So I attended LaGuardia Community College after being honorably discharged from the US NAVY. I utilized my post 9/11 GI Bill for tuition. I was told I would qualify for TAPS/PELL Grants as well by the VA Rep of the school so I applied. This all happened from 2011-fall 2012 which I transferred schools after completing my last semester.
Four years go by I receive a call from a debt collector telling me I owe money to LaGuardia for tuition costs. I inform the rep I had the post 9/11 gi bill she advised I contact the school. I call the va to verify the school received payment which they did. So I call the va rep of the school he informs me that at times the va drops the ball or it could’ve been the bursar’s office. I then get an e mail stating that he found the source and it looks like an over payment of TAP/PELL Grants.
I’m confused on this whole matter because 1. If I was over paid for taps program why didnt the school inform me while I was attending? 2. How can I be over paid if the TAP program pays directly to the school?
Has anyone been through this situation or have any knowledge on the subject. I get different answers from the schools reps every other day I call to inquire.
Thanks in advance
I am sorry that this has happened to you. Overpayments do happen. For example, your enrollment may have been certified at full time, but you may not have taken a full course load. The school would have had to adjust your enrollment - you may then have owed money. Did you get a refund? That may be what they were trying to collect. The school may have attempted to contact you by email - possibly their school email, which you may no longer have been reading. Or they may have sent mail to the address they had on file - and it either was never opened by you or never reached you.
Ask your school’s VA rep to help you understand the situation. He is your advocate, and he should be in a position to find out for you exactly what happened that caused you to owe.
Spoke with the va rep after a lot of investigation they found I received over payment of TAP which I was not supposed to receive. My frustration with this is the original VA Rep retired and he encouraged me and advised me to apply for TAP and Pell because the gi bill wasn’t considered an income and I could use TAP to pay for books or other expenses. Also I attended all the way up to the end of semester. I know people who were called to the bursar’s office if there were any issues or changes with their financial aid status. I remained at the same address up until one year later and kept the same number up until present.
While l am obviously responsible for paying this back the timing is just awful. I have a new born and day care is $140 a week. Plus I’m paying my Stafford loan back and my debt to income ratio at this moment doesn’t allow me to really pay anything over $50 a month. I emailed the bursar’s office since no one answers the phone asking for a $50 a month payment until March and I can just pay the remaining balance in full with my tax return.
Anyone have experience with dealing with repayments to the bursar’s? Is there any channels I can follow to make a complaint about the gross negligence? If they would’ve notified me at any point during the semester or even two years after I could’ve paid it in full immediately. Just frustrated.
Does your school have an ombudsman (or some other person whose job it is to assist students with issues they can’t resolve themselves)? I strongly encourage you to find someone in the school you can talk to … at the least, they need to know what happened, because it sounds like while you do owe, the situation does not seem to have been handled well by the school. Maybe they can at least let you pay in installments. If you want to PM me with the school name, I will see if I can figure out who you should talk to.
I think you need to contact your loan servicer if you want to change your repayment terms. Seems like things are tight financially.
@kelsmom who can OP contact to reduce amount of student loan payments or defer payments?
Are you in NY? I though @sybbie719 posted before that TAP can only be used towards tuition?
OP PM’d me, and I gave some advice for contacting someone at the school. It sounds like the loan situation is in hand, because the payment is $50. @Ronniehaines187, are you in an income driven payment plan that makes your payment that low? That is how I am reading it … just don’t forget to reapply annually so the payment doesn’t go back up.
I never had a loan. My tuition was paid by the VA in full each semester. I applied for Pell Grant while going and Tap (tuition assistance). I only really remember the old grant details honestly. I don’t remember seeing a TAP payment. I don’t have issues paying it but four years later when I’m paying for daycare and in other payment arrangements is pretty impossible. I am still waiting for the bursar’s office to contact me back.
My whole rant I guess is that why did it take four years for them to notice I got something i wasn’t supposed to? I also thought tap went directly to the school, am I able to get verification from the bursar’s office that they released those funds to me? I honestly can’t remember. Either way I just need them to be reasonable and understand it will be paid in full by March either way.
I will definitely be contacting the om to bring this situation to light because either way someone wasn’t doing their job. This could’ve been squared away at the moments notice.
My Stafford loan came from a different institution and I’m currently paying that back, on time. My Stafford loan shows on my credit report. Nothing from taps or new York state or anything in the dollar amount shows on any of my credit reports.
Surely with that type of debt it would’ve been reported. Possiblly wage garnishment for non payments?
NYS TAP can only be used for Tuition. If the VA covered your tuition and you got TAP, then you were over paid and the monies have to be refunded to NYS.
It did not take them 4 years to notice that you got something that you were not suppose to receive. According to your own post, you stated that they told you about this in 2012, when it happened.
They are writing you 4 years later because you still have not repaid NYS.
You will need to contact HESC to resolve your issue with TAP
Negative. I was never told about it until I received a phone call last week by a debt collector. Was never informed of any over payment, under payment or non payment.
My bad. However, the fact still remains that you must repay the state. Are you planning on returning to school? They will not release your records because you owe this money.
You may have to go to Laguardia to get this information. Can you access your CUNY first account ? You may be able to find information there
@kelsmom , would the VA be considered the last payer? If yes, wouldn’t entitlement aid credits (TAP and Pell ) be applied first then VA credits.
If this is or should be the case, maybe Op does not owe state, but the VA (and perhaps not them because those monies could be part of his/her cost of attendance).
Is this the issue that OP should be raising? I think Op needs to be speaking to Laguardia to find out how Op’s account was credited.
@sybbie719 That’s what I’m in the process of trying to figure out. Each time I all the bursar’s office it says high call volume try again later. I tried 4 times yesterday so I emailed them. It seems as of I’m in more of a rush to get this figured out than they are.
I requested they verify that I actually received those funds and not the school or va. When I spoke with the va I was told I was good. Everything was submitted and paid for during those semesters. So I don’t owe the va.
Again my problem isn’t the I owe them situation. It’s the it took four years for them to figure it out. I’ve owed the state before when I worked on scallop boats due to under estimate of how much yo set aside for taxes and they had it on my credit report after six months of non payment and about 300 phone calls and some letters.
Hopefully once I email the om maybe some more research will get done and since this is obviously a unique situation (otherwise they would’ve kept it in collection instead of pulling it out) they should work with me and not against me because if I never called the school va rep and left it alone after speaking to the debt Collector I doubt anything would’ve happened.
Ronnie- I have enormous sympathy for your situation.
However- you need to drop the attitude. This isn’t a question of the school working with you or against you. This is not an adversarial situation. The fact that you called the school VA rep vs. leaving it alone is immaterial. You don’t want something showing up on a credit report ten years from now which would prevent you from getting a mortgage or a car loan. So you got a call from a debt collector and you are now doing the adult thing- trying to figure out what happened, and if there was an overpayment, you are going to figure out the least painful way to pay it back.
Once you do get in touch with the bursar’s office, being humble is going to get you WAY more sympathy than accusing them of screwing up that it took four years to figure it out. Maybe they did screw up. Maybe you missed a letter three years ago. Maybe someone got a phone call and forgot to give you the “urgent- please call us back” message four years ago. In a perfect world, they’d keep calling and calling. In the real world, your file goes to the back of the queue until it pops up as a collections issue.
I cancelled a magazine subscription 20 years ago and it took 5 years to clean up an “unpaid” notation on my credit report. five years of being billed for a magazine I never got, didn’t want, and now was messing up my credit score. I never got a single notice that my “please cancel” phone call and letter did not go through. So I thought everything was fine.
These things happen. Stay pleasant and cordial and humble and you’ll likely find someone who will bend over backwards to help a Vet clear this up.
I generally do not have sympathy when students owe money, because they usually know or should know. In this case, though, I have sympathy for the OP. Schools DO make mistakes, and it happens. But this particular case is not typical. OP wants to pay, but also wants to 1) understand what happened & why the amount is owed (nothing wrong with wanting to understand), and 2) lodge a complaint about the way this was handled. It could all have been done correctly & somehow the OP missed it … or the school could have a big training issue. I gave the OP a contact name, so hopefully they can get it all straightened out.
I am not having attitude I have every right to be upset. In the real world adults are held accountable yet it seems whenever institutions make mistakes we are supposed to be humble. Meanwhile when the opposite happens and a student or person make a mistake theyre penalized and held accountable. My frustration is with the departments lack of follow up and ownership.
@blossom If you failed to properly do your job, neglected your responsibilities, would you or would you not be held accountable?
I will not allow for someone to not be held accountable for the gross negligence. I am also wondering how many other veterans are in the same boat as I am with the school and TAPS.
I’ve already e mailed bursar’s office. I’ll be emailing om from my laptop instead of phone so I can make sure of no grammatical errors and will go from there. I will post updates so this can serve as a reference point for any other students, veterans or not that this may occur to.
Gross negligence is when someone sells you a crib for your baby knowing that the paint is lead-based, the mattress is coated with asbestos, and the locking mechanism is faulty.
You are assuming that you were not notified of the overpayment on a timely basis. If this is correct- someone made a mistake and yes, that was a bad thing to do. However, until you have the facts, it is possible that a letter was sent to you informing you of this- and that you never got the letter. Or your roommate at the time used the letter as a bookmark and forgot to give it to you. Or you changed addresses and some of your mail never got forwarded. Or you got a phone call on your cell- and seeing an unfamiliar number, you didn’t pick up and never called back.
And you are also assuming that the college does not plan to help you figure this out-- perhaps they want to make this right and will move heaven and earth to do that. Accusing them of gross negligence over what might be an administrative error (letter sent to your old address, not the current one) doesn’t seem to be the mindset to get them to work with you to fix this.
I don’t work in a hospital or a poison control center or as a first responder. It’s hard to see how me screwing up at work could ever approach the level of gross negligence. I once failed to update an employees file with a raise he was due. He was mad. Accused me of all sorts of terrible things. I fixed the mistake and he was paid the money he was owed with interest (about 59 cents of interest- we caught it on the first pay period). I was apologetic.
Is that gross negligence?
If it took you four years, yes that’s be gross negligence. I’d say. Well as I stated I will keep updates.