Consumer complaint received 2019-03-31
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC.
State: PA
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:
On XX/XX/XXXX I spoke to Navient Collections department. I was told that my assigned agent XXXX was unavailable so I spoke to a XXXX instead. This representative told me that I had been rejected from the income based repayment program ( after setting up about 3 years of a monthly auto-debit of {$720.00} ). He said that I needed to have my co-signer ( mother ) call in to submit her financial statement before being able to resubmit me for approval. I am nearing default on my loans because they never approved my {$720.00} payments and tell me I need to be making principal payments of around {$1200.00}. The fact that I was nearing default on only some of my loans but not others leads me to believe that they are misapplying my payments. I believe that if my payment had been applied proportionally to each loan, I wouldnt have reached this stage in my delinquency so soon. By applying my payments in this way, Navient is ensuring that I default on my loans more quickly. 

On Tuesday XX/XX/XXXX, my mother called in and provided her financial statement. She spoke to another representative named XXXX, who said that XXXX was not available and XXXX would be out for a long time. His version of what happened differed from XXXX. He told my mom that her financial information wouldnt necessarily help me and that I had to make another financial statement ( the last financial statement I made was in XXXX ). They convinced her to make a payment of about {$290.00} to pull some of my loans out of risk of default. 

On Friday XX/XX/XXXX I called the number that XXXX had given me. I was surprised to be told that my loan was no longer handled by that department and now the person I was speaking to ( cant recall the name ) was my new assigned agent. I was skeptical and pushed to try to speak to the agent that was familiar with my situation, the agent put a supervisor on the line who said they could not transfer me to XXXX and that I would need to work with them. They were not familiar with my situation at all. They convinced me to make a payment of {$29.00} and to submit more financial information. 

That same night on Friday XX/XX/XXXX I called back to see if I could get some more information about my loans. I couldnt find any statements online from before XXXX of XXXX. The Navient website offered no clear way to see a record of my individual loan payments, how theyve been applied, and how theyve affected my principal balance. When I asked the agent from Navient if they could provide an electronic copy of this, they told me it was impossible. Moreover, that kind of request had to be submitted to the back office and could take a week or more to send. She transferred me to general customer service to see if they could help me get the information from the website, however that agent was also not helpful. Not only did she confirm that the Navient website has no way to access loan records and documents, she also could not give me accurate answers to questions I was asking in regard to my loan history. She told me my first payment was made in XXXX, but I graduated in XXXX and started making payments in XXXX. 

Navient is purposefully making it difficult for me to get accurate information about my options and my loan history. While it is difficult to come up with an accurate figure based on the limited information on the website, I estimate that I have made well over {$50000.00} in payments to Navient/Sallie Mae since my college graduation. Between my mostly private and federal loans, the total amount I owe has gone up by more than what Ive paid into it. In other words, I am just throwing money away while my debt continues to grow.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation