Consumer complaint received 2019-02-27
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC.
State: PA
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Private student loan
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Sub-issue: Received bad information about your loan

Complaint:
I applied to Navient for their private loan permanent rate reduction program due to my inability to pay the astronomical rates they were charging me. As a reference, I am a prior student/victim of the XXXX XXXX predatory student lending scams. They approved my interest rate reduction to 1 % for ALL my private student loans and I have been making on time payments ever since. I had been making two separate payments for five different loans ; one for about {$140.00} on three of them, and one for about {$64.00} on two of them, the sum equaling roughly {$200.00}. This was a long arduous process to which took about two months of negotiation and was finalized sometime in XX/XX/XXXX. I received a notice in XX/XX/XXXX, that my payment status had changed. They said that two of the five loans were no longer in this interest reduction program. After 2.5 hours and arguing, pushing, and inquiring with several " specialists '' that this was not right because this change was supposed to be permanent for all five loans, they finally combed through my account and realized this was a clerical error on their end. They said they would rectify the account, erase the late fees and put all five loans under one payment within the rate reduction program as it was originally supposed to have been processed two years ago. During this process I lost time from work sorting this out on the phone. Before the call I received no notice on this change. They assessed late fees and my interest rates sky-rocketed which pushed my loan amount up and thus effected my credit negatively. They kept insisting that this was always what was going to happen yet they could not provide proof to me that this was the agreement but consistently tried to push me off the phone, dismissing me as if I was being ridiculous. Once they finally realized their error they said that moving forward all five loans would be under one payment of the same amount from before, approximately {$200.00} as they are all under the same program. But I just received a statement saying that the late fees are still be assessed for {$35.00}. The payments were still processed as two separate payments and not just one as they stated. This concerns me in that despite what they said, the clerical error is obviously still present. This is not the first time I have had an issue in dealing with the incompetence of Navient in their loan servicing. I should not have to push and dig to get answers and to correct THEIR errors. I should not have to continually communicate with a large corporation to which has the financial means to maintain their clerical staff and systems efficiently, and that should also not put lower middle-class citizens like me through the rigor morale every single time they falter. I only wonder if this happens to me, what about the plenty of other blue-collar citizens who don't have the wherewithal to push like I do. Does Navient perform quality assurance checks? Do they get audited where small clerical mistakes like this cost student loan holders thousands of dollars they already don't have beyond what they owe? Are these financial mishaps recompensed to those who overpaid due to Navient 's error? Lastly, I caught this one, what if I didn't catch others? Please audit this company. Please scrutinize their billing efforts. Stop letting this happen to good people who just want to do the right thing and pay what they owe but still want to have some quality of life where they aren't being cheated by big money hungry corporations.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation