Consumer complaint received 2022-05-04
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC.
State: IL
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:
I am writing to file a complaint regarding the college I attended and the company handling the student loans I currently have. I believe that the college I attended gave me unrealistic expectations as to the chances of acquiring a job in the industry I was pursuing a degree in and the student loan company misdirected me in the best way to pay off my student loans and how to handle times when I was unable to pay the monthly cost of my loan payments. 
In XXXX I met with staff from the XXXX  XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. My brother was a student of this college at the time and I was interested to see if pursuing a career in video games or digital animation was feasible for me through this school. My brother was always the XXXX in the family, whereas my skills were mainly on the academic side of things. I explained that I had no previous artistic training or experience and also outlined what I wanted to accomplish, including the career I was interested in pursuing, by joining the degree program for a XXXX  in XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. I was assured that I would be able to learn the necessary artistic skills during the course of the degree program and that the school had a very high placement percentage for graduates in the fields they studied. I made it a point to make my living situation known. I was married with a young son and lived in the suburbs with my family and would have to travel to the school daily. Also, I would need to find gainful employment after graduation and could not live on an unpaid internship, which I thought would be normal for an industry like this as an entry level novice. Again, I was assured that this would not be a problem. I decided to enroll in the college after having my mind eased by the staff there and began working towards completing the degree program. 
Between XXXX and XXXX I had attended a XXXX XXXX in FL, XXXX XXXX XXXX, and earned an XXXX XXXX in XXXX XXXX. Therefore, all standard pre-requisite classes had been completed before attending the Illinois XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX except for a small number of classes such as XXXX XXXX. I assumed that since I had already taken XXXX years of college level courses and obtained an XXXX XXXX that my time in the program to obtain my XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX would be shorter than a typical student attending college for the first time. I was told by the staff at the Illinois XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX that I was correct in my assumption and I should be able to complete the program in 2 to 3 years maximum. This, however, was not the reality of how the situation developed. I ended up being a student of this college from XXXX through XXXX. Admittedly, there were some complications that did extend the time of my attendance there. Some were of my own choice and others were due to the schools policies that they were unwilling to make any exception for considering my individual situation. One thing that was my choice which extended my time with the college was taking time off of school to deal with a major medical issue. I had to have major XXXX to have my XXXX removed near the end of XXXX and had to take nearly a year off from attending classes until I was healthy enough to travel back to the college daily. The other thing that extended my time there includes two parts which are both due to the colleges rules and how they handled planning my degree program. First, even though I had been assured that my time at the college would be less than the standard 4 year program since I already had an XXXX XXXX and planned to attend classes year round somehow my degree program plan was set up for a 4 year period. This was never explained to me to my satisfaction, but I went along with it because I was assured that it was how the program worked after I had already began taking classes. Secondly, the school had a policy that if a student had XXXX or more absences from a class within a semester they automatically received a failing grade for that class and would have to retake it. I did not know about this policy when I began taking classes, and only found out about it when an instructor of mine told me to no longer attend her class due to my absences. I approached the XXXX of my program about this policy and asked if an exception could be made. Since I had a family, including a small child, as well as my own health problems there were times when it was not possible to make it to class. I had the computer equipment as well as the art supplies needed to complete all work that was being done in class at my home and I was always able to complete assignments as well as turn them in on time even when I was absent from class and missed a lecture. To be clear, these classes were split between some lecture time and a chunk of free time to work on projects. I had an hour commute each way that was dependent on the XXXX train schedule to get me to and from the suburbs to the downtown XXXX area. I was also frequently ill myself, or had family obligations that could not be rescheduled or missed. After explaining these difficulties with my program XXXX I was told he would look into the situation and eventually informed that no exception could be made to the rule regardless of the circumstances. Even though I was unhappy with the situation I continued to attend the school and work toward completing my degree since I had already spent so much time in the program and accumulated significant debt in student loans due to the cost of attending this college. 
I did ultimately graduate from the college in XXXX and began my job search with the aid of the school. Even though I was assured that I would be able to find a job in the industry without having to relocate my family when I began attending the school this turned out to not be realistic after I graduated. At the time there was no market for a person with my degree in the XXXX area. All jobs that I was directed to apply to were unpaid internships out of state in places like California, New York, and Florida. I followed the instructions I was given and sent out countless applications and demo reels of my work. Unfortunately, I did not receive even XXXX reply to any of the applications that were sent out and after a short amount of time the school no longer provided any assistance with the process of finding employment. I continued to apply for positions on my own with no success and eventually took a regular office job locally so I could begin to support my family. Just to give a comparison for your consideration, my brother also completed the same degree program that I did. He never attended college before starting there, but also took 4 years to complete the degree program. After graduation he was not able to find employment with the aid of the school. He ended up attending another school in Florida to receive additional training and certification in the field before moving to California hoping to find freelance work. 
In short, I believe the Illinois XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX took advantage of having me as a student there and found ways to maximize their profits due to my enrollment. They did this through first misleading me as to the realistic expectations I could have to pursue a career after obtaining this degree. Secondly, they found ways to extend my enrollment with the university by planning my degree program over 4 years when I already had 2 years of college experience and an XXXX XXXX. Lastly, they were unwilling to make accommodations to their attendance policy due to my personal health and living situation since forcing me to retake a class would ensure that they would profit further. 

My next complaint concerns the company handling my student loans. They were initially through XXXX XXXX, but then transitioned to Navient. During the time of my attendance at the Illinois XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX I did have to take student loans to pay for college. There was never a discussion of how or when those loans would have to be repaid. Also, if there was any surplus in the funds allocated to me during a certain time period that the loans covered I was encouraged to accept a refund check that was made out to me personally. I was led to believe that if I did not accept the check that the money would just be lost and would not lower the balance of my student loans. I did as instructed throughout the time of my enrollment with the college until my graduation in XXXX. 
After graduation, there were sporadic payments made on my student loan debt by my father. There were times when payments were not able to be made unfortunately. When I contacted XXXX XXXX and then Navient about these financial difficulties I was directed to request a forbearance on the loans. It was explained to me that this would stop any penalties for not being able to make the monthly payments, but that interest would still accrue during this time period. Between XXXX of XXXX and XXXX of XXXX there were XXXX different forbearance periods that I was instructed to take by the student loan company. 
In XXXX of XXXX, my father set up an auto-payment on the student loans in the amount of {$410.00} per month. These payments have been made without any problems from XXXX of XXXX through XXXX of XXXX. The reason the auto-payments were stopped is because I contacted Navient to get some information about the standing of my loans and received some disturbing information. 
I checked the history of activity on my loans on Navients website and found that it goes back as far as XXXX of XXXX where the principal and balance of the loans is shown as {$48000.00}. There are XXXX XXXX loans at an interest rate of 6.5 %. I calculated the amount paid just by the auto-payments made by my father since XXXX of XXXX and came up with the amount of {$46000.00} that had been paid towards the loans just by the auto-payments and this did not include the sporadic payments that had been made previously. I then called customer service at Navient to find out the remaining balance on the loans and how much time was left before they were paid off. I was told that the remaining balance after the payment made in XXXX of XXXX was {$43000.00}. This made no sense to me at all so of course I asked for more information. I was told that {$10000.00} was added to the principal of the loans due to the forbearances that were taken on the account. Again, this made no sense to me. They then explained that any interest accrued during a forbearance was capitalized and added to the premium on the loan. I had never been given this information before. I never received any notification of this detail over the phone or in writing. If I had known this, I never would have agreed to a forbearance. Also, I was told that after the interest had been capitalized that interest was also being calculated on the additional amount added to the principal. Their estimated pay off date on the loan is XXXX of XXXX. So, in effect, the company calculated interest during a forbearance then added it to the principal and then calculated additional interest on that interest since they capitalized it to principal on the account rather than accrued interest. 
I called back at a later time and spoke to a person that said they were a supervisor, her name was XXXX. She explained the same thing regarding interest during a forbearance and capitalizing it to principal. She then insisted that their personnel read all the terms and conditions to a customer before a forbearance is put in place. When I told her that this information had not been given to me she insisted that it had and had nothing further to say about that subject. She then explained that they calculate interest on the loans on a daily basis. She went on to explain that when a payment is received the accrued monthly payment is deducted from the payment after any fees had been deducted and any remaining balance was put toward the principal on the loan. I then asked about instances during the history activity on the loan about times when the complete payment shown went toward interest and nothing toward the principal. She told me that after a forbearance all payments made are put toward interest until the accrued amount of interest from the forbearance period is paid off. This again made no sense to me. If they capitalize interest from a forbearance period and make it capital, then how could payments after a forbearance be put toward interest when that interest had been made principal? Also, if that is the case then why werent payments put completely toward principal to cover the interest accrued during a forbearance? She did not elaborate or explain any further, but kept repeating herself. 
After realizing I was not going to get any further information about how Navient had handled my loans I asked what options I had to pay off the loans more quickly or get some type of assistance or forgiveness on the loan balance. She then told me about an income based repayment program that would adjust the amount of the monthly payments and also adjust interest based on my personal income. This was the first time Navient had told me about this program, even though I had explained to them previously when I was unable to make my loan payments it was due to financial hardship. She then told me that the balance on the loans could be forgiven if I converted the loans to Department of Education loans and participated in the income based repayment program. She said that if I did this then any remaining balance would be written off after 20 years. If I did not convert the loans to Department of Education loans she said that I could still participate in the income based repayment program, but the balance of the loans would not be written off for 25 years. The only other option she told me about was to refinance the loans to try and get a lower interest rate, but this would convert them to personal loans and no forgiveness or assistance would be available. 
Being completely dissatisfied with the information I had been given and wanting to find out if these practices were legal I started researching Navient. I found out that they settled a {$1.00} XXXX lawsuit concerning their handling of student loans and their business practices. I also found out that between XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX all auto-payments should have been suspended and the interest rate for this time period should be changed to 0 %. These loans also should have been placed into forbearance during this time period due to the XXXX XXXX passed by XXXX. Navient did neither of these things. They have continued to take auto-payments and charge interest during this time period. 
Ultimately, I feel that I was initially taken advantage of by a for profit institution, the Illinois XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, and then had my loans mishandled by the student loan company, Navient, through their misinformation or incomplete information given to me. The college mislead me as to the realistic expectations I could have regarding my time spent in their degree program and the possibility of acquiring employment in that field after graduation. Navient/Sallie XXXX XXXX XXXX me as to all of the details about how a forbearance worked according to their business practices and added what I expected to be interest charges to the principal of my loans and charged additional interest on that amount. Navient also did not follow the guidelines of the CARES Act by not suspending their acceptance of auto-payments or stopping to charge interest during the time period set out. If I am not eligible to participate in the lawsuit against Navient, then I am asking for some assistance as to how I can proceed to get some fair treatment and justice from these companies that took advantage of me for their own monetary gain. I am only in the situation I am in because I trusted the college and student loan company and followed the instructions they gave me.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation