Consumer complaint received 2020-05-20
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC.
State: NC
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Private student loan
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Sub-issue: Trouble with how payments are being handled

Complaint:
My complaint is about Navient, the company that manages my daughter 's student loans. She has a total of six. She pays three,  and my husband and I pay three. I have previously complained about this very same problem and received help from your agency. My complaint was # XXXX, This complaint was in XXXX of this year, and has since been closed. 
The company consistently misapplies our payments. Following our complaint in XXXX, Navient staff had a meeting and supposedly came up with a solution. They gave us a new account number to use for payment, and I changed our banking information to direct the payments to that new account. We have never ever been in arrears on this account, and continue to pay on time. They claimed in their response to your agency that this problem was due to a wrong address, which is nonsensical, as this is an automatic electronic transfer of funds, using this marvelous invention called the internet, in which zip codes are not used. This problem has gone on for ten years. Ten. The case has been assigned to their Office of Consumer Advocacy for about 8 of those 10 years. 
My daughter, who doesn't trust Navient as far as she could throw them, checks the account frequently. She discovered that payments this month has been misapplied yet again, and made it look like we were late in paying. She emailed the woman assigned as our " advocate '', and got a response. The woman has NO idea why this happened. She apparently took a few days off from work. Prior to the " new account '', she literally manually fixed the payments every month. Whenever she took time off, we ended up going to collections, for an account that was paid on time and fully up to date. Nuts, right? 
So today I looked at the accounts. It appears that the " fix '' fell apart in XXXX, after supposedly being put into place in late XXXX. It looks like the " advocate '' has been manually correcting the payments again, and then she took these days off from work, and the whole rig fell right apart again. I suspect that anytime now, the harassing nasty calls from collections will start up, despite the accounts being paid on time. Indeed, they are overpaid, as we send more than the necessary amount each month. Maybe it's me, but this makes no sense whatsoever. 
There was supposed to be a fix. The woman assigned to our accounts as our " consumer advocate '' told your agency and us that this was all set, and she is clearly mistaken. She told me in an email this morning that she goes into the accounts daily to check, so she obviously doesn't trust the fix either and/or knew that it had fallen apart and chose not to fix it for real or to notify us. Her name is XXXX XXXX. 
I have researched ways or places to file complaints and/or seek help with this today. Here is something wicked odd : supposedly I can seek help from an ombudsman, but guess who the ombudsman contact for Navient is? It's Navient 's office of consumer advocacy. Guess where XXXX XXXX works? Hmm,  the office of consumer advocacy for Navient. So, apparently, I am already working with an ombudsman, and they are utterly useless, crooked or stupid. 
Please help us. This literally has gone on for ten years. It is totally unacceptable, unethical and intolerable. Whatever you did in XXXX made them actually meet to see if they could fix it, unless Ms. XXXX lied about that. Please, please help. Thank you so much.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation