Consumer complaint received 2019-08-12
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC.
State: FL
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Private student loan
Issue: Getting a loan
Sub-issue: Fraudulent loan

Complaint:
We started this journey in XXXX, with the hopes of an education and a bright future. Now over 20 years later we are deeper and further in debt than when we left our school, and there is no end in sight. There has been precedence set in the mishandling of loans and deceptive practices from the schools these loans originated. 
In XX/XX/XXXX, Sallie Mae, the countrys largest student lender, agreed to pay {$2.00} XXXX to settle allegations of inappropriate anti-competitive relationships with colleges brought by New York State Attorney General XXXX XXXX. The claims mention such practices as revenue sharing and preferred lender list. The schools would get monies from SallieMae/Navient by having more and more students accept loans from them. The larger the loans and the more loans, the more money the school would receive. One of the colleges specifically mentioned in the case was XXXX University. 
This was also brought to the forefront in early XX/XX/XXXX, Attorney General XXXX ( Pennsylvania ) sued Navient for deceptive practices. Within the lawsuit XXXX University is one of the schools that is explicitly named. The claims states Navient continued to increase the amount of subprime loans offered, which increased the overall amount of loans they had. However, to get more legitimate loans, the company became a preferred lender at many schools. To become a preferred lender Sallie Mae agreed to pay schools for the amounts and number of loans they sent their way. XXXX XXXX was the associate director of Financial Aid for XXXX at the time, and he is on record in numerous documents stating how schools cant choose the federal servicer of student loans, but for private loans Sallie Mae is clearly the largest provider of private loans. 
This continued practice of being a preferred loan provider provided incentive for these schools to provide students with the opportunity and need to take out more and more loans. This practice encourages higher tuitions, and making getting degrees more and more difficult, so you may have to re-enroll or even take more loans to complete your degree. My husband and I both attended XXXX University prior to XXXX. My husband attended XXXX XXXX and I attended for my XXXX  in XXXX XXXX. Both degrees were high in expense to earn, but even more important was the deceptive practices by the school and Sallie Mae to show you your entire degree could be paid for with loans, and even books and living expenses. Sallie Mae had the habit of loaning monies to students well beyond the cost of tuition and books.  XXXX never gave you any other option for borrowing money, except for SallieMae. You had no choice, or at least were not made aware of other choices. To make matters worse the two degrees we tried to achieve were riddled with deceit and encouraged taking out more monies than needed for tuition. 
Lets start with the XXXX of XXXX XXXX. Even though I passed every class with As and was near the top of my class XXXX would not give me my degree, unless I quit my job, took out more loans to live from, and XXXX XXXX. XXXX XXXX is experience, and not something that should be part of an education requirement for the degree. To make someone quit their job, and take more loans, especially when they are rewarded for such by SallieMae, is a deceitful practice riddled with conflict of interests. This deceit and conflict of interest was even more brazen in the XXXX XXXX. My husband was accepted and during his first year of school it was told to the students the school required them to cut the bottom 10 % of students every year. This means 30-40 % of your class would never graduate with a degree even if you have more than good grades. For instance, the lowest grade to continue on every year is a 2.975, but it was not based on scores, but rather you were graded against the tests of the other students. In other words, it was up to the XXXX  to determine who was better than others, instead of letting the grades and facts determine who continues. The worst part of it, was they said the bottom 10 % would be able to reapply and come back the following year for school. This practice seems to have been encouraged by the bonus money and rewards provided by SallieMae to encourage the XXXX XXXX to  cut 10 % of the students so they would reapply and take out more loans. Again, this is a deceitful practice and conflict of interest, encouraged by the pursuit of monies given by Sallie Mae as incentive to make students, and find ways to get students to take more loans out from SallieMae. 
In XX/XX/XXXX, the CFPB filed a lawsuit against SallieMae/Navient. One of the main claims is obscuring information consumers needed to maintain their lower payments : Borrowers who successfully enroll in an income-driven repayment plan need to recertify their income and family size annually. But Navients emails and annual renewal notice sent to borrowers failed to adequately inform them of critical deadlines or the consequences if they failed to act. Navient also obscured its renewal notices in emails sent to borrowers that did not adequately alert them about the need to renew. Many borrowers did not renew their enrollment on time, and they lost their affordable monthly payments. This would have caused their monthly payments to jump by hundreds or even thousands of dollars. When that happens, accrued interest is added to the borrowers principal balance, and these borrowers may have lost other protections, including interest subsidies and progress toward loan forgiveness.

The CFPB case, is just one perfect example of the many examples how our loan has been mishandled from the  beginning. In the early part of our loan repayments we would request an income-based loan repayment program. The program would last for a couple to three years without any notices or indications it would go up. Then we would receive a new bill with the increased payment amount. We would call and SallieMae would be glad to lower our rates as long as we provided indication of income, which was always just a verbal amount ( more on this later ). The issue is it would count against us and would raise interest, payments and more because we did not call in right away. This would always happen when the income repayment period would end. That was just one mishandling.

The second is the 20 year repayment then forgiveness plan. Not until a couple years ago when I called to find out how much longer we have until the remainder of the loans will be forgiven, they mentioned we never enrolled in the plan. This plan was never told we had to enroll to take advantage of it. They said we could enroll now, which means when we are 60+ years old we would be done paying. That means we would have paid interest for over 40 years on our loans, because no one advised of the requirements for the plan. Again, the way they hide and withhold information is not in the best interest of the  accountholder, but rather what is in the best interest of big business. 
The third way SallieMae/Navient mishandle accounts is to let you repay whatever you want without explaining how it will affect your length or terms of repayment. They also dont advise you of how much will go to principal or interest. They also do not verify income when asking for an income repayment program. Our payments were going up again, and we called to have them stay the same at the very least. The lady asked how much we made, never verified with documentation, she said she could take us down even lower than our payments were previously. We got our first bill looked and determined our monies are going to interest except for pennies every third month, which goes to the principal. To this day Navient, just like SallieMae, does no advising and is not looking out for the accountholders. 
I am not asking for any restitution or something unfair. My husband and I have paid at least what we originally owed, or even over what we originally owed, and still have no idea how long or when the payments will end. The way Navient has us setup and making payments means we will pay until we die. I am asking the remainder of our loans be forgiven at this point, as if the 20 year period had taken affect. The deceit and mishandling by XXXX University. The Preferred lender program by SallieMae with XXXX University created an environment of double standards in which it was beneficial to prevent giving degrees and encouraging more and more loans be granted above and beyond the tuition amounts. The mishandling, and appropriation of the account, including through the repayment program provided this year is in no way beneficial to the accountholder, and the fact the 20 year forgiveness program had to be enrolled to take advantage was never explained is just one more way SallieMae/Navient wish to keep lenders in debt and never repay the loan, but rather continue to just pay interest. Precedent has been established in all the cases listed above, and are the same errors and deceptive practices used on my loans.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation