Consumer complaint received 2017-09-28
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC.
State: TX
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Sub-issue: Received bad information about your loan

Complaint:
After the grace period ended in late XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX for my loans, with the exception of XXXX loan having its grace period ending in XXXX of XXXX, I was frequently placed on forbearance or deferment due to temporary hardship XXXX loss of unemployment. ) I was made aware of the accrued interest during these periods of forbearance or deferment, acknowledging the capitalization of interest that would occur at the end. My initial borrowed amount of less than {$36000.00} disbursed throughout XXXX separate loans is now well over {$75000.00} due to this process after more than 6 years of being placed on deferment or forbearance. 

However, I was never made aware, not even once, of an income-based repayment plan, nor was I offered such a plan by XXXX XXXX XXXX now Navient ). Due to the recent lawsuits against the corporation, I realized Navient would frequently offer deferment or forbearance options to their borrowers instead of offering a low-income-based repayment plan, which would have helped me immensely, keeping my outstanding principal near the borrowed amount, and I would have avoided accruing so much interest. It is clear that this option of forbearance was the least expensive XXXX for Navient in terms of time and processing ( their representatives were incentivized to keep call times low ) but it was the most expensive for me and to many other student borrowers as well. 

Right now they are going through several lawsuits pertaining to the same issues I experienced with Navient XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. So since late XXXX, I have been accruing interest on all my loans, having defaulted once but making satisfactory consecutive payments during rehabilitation, and now I am on an income-based repayment plan. 

I have hundreds of emails from XXXX from XXXX XXXX and Navient where the subject reads as " Reply YES to Postpone Your Federal Student Loan Payments '' and within the bodies of the emails the first option is always forbearance or deferment, with no mention of income-based repayment plans, and only brief mentions of " possible repayment options '' if I call the XXXX number. But again, after calling and speaking with the representatives, I was never made aware of such repayment options. 

When speaking with XXXX, another student loan servicer, the very first option they gave me was an income-based repayment plan, at the recommendation of their customer service representatives. They told me this would be best option for my situation. Again, I was never given this option once with XXXX XXXX, and I was almost shocked to discover there was such a thing as a low-income repayment plan. 

This complaint outlines the deceptive practices made by XXXX XXXX XXXX Navient on millions of student borrowers. I am XXXX of those borrowers, and due to this intentional withholding of information on behalf of the servicer XXXX XXXX / Navient, I do not believe I should be responsible for {$75000.00} in loans, when I only took out {$36000.00}, and was never made fully aware of all my available options and instead pushed towards deferment or forbearance.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation