I don't think it means what you think it means.

[MadMike]

As most of you know, I haven't actually been in customer service for over 20 years, so most of what I post is either an old story or a sighting. One of my friends got hired at my job last summer, in a customer service position. I've learned quite a few interesting things from talking to her, such as certain things about our loans, since most of what I see is purely from a data standpoint.

I also learned that I wouldn't last a week in our customer service department. From what she told me, she's not ever allowed to hang up on a customer, no matter how abusive they get or how much they cuss her out. She told me that in one day, she had five different people tell her to "shove the interest rates up her ass." Nice, huh? But she seems to be able to roll with it. I've been trying to get her to sign up here, but so far she hasn't.

I was talking to her on Friday, and she told me about this one idiot who called in. It seems she cosigned for someone who wasn't making the required payments, and wanted us to stop calling her about it. Her exact words were, "I'm only the cosigner! I don't see why I should be responsible!"

Sounds like someone doesn't know what being a cosigner means.

[MoonCat]

Heh, my aunt who had a stroke knows what it means, which is why she wouldn't do it for someone years ago.

That caller's going to be very much when she finds out.

[bankworking]

Run across that one all the time. It's the whole reason we are supposed to ask how a co-signer knows/is related to the borrower. Spouse, live-in girlfriend/boyfriend, parent of a dependent college student... they're more likely to follow through as a co-signer if needed. Once you get into people who live separately or to apartment/dorm roommates, we try to be careful as hell that the co-signer knows what it means. Not that we don't also do "the talk" with the first sort of situations, but they tend to feel more comfortable, at least until a break-up happens.

I've run across people with absolutely perfect credit... except for one loan, in collections. So I ask what happened. "Oh, that was so-and-so's loan. I just co-signed, and they messed me up" *sigh* The whole reason we wouldn't give them the loan was the risk of not repaying. Don't you realize that when you co-sign?