Complaint Review: Westwood College

 I started attending westwood college online originally in 2009. After attending for about a year, I felt like I was'nt really learning anything with the online classes and thought I may benefit from switching to campus classes. I moved to Alexandria, Va and started taking my classes at the Annadale campus. None of my teachers seemed to care at all about my education from the start. I'd ask for help and always got ignored. They rarely taught anything that was even relevant to the class or career associated with it. Most of my classmates slept or talked about things all day that had nothing at all to do with college and the teachers just sat there or ingaged in meaningless conversation alongside my class mates. I got the picture fairly quickly. It was obvious that none of the teachers cares at all about the students or our education, it was just a money pool and I had been scammed! I attended 2 & 1/2 years total at westwood and only had about 6 months left before graduating with a bachelors degree in game art design when the terrible, ugly truth about westwood college was revealed to me. One of my teachers told me one day after all the time I'd wasted attending this waste of a school that NONE of my prior credits from the online classes were transferred to the campus site that I was attending and therefore my credits did'nt exist. So, basically I had wasted 2&1/2 years of hard work for nothing. I had to move in with my sister and brother in law in order to attend college on campus and my brother in law is in the military. After finding out that I had lost all of my prior credits, my brother in law was stationed in another area so I was forced to move back home which is about 600 miles away from the college. My teacher advised me that any credits that I had WOULD be transferable to the community college that I planned to attend in order to finish my classes and said to contact her once I moved back to my home town and she would help me take care of everything. Well, i moved back home. I tried many times to contact westwood college as well as my teacher that had promised to help me and never got a single call back or email. I tried to apply to the local community college and they tell me that none of my credits are transferable!! To add insult to injury, I started recieving bills in the mail from sallie mae saying I owed them over 60,000 dollars!! That was in October of 2011. Its now Febuary of 2016 and I am still getting harrassed by them! I have been unable to obtain a job because I technically have no college education and the town I live in has very slim pickings and little to offer with jobs or careers as it is. I got married and had a child in 2011-2012. My wife and I have struggled hard trying to get and keep jobs. We had starting a rent to own plan on a nice home and had made a decent life for for our family. However, our daughter was born premature at 25 weeks gestation and required alot of attention as well as medical attention. More bills! My wife had to quit her job to be a full time stay at home parent for our disabled child so it was left up to me to take care of the finances. Long story short, we lost everything! Our home, our car, our jobs, everything! Sally mae has been calling my phone non stop even though I have already told them and even filled out the paperwork that they sent me saying that I am in a financial crisis and have no money to even provide for myself or my family. Let alone to pay them money that I dont feel I should owe in the first place! Just a week ago they called me, my father, and my mother in law and threatened to garnish my tax refunds this year and eveey year thereafter until my loans were paid off and said I now owe them 70,000! They have completely destroyed my life and any chances that I had of a career after obtaining my bachelors. The staff and teachers at the college directly LIED to me! They did not just "withhold the truth" as I've read was the case with most of the other students with complaints, they lied! They told me that financial aid would cover everything as far as expenses, even said I'd recieve some money for enrolling. They said that my credits were transferable and they said that I would be able to graduate and as long as I graduated that I wouldnt have to pay back any of the student loans. These people are completely ruthless and deceiving. They will tell tou anything just to make you enroll and then your out back like the rest of us. Because of this horrific, unjustifiable, descrase of whats supposed to be a good college, I am now without any degree or proof that I even attempted to get an education, I have no chance at a career, I cant attend a different school because I already have student loans that I "owe", I have no job, no home, and no way to provide for my family. I am almost 100,000 dollars in financial debt, sally mae has harrassed me with 3 to 4 letters a day, numerous phone calls and threats, my credit is ruined due to the unpaid student loans, sally mae has refused to offer me any type of reasonable payment plan or anything! They just keep sending me mail and calling my phone every day harrassing me and trying to force me to pay them with money that I dont even have. They did attempt to garnish my taxes when i got my refund which wasnt much at all to begin with but they couldnt legally take the money because my wife and I filed together and they had no right to take her money. Otherwise, I wouldnt have even got that small chunk of change. I have looked everywhere for a solution to this. Ive researched all over the internet, talked to numerous people, etc. and nobody seems to know of a solution. I think that I should have the right to not only sue this school to drop my student loans but I feel like they should be compensating me for lying to my face and ruining years of my life by deceiving me and "losing my credits" which were useless anyway! I am beyond furious with these people! I also fund it insulting that they still have the nerve to harrass me for that amount of money after everything that I have been put through because of them. I will find a way to make sure justice is served one day nomatter how long it takes or how hard I have to try to do so because they have done this sort of thing to so many people and it is not ok to just ruin young people and their lives just to make some cash for yourself! Worst school ever and I'm glad to see that they are finally shuting down! Good riddance!