Consumer complaint received 2023-07-15
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Struggling to repay your loan — Can't get other flexible options for repaying your loan
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC. (AL)

I received federal loans from XXXX - XXXX to finance both a XXXX  and a XXXX from Mississippi XXXX, a private XXXX XXXX. Since XXXX, I have intermittently struggled financially and have had difficulty paying back my student loans at many points in the last 18 years. I have had the occasional late fee, but Ive never missed a payment. My loans were consolidated thru Navient years ago. Each time I was having difficulty paying the loans I would call Navient & discuss my options with them. I always assumed that they were working in my best interest and giving me advice that would help my financial stability and not harm it. I was never given reason by them or the government to believe otherwise, or that they could instead be working in their best interest to trap me financially for life. Ive only recently become aware of some of the deceptive tactics and self-aggrandizing behavior of Navient. Over the past 18 years, I have been placed on forebearance 4 times, sometimes for years at a time. Overall Ive spent more years on forebearance than not. See attached documents for further info. At no point was I even told about income based repayment options. I am certain that I would have qualified for these because there were points where I qualified for food stamps based on my income and the nature of my family ( I was the single parent of XXXX XXXX  for many years ). I believe I was deceived by Navient and the government and harmed by their practices. I believe that as students taking money from the federal government, there is a common assumption that the handlers of the loans are working in your best interest when I now realize that this is a flat out lie. I am furious to find out that I wasnt even told of my options at any point by Navient, despite me calling them dozens of times over the years. It angers me to learn that forebearance is a short term solution, one that shouldnt be used for more than 6 months, when I have spent the majority of the past 18 years on forebearance alone. I even had to file for bankruptcy in XXXX. Of course my student loans werent included in what could be filed, despite my lawyer requesting this in writing to Navient. Despite never missing a payment, I now owe considerably more than I did when I started paying these loans. There has to be some illegality here. Someone should have to answer for these deceptive tactics on the part of servicers of these federal government loans. I believe I should be repaid for all the interest accrued during my over 10 years time on forebearance. In fact, I believe the loans should be forgiven entirely, as I was given faulty information from the start and never fully understood the system. I now realize that this was done to me purposefully, to confuse and annoy me to a degree that I came to believe there was no solution to the large monthly payments, which interestingly always paid interest only. The largest monthly payment Ive ever had that went to the principal was {$16.00} a month. That is absurd. Ive questioned this with Navient for years, knowing that there must be a better way. Ive always been counseled by them that they were doing everything that they could to lower my payments and pay down my loan. My goal has always been to pay off my student debt as its presence in my life, just the knowledge that its there and increasing over time not decreasing, has caused me significant XXXX  and distress. Ive almost drowned at various points over the years, having to choose between making my loan payment or feeding myself and my children. I always chose to make the payment, believing that the cost Id pay for missing a payment was too severe and would affect me too severely financially in the long run. I believe that the system is irreparably broken, and a new system should replace this purposefully confusing and deceptive mess. 
I would like for the wrongs of yesterday by Navient that have harmed me to be repaired immediately. Im demanding recourse. I would like to speak to someone who will advise me truthfully and be able to offer me real guidance here about the best way to proceed. Ive never been one to sue at all and rarely think its the solution. But at the same time I believe ligation, in the form of a class action lawsuit against Navient, is often one of the few things that successful companies take seriously and try to avoid at all cost. I know Im not alone in my experience.