If Sallie Mae wants to make it so difficult for me to make payments to them, then I will stop paying them. And when they contact me to let me know I have an overdue balance, I will tell them that the mirey swamp of their payment system has left me a lost, wandering savage, and they probably should send a search party if they really want my cold, hard cash. Also, they should pay ME for the time I spent on their website, trying to get my dang password to work. I use two passwords very, very consistently. One is for the nice websites that don't require letters and numbers. One is for the skanky websites that demand a combination of both, like someone would be able to guess my password anyway. My alphanumeric password is FAR easier to guess, because I have to be sure I'll remember it. And the pure numeric PIN I had to choose for Sprint, that could not be in any way related to my birth date or Social Security number? I made it a math joke. A math joke that no one down at Sprint headquarters got, even though I had to tell it to half a dozen of their employees to get my account activated.
Anyway, so the password I KNEW was my password wasn't working, so I had to answer all sorts of security questions, and once I ran that guantlet, I got to pick a new password. So I picked the password I always use, and guess what? Couldn't use it. Because you're not allowed to input for the new password whatever your old password had been. Meaning that password I tried inputting five different times, and it kept rejecting me? Yeah, it was my password the whole time, but the ol' whore Sallie Mae just didn't like the way I typed it. I guess.
I am moving to the mountains.
Your Ol' Man (no, not your husband) has been battling this for years and it has been getting worse, now that you have to have a mix of cases and data types.
ReplyDeleteYears ago, I worked with a guy who had to log onto the system about once a month and would always forget his password and would get his id locked. His good buddy was the security admin and would reset the password to something like IMADUMMY. :)
Is your alphanumeric password "ID10T?"
ReplyDeleteSallie Mae doesn't have the smoothest set up for passwords.
ReplyDeleteHave you tried one of the password keeper applications out there? I find them to be quite useful since I have many accounts and passwords.
Bahaha, Craig, you're a witty one! And no, I will not tell you my secret, that would spoil everything.
ReplyDeleteAnd Alice, I remember hearing vaguely about such things, but I generally dodge the problem by simply being consistent.