Borrowers flooded the Office of Education and banks with calls as they rushed to beat the deadline to consolidate student loans before interest rates rise. The variable interest rate on Fed. student loans will rise almost 2 percentage points after midnight Thursday. Some borrowers could save thousands of greenbacks over the lives of their Student Consolidation Loanat the lower rate. The unusually sudden rise has pushed a wave of last-minute investigations, causing back-ups for banks ‘ eight hundred numbers and at the Department of Education’s Direct Loan Servicing Center, where at least some calls were not getting through Wed.. Office spokesman Susan Aspey encouraged borrowers to file electronically — the dep. added 9 Web servers for additional traffic — or to call at off-peak times. The center will remain open until midnight Pacific time Thursday. Borrowers can often sign up for consolidation loans online, but the process can be tough and they regularly end up phoning banks with investigations. “The volume is tremendous,” related Jennifer Darwin, a spokesman for Charlotte, N.C.-based Wachovia Company, which announced call volume was up 51 percent compared with a year back. A spokesman for Charlotte-based B. O. A claimed callers should be expecting to be on hold an hour or even more, even though the bank has added staff to field calls. Other companies said their preparations worked. Mark Brenner, president of San Diego-based College Loan Corp, announced 97 p.c of calls were being answered inside 30 seconds. At Collegiate Funding Services in Fredericksburg, Virginia, executive VP Clark McGhee further said most queries were being answered, thanks to additional staff and overtime, in spite of several times the usual volume. Pennsylvania’s Higher education Assistance Agency had bosses answering calls, which were at more than twice the common volume. Some banks bombarded students with reminders encouraging them to consolidate, nevertheless it didn’t forestall a last-second rush. “You’d be stunned how many students out there haven’t any idea what interest rates have been doing and what it suggests for them,” said Matthew Steingraber, VP of selling at Academic Fiscal Services in Tampa, Florida, where volume is about fifty p.c higher than normal. “A lot of them do not realize they have options.” Still, consolidation is a risk. Interest rates have been at record lows, but if they were to finally drop rather more, students might regret locking in at a higher rate. www.studentconsolidationloanssite.com