities but they dont follow up when requested.

Thanks for the info, Soaplady.
Irresponsible? I hear what you're saying, but on the flip side, one could say that it would be irresponsible to blindly send my SSN and other data to some group I've never heard of. If Access Group had sent this request, that would be different.

Thanks, again,
Mike

Did you ever look up who American Student Assistance is? Call them? They were not blindly writing you. You could have looked them up on NSLDS as well.

don't do it. soap lady works for ASA. ASA is known to be a crooked company in the industry. one of the worst out there.

For a so called sharp lawyer you are pretty dumb and obviously know nothing about the student loan industry. ASA is in MA...I live in FL...previously MN. ASA was once a client over a decade ago when I worked in collections.

Go back and review your law books. Obviously you skipped contract law and prom notes.

Quote:

ASA, American Student Assistance, is a nonprofit student loan guarantor. They guarantee the loans lenders make to students. Their legal name is Massachusetts Higher Education Assistance Corporation. Their headquarters are in Boston, Massachusetts. They are very much a legitimate company and the oldest guarantor in the country (founded in 1954). They are the reason most students are able to get loans from lenders enabling students to attend college--without the guarantee, the loans would have never been approved. You can look them up at www.asa.org.

Access Group is a loan servicer.

ASA has a nice bit on Wiki, and being a non profit does make an entity sound less greedy. But they don't "guarantee" loans out of benevolence, rather they presumably have the Dept of Education and taxpayers backing those guarantees. And I know of a girl being bent over right now by their collectors, FH Cann. but the point of the question; it would be so easy for sheisty characters to send out a form requesting info from you, based on some knowledge of some connection tween you and the entity, then have the return mail go to a PO Box for the Sheity one.

I just want to make a comment here. I, NOW, attend a local uiversity, full time. There are student loans, that the students can take out, from Direct Loans. here's the 'odd' part. Every once in a while (according to the Financial Aid office, on campus), some of the students will get e-mails from a place called American Student Ass. I was informed if I had received any e-mails from them, I needed to let the university know and NOT to click on their website. If I did, this 'loan comapny' would electronically get all of my information and the 'lending company' is illegal. I haven't had e-mails, yet, from them. However...again, I was told this by a very reputatable university, in the state of PA. Hope this information helps someone.

Well someone is giving you very bad information. ASA has been around for years and when I was collecting was the primary servicer for MA state loans. They are far from illegal

from wiki...

American Student Assistance was founded in 1956 under the name Massachusetts Higher Education Assistance Corporation (MHEAC). The organization began when a group of people approached Massachusetts local businesses for philanthropic donations with the idea of creating a pool of money to fund loans for higher education.[3] MHEAC went on to become the nation???s first student loan guarantor. Its model of a student loan program???funded by local banks and insured by a non-profit organization???was replicated across the country and by 1965, there were 14 loan guarantors in the United States.

Dear Mike,
American Student Assistance most likely is the guarantor of your Federal Family Education Loans. From the way you describe the letter, I suspect that there is a discrepancy between the social security number we have for you in our records and the SSN that the National Student Loan Data System has for you. I apologize for any confusion our letter caused and will bring this to the attention of the proper staff at ASA so that we may make improvements in future communications. In the meantime, please feel free to contact us at 800 999 9080 or [EMAIL="information@asa.org"]information@asa.org[/EMAIL], or visit www.asa.org to find out more about our nonprofit organization.

Best,

Corporate Public Relations Manager
American Student Assistance

I think its sad that yo ucan not see all the warning signs from this company.....Maybe you are an employee for the company and just trying to clean it up.....A SCAM is A SCAM no matter what name you put infront of it....:D

Maybe use a source other than WIKI.....like BBB (Better Business Bureau) find anything????

The Student Assistance Corporation is a newly formed Non-Profit & IRS 501(C) 3 Corporation located in Atlanta, Georgia. We were established in March 2009 for the sole purpose of providing health/youth services to students. The leadership of our organization consists of experienced instructors in both the college and public high school classroom, and we have seen ???first-hand??? how vital and crucial this need is to our young student population.
Our mission is to provide continuous services support to a select cohort group of several hundred students during their school years of 9-16. The criteria we use to determine the recipients of our services is; low family income, maintenance of an acceptable GPA, good attendance, and an acceptable discipline record. The Student Assistance Corporation will help these young citizens realize their future dreams of becoming a part of the strong backbone of America. Presently, desperate economic need is causing these very same students to resort to crime and bad social association to survive; this weakens the quality of our labor force and the integrity of our future leadership.
Students supported by our organization receive free annual services in the area of clothing, eye exams, eye wear, mass transportation assistance and personal finance training. We do not however, participate in providing student loans, grants, or scholarships.

If you are interested in financially supporting this charitable endeavor, contact us at: [EMAIL="sac@studentassistancecorporation.com"]sac@studentassistancecorporation.com[/EMAIL]

Right now I am being wage garnished by ASA for 100 dollars per week and they took my state and federal tax. The refused to negotiate more reasonable payment options with me. Right now my income is less than my monthly bills and that is not even including money for gas, food or clothing.

I checked out the BBB as suggested above and found this :http://www.bbb.org/boston/business-reviews/consumer-finance-and-loan-companies/american-student-assistance-in-boston-ma-17807/

I just dont know how they got my loans in the first place. I just started receiving mail from them one day. I thought my loans were with the US Dept of Education.

My experience with them has not been favorable at all. Rather than discuss things with me and come to an agreement with me, the woman in charge of handing my loans would bark at me with orders and even hung up on me one day when she called me at my place of employment and was not able to speak with her where I was sitting.

Now I am probably going to lose my apartment because they are taking close to $400 per month. I was already struggling with my mandatory living expenses. Now I just got a notice of a rent increase and everything. They were not willing to negotiate at all.

Why would US Dept of education let you enter into forbearance but ASA demands high amounts of money regardless?

My loans are not even that old. I have friends who have been in forbearance for their loans for years, like 10+ years. And they make more money than me! So I do not understand.

ASA is your guarantor. Maybe you have other loans with the DOE?? How many loans did you borrow?

I had federal loans and then one private loan. I paid one off so the DOE was the only ones left.

you didnt answer my question..,.how many loans did you borrow? ASA is a federal lender under the FFELP program, totally different from the Direct Loan program with the DOE. THink you need to get logged into www.nslds.ed.gov/ to look up who has what

Okay so I went there and saw they list 9 different small loans consolidated together into 1 under FFEL. So was ASA assigned to my loans then? I never chose them.

ASA are the guarantor of your loans...you dont choose them per se. When you borrowed, they were the ones who guaranteed the loans. When you defaulted, ASA paid the claim. Did you consolidate with Direct loans?

That was never explained to me. I didnt know there was a guarantor and that if I defaulted they took over. That explains how they ended up writing to me.

I do not recall consolidating with anyone. I always got letters from sallie mae. Last I spoke to them I requested a hardship forbearance and they denied me. What happened next is letters from ASA I guess.

My financial situation has always been extremely tight since graduating from school. The high monthly payments they ask for are simply something I have not been able to afford. I really am in a very big mess right now and I do not see any financial breakthrough any time soon.

I am being sent a financial hardship form to see if I can get all or part of my tax return back. They said I might get it back if I can prove hardship-which will NOT be hard at all.

Sallie Mae was your lender/servicer. ASA was the guarantor behind the loan.

You probably should have consolidated. You would have had much lower payments under the income contingent repayment plan.

I got a call from them after I graduated. They seemed legit, just letting me know that I would have to start paying my loan after my grace period ends and giving me contact information of citibank so that I can check that everything is in line with them.

I assume if I don't pay my loan or something like that they will start getting mean but that is too be expected.

I'm the same lazy Unregistered who posted above. When I talked to them they encouraged me to check I would say it is pretty hard to argue against the validity of that website. When I logged in there with my fafsa pin it showed me the amount of my loan, that the loan was from citibank, and sure enough American Student Assistance is listed as the guaranty agency.

So, check for yourself if you don't believe me but they are completely legit and not phishing for anything.