Consumer complaint received 2016-09-01
Company: GREAT LAKES
State: CA
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with my lender or servicer
Sub-issue: Trouble with how payments are handled

Complaint:
After making timely monthly minimum payments to Great Lakes for over 2 years, I made an extra payment in the month of XXXX 2016 of {$100.00} toward a specific loan in my loan package. I received a confirmation message to my Message Center on XXXX.org acknowledging that the payment would be applied to the specific loan as requested. Shortly thereafter the payment went through - except the {$100.00} was applied across all loans in my loan package, with a whopping {$2.00} allotted to the specified loan. 

When I called about a week later to resolve this issue - an issue brought to my attention only because I thought to check the Payment History page of my Great Lakes account - a Great Lakes representative told me he would submit a ticket to have the payment reverted and applied to the correct loan, but that it would take 5-7 business days to be resolved. 

When I called 8 business days later, having received no update from Great Lakes, a different representative told me there had been no such ticket made, and then began to suggest clearly invalid reasons for why there was actually no problem from their perspective. All this despite the fact that Great Lakes had already verified in writing that my payment was supposed to go to the specified loan. I asked to be connected to another representative, who told me that the payment would now be reversed and re-allocated when my next automatic monthly payment was processed on XXXX XXXX. 

I asked this representative for some sort of confirmation that this would indeed take place, owing to my steadily declining trust in Great Lakes after the last couple of phone calls. He assured me he would send me a " custom e-mail '' to confirm this new supposed fix scheduled for XXXX XXXX, but that it would take " 1-2 business days. '' At this point I was feeling a strong sense of deja vu. 

It does n't take 2 days to send an e-mail. But 2 business days later, not only have I not received said e-mail, but this last representative has also failed to answer any of my phone calls or return my voicemails. 

At this point, my confidence in this issue actually being resolved in XXXX is virtually nonexistent. And even in the unlikely event that my issue is resolved, Great Lakes ' behavior in this matter is, to my mind, tantamount to fraud. At every step of the way I 've been misinformed, misdirected, or otherwise placated, without any sort of resolution to my issue, the cause of which lies squarely with Great Lakes. It 's become painfully obvious that Great Lakes representatives are trained not to try to fix problems, but to make up bogus reasons - " the catch '' - for why debtors ' payments are n't being applied the way they should be. Worst of all is the fact that I now feel actively discouraged from paying my loans. How can I trust that if I make another payment toward my loans, Great Lakes wo n't simply take it and apply it elsewhere, in other words, lie to me again? 

I 'm reaching out to CFPB in the desperate hope that Great Lakes can be held to some form of accountability. I 've held up my end of our bargain ; it 's not too much to ask that they hold up theirs and do their one job, taking my hard-earned money, correctly. Any assistance you can offer is greatly appreciated.

Company public response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation