Consumer complaint received 2017-11-02
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Struggling to repay your loan — Can't temporarily delay making payments
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC. (IL)

On or around XXXX XXXX, XXXX, I contacted Navient because my current financial situation was making it extremely difficult for me to meet my currently monthly loan payments. 

I explained to a customer service rep at Navient that during XXXX I had worked for a start-up company ( the " XXXX '' ) that ran out of money and failed to pay me the majority of the wages that I was owed from XXXX XXXX - XXXX XXXX, XXXX. 

According to my employment agreement, I was supposed to earn my wages at a base pay rate of XXXX} per year, but due to the XXXX going insolvent I was only paid a total of XXXX  gross ( versus what should have been XXXX  gross at the true base pay rate ). In addition, much of the pay that I received was as a XXXX employee, so payroll taxes became my responsibility on the XXXX gross that I was paid. 

When I provided this information to the Navient customer representative he told me that I would be able to get relief if I applied for an IBR plan. He told me that he would put my account on forbearance until XXXX XXXX which would give me some cushion to get back on my feet as long as I also applied for the IBR during this period of time, which would also bring my repayment rate down to approximately XXXX  per month for a XXXX period. 

I followed the Navient customer service rep 's instructions and filed for the IBR plan while providing the exact same information that I told him about my current financial situation. However, on XXXX XXXX, XXXX, I received an email from Navient saying that my IBR plan had been approved, but that I would have to begin making monthly payments at a rate of XXXX per month, and that my first payment would be due on XXXX XXXX, XXXX. 

This is the exact opposite of what I was told would happen by the Navient customer service rep. Not only was my forbearance until XXXX XXXX removed, my payments were actually increased form what I was paying before. My previous payments were for XXXX per month, and now they would be XXXX per month. Not to mention, the XXXX per month was about XXXX more per month than the Navient rep told me that I would have to pay under the IBR plan. 

So, it appears that there was a total bait-and-switch scheme conducted here by Navient. To make matters even worse, when I called Navient earlier this morning, the first rep rudely told me that there was nothing that could be done to help rectify this situation, and that I needed to start making my monthly payments on XXXX XXXX, XXXX as instructed. 

I then asked to speak to a supervisor because none of this made any sense to me, and the supervisor told me that I should apply for a loan consolidation which would put a temporary hold on my payments, but after reading the terms and conditions I realized it would essentially reset my loans and I would then have to continue paying off my consolidated loans for the next 360 months. So in summary, in order for me to get a temporary hold on my account, I would have to pay thousands and thousands of dollars of interest over the course of the next XXXX years. Anyone can see that this is just another bait-and-switch by Navient at my expense. 

This situation has not only cost me time and money while providing me with absolutely none of the relief that I was seeking or promised when I initially called, it has also caused me and my family significant emotional distress as we are being made to feel that we are nothing more than debt slaves to Navient, and that my only option is to be beholden to Navient financially for the rest of my life.