As Jaimiedude said before, "It's sneeky and I love it."
There's no way I'd ever put a heavy student loan balance on a credit card, especially a heavy delinquent one. Yes, the return of those $100 checks was only posturing and bluffing but that's only part of the truth. Think of all the worse things that would happen if he were short paying off the huge amount shunted off on to the credit cards. Whenever, a collector starts off a phrase by "Honestly," watch out!
Basically, our resident collector is recommending the client do what CBV wanted him to do all along - put the student loan on his credit card(s). That way, CBV gets their snack and the client is stuck with $17,000 of debt on his high interest credit cards. And remember, these are not low interest revolving lines of credit.
Naturally, CBV, while they postured they wouldn't accept 100 bucks a month, nonetheless would have been quite happy to accept $17K or something significantly less. Clearly, that's as much (or more) than CBV expected to recover all along and so whose side is our practicing collection agent on?
Birds of a feather stick together.
Ray