Consumer complaint received 2019-04-03
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC.
State: NH
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:
Hello, I am incredibly concerned and frustrated with the way Navient has handled my student loan repayments, and after researching the current cases against them. 

I wanted to share the issues I have had with Navient since graduating in 2012. 

-Once graduating in 2012, I began to repay my loans using the income driven repayment plan. I chose this option because the cost of my rent, car and household bills took up most of my low income. My payment was around {$100.00} and I faithfully paid it every month. After 4 years my payment NEVER decreased. I was only covering interest, and was charged hundreds of dollars in capitalized interest each year. 
It is clear that they were pushing students to choose this plan to make the company more money in interest. Why would navient include a payment plan that would never pay off your loan? Because it was more money in their pocket. 

-Once I realized what was happening with the income driven plans, I switched to a graduated plan and began throwing any extra money I had toward my loans. The website has an option to allocate where extra payments go. I chose to tackle the highest interest loan and was putting all my additional payments toward that. There is also a place on the website to tell navient to either push out your due date when extra payments are made, or keep billing you the monthly amount. I specifically checked off the box to have them continue billing me for my monthly amount. However, over the years I have had to call and complain because they ignore this request and advance my due date on some loans. 
I believe they advance the due date on some loans so they will be able to charge capitalized interest. 


-The most recent issue I had was when I decided to go back to school to get my masters. My company paid for me to take a class, and I did not opt for any financial aid. I did not request for ANYTHING about my XXXX loans to change. A month into taking this class, I got a letter from Navient saying that my loans had been put into deferment because I was a XXXX XXXX XXXX. I DID NOT REQUEST OR APPROVE THIS. I had to call Navient to request they take my loans out of deferment. A month later I was charged {$61.00} in capitalized interest, despite having paid {$600.00} extra payments every month for 6 months. During the phone call I was told that the {$61.00} was for the 15 days that my loans were in deferment. That 15 days was the time it took for them to send me a letter informing me of the deferment. I check the website weekly, and it never said I was in deferment anywhere online. 
I also found out during this phone call that they had again been moving my payment due date a month forward with each extra payment I made. Therefore, some of my loans were accruing the capitalized interest WITHOUT MY KNOWLEDGE even though I had specially checked off the do not advance my monthly payment on the website. The woman on the phone told me that their system did not have it checked off. 

I am extremely frustrated with this company, and I worry for those new graduates who might naively assume that their minimum payments are making a difference in their loans. Students are trusting this company to handle their payments correctly, and Navient continues to cheat us out of thousands of dollars. Their communication is unclear and inconsistent. I now fully read my entire statement every month and compare it to my online account to make sure the information is correct. It almost never is. Something needs to be done to give students a fair chance at loan repayment. 


Thank you for your time, XXXX XXXX XXXX, NH

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation