Honestly I never paid much attention to loan default penalties when I was younger and it appears that I have gotten into a world of trouble because of it. I ordered my first credit score/check online today and found a loan that I defaulted on from college. 4 years ago I had paid off two other student loans that I knew about, this one came as a surprise on my credit report. Trying to get my life in order I tracked down the Dept. of Edu. to see what needed to be done with it. They told me to call my local college that issued the loan. I then called the college who told me that sadly since they could not find me with skip tracing they turned my loan over to collections and proceeded to give me the collectors number. At this point I was feeling good and had every intention to set up a plan to pay the whole debt off (the debt itself was $2000, interest was around $600). I called the collection agency to see what the next steps were to pay off my bad debt and was informed my total debt owed to the agency was $4538. They do not accept settlements, there is no bargaining, if I would like to resolve the debt this is the amount that needs to be paid. I hung up the phone in shock, mumbling about needing to think about how I was going to handle this. I guess my question is....is this right? Can they more than double what I actually owed on the loan? They really do not accept any type of settlement for the actual amount of the loan? I asked where all the extra money came from and was told it is "collection fees". I understand companies like this need to make money to get money but more than double what I owed?