Consumer complaint received 2017-03-12
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with my lender or servicer — Trouble with how payments are handled
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC. (FL)

XXXX originated as the third party on this account and continuously put us in payment plan that had no end in sight. We continued to struggle make payments for the past 15 years, but made all our payments except only had to take a forbearance once due to a job loss. We struggled without savings and without retirement knowing we were getting close to the 20 year forbearance. Now our loans are with Navient and things are not any better. When we called recently to find out exactly how many more years we had to pay until our loans were forgiven, they said " oh you are not eligible for forgiveness because you are not enrolled in that program. We can enroll you in that program now if you like, and in 20 years you will have forgiveness as long as you are in good standing. '' Not only do we face 20 more years of payments, and no more savings, or retirement, but our kids are now faced with taking loans for school and more. The cycle never ends with the deceptive practices. Never once did we assume our loans would not be forgiven after 20 years of payments, and especially since the principal amount of the loans has been paid, but due to the way the system works the wording and the structure of their repayment assistance you never payoff your loans and you keep paying more and more interest. We are now faced with our payments going from {$650.00} to over {$900.00} for the next 20 years, even though we have paid over {$110000.00} to date, which was the amount of our original loans. According to Navient we will now pay the same amount in interest as we had in original loans, and we will have done so over 40 years. This practice is unfair for those who have made payments for decades and continue to do so, only to find out that our remaining loans would not be forgiven after 20 years. Never were we advised about having to be in a special program for forgiveness after 20 years, actually the only willingness the groups are readily able to do is lower your payment, but never telling you the long term ramifications. This is worse than the housing market scams, I am not looking for any special penalties or refunds, or monetary damage. At this point I would like to just have my the remainder of my loans forgiven. That is only fair. I have paid over the original loan amount since I started paying, but apparently that only goes to interest. Doing simple math even though we paid more that this, we owed {$110000.00} originally, and we paid about {$600.00} per month for 15-17 years at least. This means we have paid around {$120000.00} to these companies. Somehow the principal has never gone down ... it actually went up ... and we wo n't be forgiven once we even reach 20 years. I have paid and been responsible for paying back the monies, and only to find out I have been stabbed in the back. Once again I do not seek damages, but just forgiveness for the remainder of my loans as I assumed would happen at the 20 year mark anyways. I ask for forgiveness now please, before I am forced to make even more Ludacris $ 900+ monthly payments.