Consumer complaint received 2018-10-26
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Trouble with how payments are being handled
Company: GREAT LAKES (LA)

Back in XX/XX/XXXX, my student loans with the U.S. Department of Education was handed over to Great Lakes Lender in the amount of {$33000.00} and some change. I was never contacted regarding this decision or even asked if I wanted a different option for my loans. To date, I have never received any loan/lending papers/statements from Great Lakes informing me of what/how they are handling my loan. I began repaying my loan and after almost 4 years, my principle balance has gone up to {$37000.00} as of today. ( no matter how much I pay over the amount due every month ) Upon reaching out to Great Lakes numerous times via email and phone. I have learned that they always have a different reason to tell you for why your balance has not gone down. I have a fixed interest rate at 5.375 yet they can not tell me exactly how much money has been paid to interest from one day to the next. I called on XX/XX/XXXX and spoke to XXXX, she told me that she can not tell me how much I paid in interest with my XXXX payment of {$200.00} even though she told me that my monthly interest is {$170.00} and some change. I was told in XX/XX/XXXX, that in order to apply an overage payments to the principle that I needed to " allocate '' the percentage of the overpayment to be applied to the principle. So, for my XXXX payment, I did just that. I payed {$200.00} and allocated the overage of {$30.00} to my principle. To my dismay, the only amount of money they put towards my principle was {$4.00}. When I asked XXXX why, she said because I had to meet the interest first. But, I did. All {$170.00} for the month. She could not explain to me why the interest suddenly became {$190.00} for XXXX ... I then talked to a manager by the name of XXXX that had to put me on hold numerous times to be able to give me a solid number for the amount of money that I needed to pay each month to meet my interest obligation so that I would know how much extra I needed to pay to hit the principle. Her final answer was {$180.00} per month as of XX/XX/XXXX because it changes everyday according to her!! And that even if pay more than that, the overage goes towards " paying ahead ''. AND, that IF I am to pay extra, I have to do it on the due date. Because if I pay at any other time ( even a day after the due date ), that payment will go towards the next payment due NO MATTER WHAT I TELL THEM IT IS FOR. I then requested to have monthly statements mailed to my home. I found out that they do not mail out statements to customers. ( if I request something about my account from a bank they should be required to hand this over to me to show what I've paid into this ). I also requested an amortization schedule for my account and was told that they do not do that either. I researched online on XXXX and noticed that Great Lakes is doing this same thing to so many people. I truly feel like they are scamming customers and stealing money by lying about the interest and then NOT allowing the customers to apply any over paid monies to the principle balances. With a daily interest accruing on the accounts, how is anyone every going to pay off an ever growing loan? This is something that needs to be reviewed and investigated. I will be continuing to push this and will not stop until this company has been outed for what they are doing to people ( ESPECIALLY PEOPLE THAT DID NOT CHOOSE TO HAVE THEM ). I am currently working on finding a lender that is not a crook and actually works like a legit banking/lending service provider that is transparent with their services. I have kept all of my emails to Great Lakes asking them for explanations and reasons for these issues as well as all of my requests for papers/statements on my account.