Consumer complaint received 2017-02-15
Company: DISCOVER BANK
State: AZ
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Non-federal student loan
Issue: Can't repay my loan
Sub-issue: Can't decrease my monthly payments

Complaint:
Dear XXXX XXXX : Thank you for the reply to matter # XXXX. Please let me clarify and respond. 
1. My requests to you for your personalized response, left on your direct voicemail ( XXXX/XXXX/XXXX, XXXX/XXXX/XXXX & XXXX/XXXX/XXXX ) where all attempts to grant you permission to call and discuss the matter with me. Hiding behind a request by me not to receive automated collection calls is absurd. You officially, on the record, have my permission to call me to discuss this matter. 
2. Beginning in XXXX XXXX, by my frequent and regular communications with Discover I have expressed nothing by an interest in working out these obligations so that I can better pay them on a regular basis while also begin repaying my federally secured student loans. Asking for a principal reduction was only one request. If you were to spend some time listening to previous calls and reading account notes, had your team members properly documented the account, you would also hear my many requests to restructure the loans to lower the monthly payment. That can be done by graduating payments, amortizing over a longer period of time, forbearing one loan while the other is being repaid, reducing the interest rate, and on and on. The number of possible work out solutions is quite expansive. Instead, your company with their consistent and robotic responses have said there is nothing we can do. 
3. Contradictorily, your representatives have also told me each time I called since XXXX that I could pay a lesser amount, representing one month 's payment per loan to avoid the loans charging off at 150 days. I was also told, on numerous occasions now, that the loans would be turned over to the insurer after the loans have charged off at the expiration of 150 days past due. 
Since XXXX, I have been following that edict, alternating payments of approximately {$230.00} per loan around the XXXX and the XXXX of each month. The significance to those dates is that when I called in XXXX, I was told by the representative that Loan XXXX was at that time 141 days past due and that it would hit 150 days past due on XXXX/XXXX/XXXX. On the same call, I was told that loan XXXX was 110 days past due and that it would hit the 150 days past due mark on XXXX/XXXX/XXXX. I have not missed a payment since making the first payment on XXXX/XXXX/XXXX. Surprisingly, when I called this week on XXXX/XXXX/XXXX to make a payment ( the first business day after XXXX/XXXX/XXXX ), I was told both loans were 139 days past due and that they would hit the 150 day mark on XXXX/XXXX/XXXX. This is highly questionable given my payment history since XXXX and at the least, unfair and deceptive treatment given prior conversations with your company 's representatives. 
4. What has become even more alarming now, is that in your response to my CFPB inquiry and complaint is your position that you " will be [ filling ] a claim with XXXX soon '' and that my only recourse at this stage is to bring the accounts current. Not only is this statement abusive in that it now threatens something that is contrary to what I have consistently been told since XXXX, it is unfair and deceptive. This bait and switch approach to collections is the very reason the CFPB exists, to help level the field and open communications between company and consumers. If I could afford to bring my accounts current on the schedule you now prescribe, I would not be talking to you, your collection representatives, or the CFPB. 

Please see attached document for the rest of this grievance. Thank you!

Company response to consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief