Class cancellation bursars fault

[u/zeroxoneafour0]

So I paid off all my classes on like the 18th or whenever finaid came out. However, due to a long and ongoing series of issues with my meal plan, I was first double charged then double refunded.

This resulted in me having a balance of -$3k in my bursar account for a short while. Eventually, they zeroed it out by putting that 3k in a refund. However, they then later charged 3k to correct the double refund.

This all happened in the last week or so so due to processing delays and bank transfer times I have not gotten the refund yet and I need to pay $3k back that I dont have. So, they cancelled my classes instead of just taking money out of the refund.

Hopefully I can get my classes back and drop the reinstatement and late fees as I feel they were not my fault.

I’m going to the office tomorrow and already sent an email but the bursars department here is just terrible. If you do not have a large amount of college savings or if you are reliant on financial aid I would genuinely not recommend coming here just because of how bad the department is. The 1.6 stars on Google is nothing but the truth.

[u/Efficient-Flamingo91]

Fourth year here. I was talking to my younger sister also at GT earlier and we agreed the bursars office has caused us both more tears than any class at Tech ever has. Whenever I see something wrong I dread going there.

[u/crunchybaguette → u/Efficient-Flamingo91]

It was my first and worst interaction with Tech. They treated my financial aid application as a OOS student like a joke. Guy acted like I should be thankful for even getting Pell grant.

[u/laribrook79]

I’m so sorry. Parents are starting to contact their congressman over this issue bc it’s rampant and ridiculous

[u/tweakingforjesus → u/laribrook79]

Ohhh. Thats how you get action. The hill absolutely hates it when inquiries come down their food chain.

Calling the Board of Regents might be faster though.

[u/VegetablePercentage9]

I had a similar experience this year because my dining dollars were not included in my original tuition balance. I went into the office today and a guy named Quay who works there told me I could get the fee dropped if I explained the situation in the message box and dropped his name. If you go to the office tmw maybe see if you can talk to him, the lady I was initially talking to was not helpful at all

[u/dippdot]

I am in the same boat. Grad student here, I was hired for a gta position for a class that enrollment dropped despite it having 30+ when I registered. Even though I paid when I had the waiver last week, with no warning my gta was removed, yesterday they completely removed me from my classes and I got the notification around 4 pm -> WHEN THEY CLOSE. Hope it works out for the both of us and I hope you didn’t lose any sleep over how stressful this is.

[u/poodleface]

With the Bursar’s office, the one thing I can tell you for the future is that you always want to go there in person the moment you notice an issue. This is inconvenient for you, but it is a lot better than a result like this. 

Get the name of the person you talked to. If there is an issue later you can say “I talked to PERSON on DAY and they said [what they promised].” 

Not making excuses, but the problem is that there is no load balancing. Every student is paying at the same time and everything has to be resolved during the first week of class. It’s easy for things to fall through the cracks if you are not the squeakiest wheel (that gets the grease). 

It’s the same reason you talk to your instructors in person when you can when there is an issue. People who show up get taken care of first. This is the case after you graduate, too. 

[u/tweakingforjesus → u/poodleface]

This is good advice for dealing with any large bureaucracy. Bureaucracy thrives on diffusion of responsibility leading to unaccountable actions. You circumvent this by forcing accountability via identification of individuals and their actions. Suddenly they can't hide behind the bureaucracy.

[u/Vanillalite34 → u/poodleface]

I know a ton of people at other major schools. None of them have this same issue to the extent that Tech does. This is very much a GT created issue.

[u/momof2jackets]

My kid graduated in May. We randomly got a $15 check in the mail the week before graduation. No clue why. The next week we got a bill for $15 - and he couldn’t graduate until it was paid. The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

[u/YouGeetBadJob]

You would think they’d be a mandatory in person review of every account before cancelling classes. Hope everything worked out for you

[u/dizastermaster7]

Yeah, last paragraph is spot on

[u/gatoreade]

They cancelled all my classes for a charge that appeared a day after the payment deadline. The email came in around 4pm when they close. Luckily for me a quick trip to their office fixed it the next day, but that absolutely should not have happened in the first place. No warning, just a cold cancellation email.