<p>"Score two for online consumer advocates or, as they might be called, Occupy Online.</p>
<p>On Thursday, three months after Bank of America backed down from imposing a $5 monthly debit card fee in response to an online Change.org petition that collected 300,000 signers, Sallie Mae, the nations largest private student-loan provider, changed its fee policy in response to an online petition.</p>
<p>For years, Sallie Mae had required unemployed people who could not afford their monthly payments to pay a $50-per-loan fee every three months to suspend their payments temporarily, even as interest charges mounted.</p>
<p>Sallie Mae called this forbearance fee a 'good faith deposit' but it was neither credited to the borrowers account nor refunded.</p>
<p>Stef Gray, 23, a New Yorker who owes $600 a month on four loans, saw it as a predatory effort to squeeze blood from a generation of turnips graduates already buried under a mountain of student debt. In November, she started a petition, 'Tell Sallie Mae: Stop the Unemployment Penalty' with Change.org., a group based in San Francisco. 'Sallie Mae is preying on people like me and cashing in on the fact that we need more time to find work before we can repay our student loans,' it said. ..."</p>