Consumer complaint received 2024-01-12
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Received bad information about your loan
Company: Nelnet, Inc. (CO)

I have 2 student loans that are currently with Nelnet. They have been mishandled since their inception in XXXX. They are both consolidation loans. I believe one is subsidized and one is unsubsidized. The debt balance is incorrect. According to my records, the balance should be at least {$20000.00} lower. According to my promissory note for the origination of the consolidation of these two loans, which I signed in XXXX XXXX XXXX my beginning balance should have been {$50000.00}. According to Nelnet, my previous lenders, and the FSAID website, my original disbursement on XXXX  was supposedly {$53000.00}. Then, when looking at the payment history that I printed from Navients website ( the company that had my loans before Covid ), my original disbursement/balance on XX/XX/XXXX was {$58000.00}. Then, after paying more than {$25000.00}, over the course of years, on these loans, my balance only continued to go up. While making active payments monthly, my balance only increased. This was NOT during a forbearance or deferment, and I have never had an income-based repayment or any other weird repayment process. The payment history that I mentioned earlier doesnt show a loan balance after each payment. There is no way for me to monitor what happened with the loan or make sense of the numbers. It is incredibly shady and none of the numbers add up. I have been trying to fight this since XXXX. 
Originally, I was refusing to pay and trying to get Navient to validate the debt. They just kept sending me the promissory note. The promissory note actually proves the debt is inaccurate! It proves the beginning balance to be wrong. They have never sent me any documents that tell what I agreed to pay and for how long. I have no actual loan papers. They just continually told me the loan was accurate and mine, while continuing to bill me. While trying to communicate my concerns, all anybody wanted to do was put me on a plan to get me out of delinquency. I filed a complaint with the FSAID Ombudsman and she eventually, after months, came back and told me that Navient told her the debt was valid! Thats it. No proof or explanation. She clearly didnt investigate anything. Very soon after that, my loans were taken over by the Department of Education because of the Cares Act for Covid. 
Last XXXX my loans came back. Nelnet is now servicing them. The payment has now increased by {$270.00} each month. My payments went from {$410.00} per month to {$680.00} per month! With Navient, my final payment was scheduled for XXXX. Nelnet clearly restructured my loan without any communication with me and without my consent. My newly structured loan was written to have 118 payments and a final payment in XXXX. This cant be legal. The beginning balance for the newly written loan is completely wrong. I am essentially restarting my repayment for my loans with a balance of {$62000.00}. This is {$12000.00} higher than what my original loan balance should have been and I have already paid more than {$25000.00} for it. They are literally billing me for money that I dont owe. To top it off, on the FSAID website, the section that shows how much I have paid to repay my loans, is only showing payments from XX/XX/XXXX to present. As of now, that is only showing 4 payments. It does not show ANY payments between XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX! This is not a valid debt! 
Choosing not to pay my loans while I disputed them only seemed to make things harder. Nobody listened to me. All anybody would say was that my loans were delinquent and they wanted to get me into a program to get them out of delinquency. It also got my loans passed around and made it impossible to handle. So, I have chosen to continue to put a hardship on my family and make the payments on these fraudulent loans until somebody helps me. This is not how it should be. When a loan is disputed, it should be placed on an administrative forbearance until the dispute is completed. However, I have been informed that they wont do that. Unfortunately, I also havent been able to get anybody to help me. In XXXX I sent Nelnet a dispute letter and I filed a complaint with the Ombudsman with the FSAID again. It has been almost 3 months and I have heard nothing from either of them. Right after filing with the Ombudsman I received an email informing me that I have filed a complaint and telling me my case number. There has been no communication since. After Nelnet received my dispute letter, they also sent me an email. The email said to continue making payments and that I would receive further communication within 15 to 20 days. I have received no further communication. Before my XXXX payment, I called their customer service department. I was on hold for 2.5 hours before I finally talked to somebody. One of the people I spoke to, named XXXX, confirmed that the dispute was still being worked on and that it would take 10 to 12 weeks. She encouraged me to apply for an income-based repayment. She said that even though my loans are FFELP loans, they qualify for all the IBR programs because the Cares Act made them belong to the Department of Education. I gave her an estimate of my income and she said I qualified and encouraged me to apply through the website. The website application process told me I qualified for an IDR and that my payments would be reduced by about {$250.00} per month. Within about a week, I received a letter telling me that I dont qualify, and it didnt say why! 
I am completely at the mercy of these corrupt school loan servicing companies. At this point, if I could sue, I would. Originally, all I wanted was for somebody to figure out the legitimate balance of my loans and rework a payment plan that would actually pay things down. That answer is no longer good enough for me. These companies need to be held accountable! 
In the past, I also tried to get the Credit Bureaus in on it. I asked them to remove the debt from my credit reports until they could validate the debt. They always just wrote back saying that the debt is valid. They clearly did no investigation work either. They also should be held accountable.