OK, let’s take a look at typical usage and requirements first:

Typical Usage and Requirements:

• Your customers will visit maybe once a month.
• They’ll make a single payment, maybe more, and leave.
• Once a year or so they’ll want to get forms for filing taxes.
• Payments can only be made, new loans can’t be requested.
• Your customers may have loans in someone else’s SSN which they’d like to make payments on. (With permission.)

It seems like Sallie Mae tries to make their website as hard to use as possible. The most frustrating part is: They require a “secure” password for an account. Part of their definition of “secure” is “never used before”, which is the real crux of the problem.

Every time I go to their website, I can’t remember my password, because the previous time I was there, I had to reset it because I couldn’t remember it, because their system requires you to use a password that you’ve never used before, and it has to have all of the other typical “secure” requirements. And of course, every time I go there, a month has passed since I last set the password.

I find this kind of odd considering that if someone was to get access to your login on Sallie Mae, most likely the worst thing they could do is make payments on your student loans, which would certainly be appreciated. :)

Maybe I should start writing my password down on a Post-It and sticking it on the bottom of my keyboard. :)

On another note, they provide no easy way to make payments on both of my loans, because one is in my father’s name. It seems like it would make sense to allow linking of one loan to another SSN in order to let the person with that SSN make payments online. I can make payments over the phone, so why not?