Consumer complaint received 2016-02-22
Product: Student loan — Non-federal student loan
Issue: Can't repay my loan — Can't temporarily postpone payments
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC. (NJ)

I attended school in NY & NJ. I am unemployed despite exhaustive efforts to find employment since XXXX ; I have applied to XXXX positions in my field that I am qualified for & have documented all of my efforts. I am willing to pay my student loan debt. I have called Navient multiple times trying to work out a repayment plan. What I need is a deferment until I find employment. At such a time, I will be happy to begin repaying my loans at a reasonable & affordable rate. I am also requesting an Income Based Repayment plan, as I have with my DOE & Federal loans. Under those loans, my income based repayment plan requires $ XXXX monthly payments because that is what I can afford. During this time I am not being charged fines or other penalties for missing payments on my Federal/DOE loans, as I am with the private loans. I am requesting that all fees & fines that have been added to my private loan accounts be waived & removed, as they only ensure that I will have more trouble catching up on payments and being able to resolve my student loan debt. It 's my understanding that many of my private loans were bought by the DOE when regulations on student loans were first put in place. As a result, there are payment plans that are designed to make loan repayment possible. There is no reason why the same should not apply to my private loans. I intend to repay them, but Navient 's practices will ensure that my debt will continue to grow even as I make payments, and I will never be able to pay back the balance in this lifetime, which I intend to do. I was told by a Navient rep that my private loans can not be bought or refinanced by the DOE or any other loan carrier. I question the validity of this information. Navient states that I am no longer eligible for a deferment or forbearance, and that they wo n't give me a deferment based on economic hardship either. They have told me they have repayment options in order to help me make payments but this is false because the only repayment options they have offered require that I enroll in automatic withdrawals of payments from a checking/savings account, in exchange for a monthly payment that is still unaffordable without any income. They set my monthly payments close to {$500.00}. As I am unemployed, if they try to withdraw money from a checking account without funds, I will face fines from my bank & Navient will dis-enroll me in this repayment program. THIS IS NOT A SOLUTION AND IT DOES NOT DEMONSTRATE A WILLINGNESS TO WORK WITH ME so that I can repay my student loan debt. Instead, the customer service & collections reps engage in practices that rely heavily on bullying & threats that result in my physiological and emotional distress. I have a great credit score currently, and have always been on time or early with all of my other bill payments. I am responsible. It is unjust for my credit to be ruined by a company that is not making any genuine effort to work with me so that I can pay off my debt. I offered to make a partial payment of {$50.00} ( which I would have to borrow from someone who has no financial obligation to me ) in the hopes that my accounts would not be sent to collections and that my credit could be preserved. Navient denied this & said that even if I make partial payments, if they are n't in the full unaffordable amount they have designated ( or an equally unaffordable amount that only covers some of the interest ), I will default & my credit will be destroyed. These are predatory tactics. The student loan debt crisis facing multiple generations of people in this country is a widely known fact. It is made worse by the unscrupulous debt collection practices of companies like Navient, which was formerly XXXX. I am well aware of the multiple & varied legal actions these companies face & I do n't intend to be another victim of their vicious and corrupt practices.