Consumer complaint received 2016-10-05
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with my lender or servicer — Don't agree with fees charged
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC. ()

Background : I took these loans out when I was XXXX - I 'm now XXXX. 

30 years later, after much struggle in my field and other fields to make end meet, I find that I 'm still burdened by these loans despite my best efforts to be gainfully employed and to eventually pay them off. 

I took out these loans as an undergrad at XXXX where I received what turns out to be a rather noneffective XXXX my choice, my bad, my decision at age XXXX. I am accountable. 

But here 's the thing : I had paid off a large portion of those loans in lump sum payments after the semi-successful sale of a low budget feature film I made and sold. My goal was and is to transition into XXXX and other practical areas to find additional work ( *I 'm XXXX now, XXXX ) but at the time XXXX would not even release my transcripts until I paid off their loan component - I forget the names of the internal XXXX federal loans now, versus the external Federal loans. XXXX XXXX or XXXX? ] Anyway : my point is, the fact that I have those XXXX transcripts now is 100 % verification that I have in fact partly paid off that part of my loans. 

When I was last back in the XXXX, I contacted my prevoious loan holder to try to ascertain the status of the loans. No response. I also contacts ( by email and certified letter ), the 'Ombudsman ' who I gathered was in charge of helping me navigate the serpentine world of student loan repayment. 

No response. 

I also did outreach to my credit agencies to determine my credit, assuming that my credit would be substandard due to my outstanding loans. XXXX replied that 'I had a blank record '. I asked them to send me a copy anyway, just so I would have some hard copy proof of my credit via that outreach. 

I still have those records, and despite my attempts to determine the status of my loans - and to EVEN FIND OUT WHO I OWED TO ( i.e., who had the loans ) - I could get no information despite my good faith efforts. 

During that time, by the way, I worked for the XXXX and I received excellent reviews for my performance. And, during that time, there was also no mention of my loan status, or that anything was amiss. 

My assumption was, that, since I had done sustained, proactive outreach to find out a ) who held my loans and b ) what the status of these loans are/were, that I had done nothing wrong. 

Yet, recently, after voting from XXXX ( where I 'm making a very modest living although I 'm constantly seeking additonal work - my alternative was foodstamps and unemployment in the XXXX ), there has been outreach from a new loan agency which is charging me more than the initial sum I started out with 30 years ago. 

That is : there is no itemization of my previous payments, and my overall sense is this is a predatory agency and that my rights as a loan holder have been violated. 

Aside from all technical data and determinations : I fail to see how it is reasonable or has any bearing in a common sense world, that I can be scraping and hustling to find work ( and to work ) for 25 years, not able to afford a family, taking on Foodstamps on occasion, and taking work outside of my degree field without hesitation, only to find that the 'boulder ' is back down at the bottom of the hill via an inflated and opaque amount due. 

I am not someone who has declared that I have a 'moral right ' not to pay the loans - I have just been unable to, and have also been at times nearly unable to make ends meet, even aside from these loans : 1 ) What are the legal ramifications of the loan holding agencies NOT responding to my sustained previous outreach to attempt to identify them, which in turn has led to a further 'compulsive ' delinquency? 

2 ) How is it that, after paying off several of the loans via coercion, i.e., being unable to gain my transcripts from XXXX until I paid for the loans, that those paid-off loans are not reflected in the total?