Consumer complaint received 2017-03-14
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with my lender or servicer — Trouble with how payments are handled
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC. (WI)

I have 3 issues : 1. I have been on an income based repayment plan since XXXX. My standard way of communicating with Navient was via email, but they mostly spammed my inbox with XXXX. At some point in XXXX, they sent me a renewal notice for my IBR. Thinking it was just more XXXX spam, I missed the email, and my loan went into standard repayment. I did not know until I was 2 payments behind. A customer service rep advised me to take a forbearance, and I did to avoid having to pay the high balance. She did not inform me, however, that in taking a forbearance, I would no longer qualify for my 1 % interest deduction I had been receiving for making on time payments. I only noticed after looking at my account. When I called customer service about it, they informed me even though I had always made on time payments, I would NEVER be able to earn back my 1 % interest deduction. 

2. Every year I submit my family 's tax returns to renew my IBR plan. Every year, I have received a payment amount that has allowed me to work toward paying off my principal. This year, they offered me an extremely low payment, even though our family income went up. If I chose to pay this amount, I would never pay off my principal, and my interest would accrue and be capitalized each year for my unsubsidized loan. In effect my loan balance would be going up. Even though I pay much more than they are asking, I am still behind on my interest, and all of my payments are going toward SOME of the interest. I am making no progress on my principal. To make matters more complicated, my subsidized and unsubsidized loans are grouped, and they always allocate my payment to the subsidized loan first, so even if I wanted to work on my unsubsidized loan to keep my principal from going up, I would have to physically call one business day after my payment to tell them to put the extra money toward that loan. And I always forget. They will not let me ungroup those XXXX loans because they were disbursed on the same date. If I want to know how much interest I have accrued so that I know how much to pay to keep my head above water, I have to select each loan individually, then add everything up, then call them to make sure it 's going where I want it to go. It 's all very confusing and could be solved by assigning me the appropriate repayment amount in the first place when they process my IBR. I 've never had to deal with this before, and I do n't know what has changed. It seems overly complicated and full of traps that will not lead to my success in paying off these loans. 

3. I had a XXXX loan that was transferred to Navient in XXXX, and though I applied for IBR for that loan with XXXX, the application did n't carry over and I am paying the full amount. Though Navient has offered me the chance to reapply for an IBR for this loan, I am worried that the amount they will assign me will be detrimental to me paying the loan off, givien my situation described above. This has caused me to fall even further behind on the other loans above, adding to that problem. Again, way too complicated.