Consumer complaint received 2017-01-30
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC.
State: CA
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Non-federal student loan
Issue: Dealing with my lender or servicer
Sub-issue: Trouble with how payments are handled

Complaint:
Like many people my age I have a crippling amount of student loan debt, almost all from the private lender Navient ( formerly XXXX XXXX ). I recently read about the law suit being brought against them and it was like reading about all my own horrible experiences ; I had no idea the CFPB were the people to report their behavior to, and I would like to disclose my miserable dealings with them as well. 

Shortly after graduating in XX/XX/XXXX I started making my payments. At first I was on a four year interest only repayment plan which was over $ XXXX/month ( that 's just interest! ). After that I started making payments of around $ XXXX/month. I have tried everything to get the interest rates reduced and release my cosigners but have been denied every time. I have called their Customer Service representatives ( which is a whole other complaint in and of itself, it 's like pulling teeth trying to deal with those mindless people ) and even took up my issues with their Office of the Customer Advocate. The response every time is " there 's nothing more you can do except pay the bill. '' But perhaps the biggest frustration has come when trying to pay more than the amount owed that billing cycle ... 

If I had a bill that was, say, {$1100.00}, and I want to pay extra? Good luck! First they will try to allocate the extra funds to your next billing cycle instead of applying it to the principal balance. They literally just sat on the money I sent and took it off the next bill while my interest kept accruing. And then if you call they give you some confusing statement about why that is, and if you get them to reverse it they will spread the excess payment out across all the loans. Getting them to apply the extra funds to a specific loan is an even more difficult task. When I asked how to make this go smoothly in the future they said to send a check with the instructions for the extra funds in the memo section. Tried that, same results as before. Another call with Customer Service, another 30-40 minutes of my life wasted, another XXXX ensues. Rinse and repeat every, single, time. 

I know what they 're doing, they 're trying to XXXX around with the payment in a way that is detrimental to the customer. Why listen to their request to apply additional funds to the loan with the highest interest rate? That means they wo n't get more money in the end! I 'm happy to repay the money I borrowed but this is absolutely insane. At the rate I 'm going I will have paid for my education several times over by the time I 'm done with Navient. It 's outrageous that they would even offer these kinds of loans to an XXXX year old kid. I guess that 's what the cosigners were for, and perhaps it 's my parents fault too for not recognizing the indentured servitude I was signing up for, but we were all products of the XX/XX/XXXX 's ... borrow everything, you 'll be fine! I was naive when I signed up and had I to do it over again I never would have done it.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation