Consumer complaint received 2021-07-08
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC.
State: OH
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:
I have a Federal parent loan that went into consolidation/repayment in XXXX for {$110000.00}. I have never missed a payment and I've been on automatic payments for a long time. In late XX/XX/XXXX I called to change my automatic payment amount. I spoke to a young man and he took the new information and said it was all set up. I received a call in I believe in late XXXX to say I had missed payment and asked if I could make it then. I explained why I was confused and she explained that autopay had ended but no new account had been set up. I made a payment for the missed payment that day with her over the phone and then she explained I had to complete the forbearance process in order to set autopay up again ( I receive a 0.25 % interest rate discount for autopay, so I didn't want to lose this. ) I completed this process with her and she set up my autopay from that day forward. I received a notification that my monthly payment went up from {$500.00} to {$540.00}. The loan has XXXX more months before payoff. That approximately {$45.00} in increase monthly payment means I would pay an additional {$7.00} over the remaining loan payoff period. I called to find out what had happened : how can a change in direct pay account cause this? First, it is impossible to find a customer service number. So I wrote an email. I received a response that basically said " you went into forbearance and this is the recalculation due to capitalized interest. '' The email provided me a phone number, so I called today. The first person confused me and I kept asking drill-down questions. How can this happen : I never missed a payment, I simply wanted to change accounts, and now I'm scheduled to pay + $ XXXX. She explained that a change of direct pay accounts is considered a forbearance because it takes them time to set it up and therefore a payment is missed. I explained that I didn't miss a payment, that I made the payment the day I found out the account had not been set up on my initial call. She said that there was about {$210.00} in interest for the forbearance period that was capitalized and this changed my payment. I continued to ask about why this was necessary and we were disconnected (? ). I called back and eventually, receiving no better answers from the second representative, asked to speak with a supervisor. Ultimately, the supervisor removed the forbearance action and the capitalized interest. She said this took off a few dollars from my new payment ; it is now {$540.00} per month ( vs. {$540.00} ). She explained that the other increase in the monthly payment is due to the account being audited and this higher amount was put in place so that I can pay the loan off in the time period set forth in the beginning ( 30 years ). What? I tried to see my payment history and while it says the loan was disbursed on XX/XX/XXXX, the website only shows payments back to XX/XX/XXXX. During this period I paid about {$26000.00} in interest. With the time left to repay, It looks like I will pay an additional {$26000.00} in interest. I would like this loan audited by someone to see if all this is correct. I can't do it myself, but is all seems very questionable.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation