Consumer complaint received 2021-03-15
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Received bad information about your loan
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC. (CA)

Hello, Towards the beginning of the pandemic when the CARES Act was implemented I received notice in my email that my loans were set to 0 % interest and on hold. Like many people, though, I was not aware that that didn't apply to FFELP loans, which I didn't know were distinct from Federal Loans - they were always referred to as XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX so I assumed references to federal loans included this loan. 

It wasn't until I started getting aggressive collection calls from Navient that I learned that my old loan slipped through the federal relief cracks and that I was significantly delinquent with them. I hadn't lost my job or anything but my situation is potentially precarious so I was counting on having the benefit of the Cares Act to be able to save my money instead. I'm living in XXXX on a temporary work visa tied to my current job - should I lose my job I'll have to move out of the country immediately. 

At that time I perused the website looking for the various relief options. They only allowed very short term deferment requiring ample documentation ( and my situation wouldn't have been accepted according to their survey ), IDR/IBR ( I wouldn't have been able to get a lower payment anyway ), or forbearance. XXXX XXXX XXXX  was listed at the very bottom of the website 's options but all they had to say about it was that it would combine all loan payments into one payment - nothing about how it would make the XXXX the owners of my loan and thus eligible for federal COVID relief. 

I sent an email for help to which I received the attached response ( they don't accept regular emails - you have to use their help contact form and you receive a response attached in an image file or PDF that you can't reply directly to - the emails I'm attaching are those responses ). As you can see, they never suggested consolidation as an option. I decided to bite the bullet and just pay up when I could. 

It was only a few days ago when researching student loan forums about the issue of potential loan forgiveness and what would be done with FFELP loans that I learned that I could have easily converted my loan to a direct federal loan at the beginning of the pandemic and I wouldn't have had to be paying anything all year and I wouldn't have been accruing any interest. Needless to say, I was extremely angry that Navient got ahold of money that could end up being vital for me if the worst case scenario happens ( not to mention that I could just have taken that money that I would have been holding back and paid a large lump sum to the principal before the payment/interest freeze finally expires instead of having a bunch of it go towards interest ). 

It's clear they're making no attempt to adequately educate their borrowers about the FFELP vs federally-held loan distinction, what our rights are, what our best interests would be, etc. Instead they choose to take advantage of the situation and the confusion to continue to extract interest and potentially push us into forbearance which will lock us into the perpetual debt cycle ( they literally sent out emails during this pandemic saying, " Reply yes to put your loan into forbearance '' which would LITERALLY put your loan into forbearance with a simple reply of " yes '' which I find to be, quite frankly, predatory behavior ). 

I'm attaching two PDF emails : one where I first asked for options for halting payments in my situation - you will see that consolidation was not mentioned at all. The second one is the latest response to my email complaining about their lack of information about consolidation, informing them that I had already applied for consolidation, and requesting a refund of my payments made over the last year. You'll see that the person responding doesn't seem to actually understand my email. She doesn't mention consolidation, and just proposes applying for XXXX ( clearly didn't read the part about me consolidating ... ). 

I've also included screenshots of their resources for halting/changing payments : their help portal as well as their little chat bot. I typed Cares Act into the chat box and the subsequent " conversation '' is what it spit out. Both resources never propose consolidation. If you do a direct query of consolidation you'll see that their response isn't really clear about what you're consolidating - you would have to know what it is to know what they're talking about and what the benefits are or to even ask for it.