I posted the stuff below as responses in a different thread, but I thought I'd share this information with the community at large because it concerns the $10K grant/advance. The information comes directly from 2 different tier 2 SBA representatives and are exact quotes. I'm just putting this out there and am not intending to confirm or deny the information these two SBA reps have shared. I admit, however, that both do sound very knowledgeable and credible. I spoke to one within the last hour, while the other representative spoke to a longtime friend of mine earlier. He recorded their conversation and played it back to me and gave me his approval to publicly share it. Consequently, I'm sharing these in this separate thread in addition to their having been posted earlier in a different, related thread. I've had to slightly edit it to make it sound intelligible as an initial post here and not part of the original thread in which it was contained. The words below are culled from my posts this afternoon in the other thread, with SBA quotes as indicated.
...A friend of mine, who found out he was declined for an EIDL & never received the grant, was verbally told today by a tier 2 rep the following: "...you were declined based on a review of your credit. Therefore, you are also ineligible for the grant."
A further comment by the SBA rep. also said this: "Advances are not guaranteed or promised. If you are denied an EIDL loan without having received a grant prior to having applied for the loan, you automatically become ineligible to receive the grant. That would be like just throwing money out the window to anyone and everyone in the country who asks for it, and that's not what Congress intended nor how the SBA operates."
Now, I'm not some expert in this, but that does NOT sound like what the $10K grant situation was supposed to be like!
Oh, I realize many people were declined for a loan but did receive a grant, but I believe they received said grant before their decline was decided; or they at least had their grant APPROVED before the overall loan was denied.
BTW, I literally just got off the phone with a polite, helpful tier 2 rep. Among 1 or 2 other things, I chatted with her about the grant, and I asked her what happens if someone is eventually declined for the loan. Responding to our discussion regarding those who have NOT received a grant and who have applied for an EIDL, she was polite but emphatic when she said this: "Once you are declined for the EIDL, you are declined for everything, grant included. You cannot receive the grant once you're declined for the EIDL." Those were her exact words, which, IMHO, seems to go against the intent of Congress in crafting the law dealing with the grant/advance.
I did ask her a follow-up question regarding the grant. Specifically, I asked her if she might know why many people who applied for an EIDL seemed to relatively quickly receive a grant while others like me and many folks here have yet (if ever) to receive the grant and may never will. I asked her this because I was under the impression that the grants were pretty much automatic (though I didn't use the term "automatic when speaking to her).
She replied, "It is entirely up to a loan officer to decide whether an applicant will receive the grant and if so, how much. I'm not in the loan department, so I can't get into any more details, but from what has been explained to me, each grant request is reviewed by a loan officer, and it is done independently and separately from the loan request itself. The loan officer reviewing the grant request has the sole discretion to approve or not approve the grant request, and the officer looks at many things. A person's credit may not initially be a factor, but once a credit score is pulled, it can and often does factor into a loan officer's decision to approve the grant or not. To sum it up, Mr. NNNNN, the decision to award the grant is entirely subjective. It was designed to be, because we are dealing with taxpayers' money here and have to be careful and prudent with these funds."
If what this rep. said to me is accurate, this really changes many people's perspective on the grant, because it sure seems to me that that wasn't Congress's intent on creating it.
...A friend of mine, who found out he was declined for an EIDL & never received the grant, was verbally told today by a tier 2 rep the following: "...you were declined based on a review of your credit. Therefore, you are also ineligible for the grant."
A further comment by the SBA rep. also said this: "Advances are not guaranteed or promised. If you are denied an EIDL loan without having received a grant prior to having applied for the loan, you automatically become ineligible to receive the grant. That would be like just throwing money out the window to anyone and everyone in the country who asks for it, and that's not what Congress intended nor how the SBA operates."
Now, I'm not some expert in this, but that does NOT sound like what the $10K grant situation was supposed to be like!
Oh, I realize many people were declined for a loan but did receive a grant, but I believe they received said grant before their decline was decided; or they at least had their grant APPROVED before the overall loan was denied.
BTW, I literally just got off the phone with a polite, helpful tier 2 rep. Among 1 or 2 other things, I chatted with her about the grant, and I asked her what happens if someone is eventually declined for the loan. Responding to our discussion regarding those who have NOT received a grant and who have applied for an EIDL, she was polite but emphatic when she said this: "Once you are declined for the EIDL, you are declined for everything, grant included. You cannot receive the grant once you're declined for the EIDL." Those were her exact words, which, IMHO, seems to go against the intent of Congress in crafting the law dealing with the grant/advance.
I did ask her a follow-up question regarding the grant. Specifically, I asked her if she might know why many people who applied for an EIDL seemed to relatively quickly receive a grant while others like me and many folks here have yet (if ever) to receive the grant and may never will. I asked her this because I was under the impression that the grants were pretty much automatic (though I didn't use the term "automatic when speaking to her).
She replied, "It is entirely up to a loan officer to decide whether an applicant will receive the grant and if so, how much. I'm not in the loan department, so I can't get into any more details, but from what has been explained to me, each grant request is reviewed by a loan officer, and it is done independently and separately from the loan request itself. The loan officer reviewing the grant request has the sole discretion to approve or not approve the grant request, and the officer looks at many things. A person's credit may not initially be a factor, but once a credit score is pulled, it can and often does factor into a loan officer's decision to approve the grant or not. To sum it up, Mr. NNNNN, the decision to award the grant is entirely subjective. It was designed to be, because we are dealing with taxpayers' money here and have to be careful and prudent with these funds."
If what this rep. said to me is accurate, this really changes many people's perspective on the grant, because it sure seems to me that that wasn't Congress's intent on creating it.
