Consumer complaint received 2023-07-09
Company: Nelnet, Inc.
State: TX
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Sub-issue: Trouble with how payments are being handled

Complaint:
On XXXX XXXX, 2023 I received an email from NelNet that my student loans were being transferred from Great Lakes to the new platform. This presented 2 immediate problems that seem to be unfair or shady business practices at minimum and with further information are clearly designed so NelNet can rake in the maximum amount of interest/income as possible. 

- I was unable to access my Great Lakes account in any meaningful way. The payment history was unavailable, and I could make no further payments towards my account. 

- No new account with NelNet was set up; further exacerbating problem 1. 

I received another email on XXXX XXXX saying I could sign up with NelNet to access my information, but today ( XXXX XXXX ) was the first day I tried logging in. I was successful in verifying myself and getting access to my new account, but there were again problems. 

- All payment history from Great Lakes was not transferred and is unavailable. 

- There is no way to contact them except during regular business hours via phone - their email portal is 'unavailable '. 

- The one thing NelNet WAS able to transfer ( besides my balances ) was my auto-pay and banking information. There was already a payment scheduled for XXXX for a minimum payment, despite the fact all Student Loans are in COVID Forbearance. Given I had turned off auto-pay with Great Lakes, this was extremely concerning to me. 

So my formal complaint is about 4 things - 1 ) NelNet didn't pull any payment history from the previous borrower and there is no way to access it online. 

2 ) There is no mechanism to contact NelNet except for on the phone, which I havent tried but I am sure that is not going to be easy nor time efficient. 

3 ) NelNet automatically signed me up for an auto-pay without any formal notification, email, or call. The fact they can pull my bank information but not my payment history is extremely suspect to me and shows me they intend to start collecting people 's minimum payments without their knowledge/consent. I purposefully have not been paying any minimum payments since COVID Forbearance started and will only pay my loans in chunks when I have a financial windfall. Given the Federal decisions on that until it expires, as a consumer thats my choice, not the loan owner. 

4 ) My credit score was affected by decisions that I as the consumer had no power or consent in making. I understand that when loans transfer that credit lines will be affected ; but there needs to be a federal rule that prevents this from affecting consumers actual scores ; mine dropped primarily due to the age of my accounts dropping ; the new account hasn't even shown up on my credit report so I am sure it will dip again when that debt is re-added as a new entry. I know this a mostly moot point since it's only a few points, but I am currently house-shopping so this could have caused a bigger issue if it had dropped me from 'Excellent ' to 'Good ' standing with lendors.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation