Problems with Financial Air Office?

I have generally found all UCF offices very responsive – except Financial Aid.

If our experience is typical, they are just plain incompetent.

They rarely answer emails, except for bot messages saying covid blah blah blah. On the rare occasions when they do answer a very specific question, they answer with a packaged answer that has nothing to do with the question asked.

We’ve been trying to get a simple yes or no answer to a simple question for more than THREE MONTHS: Did you receive the check…or not?

Probably a dozen emails because they don’t answer their phone or return calls.

NO answer one way or the other.

I finally gave up and just paid all outstanding bills. Whatever happens, happens.

Ours was a small, unimportant scholarship and I was just trying to clear up the one remaining loose end – so if we get it, we get it.

But I really hope folks with important scholarships are getting MUCH better support than we got.

Try emailing sfascholarships@ucf.edu to ask about the scholarship we self reported on my ucf. I wanted to confirm they received the funds and that it was properly applied to my son’s account. I emailed this account and never did hear back BUT the scholarship now appears on the fee invoice and has been “accepted”. So I “think” it worked.

That’s exactly who I have been emailing…for several months.

Our scholarship shows as “anticipated” for Summer 2020, but not accepted. We don’t know if they received the check or not, and they can’t or won’t tell us.

I’ll post a complete report when this mess is finally over, but it appears that at least someone in the Financial Aid office came out of hibernation.

They still haven’t answered any of our emails about anything (since March!), but they did pay for our daughter’s books. So apparently, they DID receive the check and seem to be using the funds.

The books were only about 10% of the total scholarship, so hopefully they’ll give us some kind of accounting so we can be assured they didn’t steal the rest of the money.

We have been extremely enthusiastic about UCF, and some of that comes from the extreme responsiveness and helpful attitudes of MOST of their offices.

But if I told you what I really think about UCF Financial Aid, I’d probably violate our posting guidelines!

Is it through BF? If so, the bills will say ‘anticipated’ as the school doesn’t get the money until AFTER the drop/add date because BF pays by the credit. Daughter’s school (private in Florida) would give credit for the BF on the bill, which was due in Aug/Jan, but the funds were not released until 3-4 weeks later. My daughter went before BF paid for books, and her school restricted BF to tuition only, so there was nothing to refund to her, but they didn’t make us pay before they received the funds.

No. It’s a third party scholarship from an organization. I entered it as “anticipated,” but never could get an answer from the Financial Aid Office as to whether or not they actually received the funds.

They paid $200+ for books, so now the question is: ***What did they do with the rest of the money? *** It doesn’t show in my daughter’s account, or in financial aid.

Although the Financial Aid Office has been useless, the Student Accounts office is very helpful. They said what usually happens is leftover funds are forwarded to Student Accounts, and if no bills are owed Student Accounts direct deposits the leftover to the student’s checking account. That’s what I expect to happen…someday.

IF Student Accounts gets the funds eventually, I’m not worried – but I have no reason to trust the totally-unresponsive Financial Aid Office.

The hits just keep coming!

We just got an email saying they have refunded the balance via direct deposit.

**The refund is $1,000.00 SHORT of what they owe us. **

The good news is that we are now dealing with Student Accounts, so at least we should be able to find out what happened. Our daughter is home this weekend, so we’ll call Student Accounts on the drive back to UCF.

smh…