Consumer complaint received 2017-05-21
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC.
State: NH
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Private student loan
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Sub-issue: Trouble with how payments are being handled

Complaint:
Complaints : - Dealing with lender. Including making payments, getting information on my loan, and overall management of the account.    - Problem with credit score . I believe my  credit score h as been wrongly penalized.     Summary Throughout the lifetime of my private loans   XXXX   XXXX  , who then handed the loans to Navient, equally and repeatedly mishandled the payments of the  XXXX  private loans I had with them.     After graduating college in   XX/XX/XXXX  , I 'successfully ' applied for automatic debit withdrawal from my bank accounts for loan re-payment as recommended by the company. This meant that as of  XX/XX/XXXX  I would be paying the loans directly through auto debit, before circa   XX/XX/XXXX - XX/XX/XXXX   my parental guardian had been paying a small amount monthly.     Throughout the life the loans, countless times the loans were misappropriated on their end which was followed up by continuous automated harassment by email and phone telling me I was not paying my loans on time and/or missing payments, often charging and threatening late fees and marks on my  credit score for missed payments. Typically, it took multiple phone calls going through multiple departments before someone wa s able to solve the problem, which was often the same as the month before, without giving any explanation to the problem. Eventually I started recording customer reference numbers, of which I still have  XXXX  for reference in future enquiries.     However, ultimately it was errors on the lenders ' end that were resulting in the payments not being processed correctly.     There are  XXXX  examples of errors that resulted in my loss of confidence in the service that are described below. However, it also resulted in a lot of impact on my personal and private life which included, anxiety over whether or not the payment would go through, multiple hours on the phone trying to resolve the issue, ultimately settling to pay late fees in order to not have to spend more time on the phone, consistent phone calls asking for repayment, consistent emails asking for repayment, threats on my  credit score, a negative mark on my credit scor  e in  XX/XX/XXXX , and t he inability for anyone to explain why I had to often pay a different amount than the month before.     Examples  : 1. Th e payment was not going through because the dollar number being paid was not correct, so it showed me missing the payment, but in fact every month a lender employee would try a new number to be automatically withdrawn from my debit account, in order for me to satisfy paying the loan and then promise that the same problem would not happen the final month.     I paid different amounts throughout the lifetime of the loan due to this, even changing between a single 30 day period even though I was on autodebit  (  XX/XX/XXXX ,  XX/XX/XXXX , and  XX/XX/XXXX  ). Additionally, I often agreed to pay the late fees because I was tired of having to argue with the customer service representatives (  XX/XX/XXXX ,  XX/XX/XXXX ,  XX/XX/XXXX ,  XX/XX/XXXX ,  XX/XX/XXXX , etc. ). To be fair, sometimes they would reverse the payment because of the error (  XX/XX/XXXX ,  XX/XX/XXXX  for example ).       2.  Circa   XX/XX/XXXX   - exact date can be confirmed - Navient took a payment for  XXXX  of my student loans out of my mother 's bank account, who was not a co-signer on any of my  XXXX  loans. My   father was the only co-signer on the loan.
3. Impact on my credit score. In  XX/XX/XXXX  there was a mark on my credit score,   as I was in the process of moving to another country for business another automatic debit issue occurred which I was unable to solve for two months. When I called,  Navient  had already put a credit mark against my account, however, it was their error in processing the payment that resulted in me not paying. The representative told me that there was nothing Navient could do to help.     After these wide variety of issues occured I started to keep reference numbers out of frustration. I do still have  XXXX  reference numbers in order to document this.     Lastly, in terms of impact, I was unable to switch to a new private loan provider after I was completed dissatisfied with the service and handling of my loans. After the last major incident in which my  credit score w as affected by  Navient 's   error I was unable to switch to  XXXX   XXXX  for Student Loans or  XXXX , who were offering considerably lower interest rates for private student loans ( almost half what  Navient charge s in interest ). This was due to the fact that I was unable to show that I had n't missed a payment due to the repeated mistakes on taking payment reflected in my. I applied at the closure of  XX/XX/XXXX  to  XXXX  and was rejected, similarly with   XXXX  I  was also rejected. This resulted in me paying off the remaining balance on my private student loans in   XX/XX/XXXX   because I was anxious about any continuous marks on my  credit score that might impact my life. I used every dollar I had ( including savings granted from my grandmother for a downpayment on my house ) in order to avoid this continuous pain and a nxiety around paying my student loans. Towards the end of the loan I paid them manually in order to avoid some of the pain surrounding the payment regarding the automatic debit withdrawal.     Please let me know if you have any further questions or if you require any more information.     Thanks and Best Regards,  XXXX

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation