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Beware The Fake Student Loan Application FAFSA Website.
Back when my wife was applying for student loans, she called me in our office one day to look at a website. She was going to start filing her FAFSA forms (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) with the government, but had ended up on a site that was charging students at least $79 to file the forms. Turns out, she was on FAFSA.com instead of FAFSA.ed.gov, the official government student loan site. In yet another example of companies taking advantage of people (like the alternate “free” credit report sites), FAFSA.com bought the domain that was so close to the government domain in order to have people use their paid service instead of the free one. There are a lot of people who are not too internet savvy who have probably used FAFSA.com to file their applications that should have been free. Really, it is quite ingenious…and tricky.
The sneakiest part of all of this is that FAFSA.com, the fake site, still goes by FAFSA. But instead of it standing for “Free Application for Federal Student Aid”, it stands for “File your Application for Federal Student Aid”. Way down below the fold it says “Please note that this site is not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Education or the FAFSA on the Web site. FAFSA.com (Student Financial Aid Services, Inc.) completes, submits and tracks FAFSA applications”. These guys are sneaky - don’t let them fool you or anyone in your family. It is free to file for government-backed student loans and you should never pay for the service!
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4 Comments so far
It’s a shame sites like that are allowed to exist! You would think the gov’t would know about this and shut it down. Thanks for the info!
The resourcefulness of scoundrels never ceases to amaze me.
It is pretty dastardly on multiple counts: a) to charge money for something that should be free, b) to take advantage of people (parents and children trying to secure funding for education) and c) the obscured- or non-disclosure of the fact that when you file directly through the proper http://www.fafsa.ed.gov site, that *they* don’t charge you a fee.
It’s layers of deception and uncharitable business practice aimed at a very vulnerable slice of the population.
The foundation I work for is an odd hybrid - a non-profit student loan lender. We couldn’t conscience doing such a thing; we even have a an entry in our myspace blog discussing the basics of financial aid pointing out that there are companies and websites our there that do this.
There are a whole host of companies, ours included, that will provide in-person assistance with the completion of the FAFSA (as well as other daunting forms!) who do *not* charge a fee.
Families looking to locate free assistance should look first to see who their state Guarantee agency is - there is one per state - to see if there are college planning counselors to assist them with the whole process. Each state department of higher education should be able to provide information on who to call. Guidance counselors at your child’s high school are usually excellent resources, too.
After working here for over four years and absorbing a lot of technical info on student loans, my son and I still benefited from our own in-house college planners!
Thank you for helping to get the word out on issues like this. The financial aid process is stressful enough without having to worry about getting taken advantage of!
Thanks for sharing that. Very sketchy…and what’s worse is that .com is so instinctive.