Consumer complaint received 2019-01-08
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Received bad information about your loan
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC. (TX)

Navient is the current servicer of my consolidated federal student loans. I have had constant barriers to my ability to apply for and subsequently recertify my income based repayment plan. The current complaint deals with their admitted failure to contact me about recertifying my REPAYE plan in XXXX using the provided and up to date contact information. As a result, they have converted my IBR/IDR into a standard repayment plan and failed as well to notify me of such until a past due balance had accumulated. 

The navient website directs customers to the studentloans.gov site for loan information. The studentloans.gov site directs customers to the navient website for information. When I called to speak to navient about the issue, despite admitting to the notification oversight, the rep said that the only way to move forward is by applying for a forbearance and then reapplying for an IBR/IDR. He listed the conditions for the application which include impacting loan forgiveness for on time payments. I indicated that it was my understanding that by missing these erroneous payments and then going into forbearance it reset or potentially deleted the clock on the possiblility of forgiveness in the distant future. I was not ok with this option given their oversight. 

I was then told that my only other option was to pay them {$6000.00} and still apply for a new IBR/IDR. Given the unsatisfactory nature of either, I indicated that I was only accepting the forbearance under duress and that I wanted that fact noted on my account. This is not the first time that I have been placed in an almost identical situation by navient. It took so many months ( 4-6 months as I remember ) for them to get my initial application to me and then processed that I was also forced under duress to file for forbearance. 

I should stop being surprised every time, but I am also very unhappy about being told by my loan servicer that they dont actually do anything associated with repayment plan applications. Theyre happy to file a forced forbearance, however, each time I am instructed that the only way to obtain the application is by calling some third party system automated system that has no possible way of speaking to a live agent. It is my recollection that for my initial application it took 2-3 failed attempts from this system before I finally got ahold of the right person at navient that was authorized to actually service my loan. Last year I seem to remember that I was contacted in advance to recertify, but still faced difficulties with obtaining the necessary application and getting it processed. 

Navient has been explicitly informed during every phone call I have ever made to them as well as in writing with every piece of mail I have sent them that I do not accept any form of incoming electronic or telephone communications from them. All contact should be through USPS or other snail mail. This is to specifically combat the unreliability of telecommunications due to everything from changing spam filters to my financial ability to maintain internet or telephone service. Additionally, it helps me to combat the abusive and manipulative practices of companies like navient that like to hide pertinent and timely information in things like html emails that would not even be loaded in my email to begin with since security settings prevent it. ( Not to mention navient emails go directly to junk and will never be placed on a safe list because they should not be contacting me using that route anyways. ) I do not accept phone calls from numbers not known to me. If a message is not left, the number is immediately blocked. Any businesses that ever text my cell phone are immediately blocked. I have no idea if navient is included in this list because trash phone calls from unprofessional reps and robocallers are a ubiquitous problem that I handle by blocking. Even if I was willing to accept these trash phone calls, I dont hear well and do not like to use a telephone for this sort of business. 

Navient has been repeatedly informed and sometimes agreed, sometimes indicated that its not legal to do that, sometimes just said it doesnt matter theyll contact me however they like and its my problem if I dont get the information. Today, the rep agreed and once again noted on my account the correct method for contacting me. But he also took the stance that it doesnt matter if they contacted me or not, its my problem and not theirs that the repayment plan was changed. He did indicate that there was no way that filing a forbearance or being late on these erroneous payments would impact future eligibility for loan forgiveness programs. Based on my understanding, it seems that is likely a blatantly false statement, but I will have to reread all of the terms of my loans and repayment plans to verify. 

This behavior is unprofessional. It is unacceptable. It has now met the definitions of chronic and habitual. This sort of abuse of students borrowers on such a wide scale should not be allowed to continue. There is a very real risk that navients very shady practices in loan servicing will result in my loans defaulting. I live in fear that an already dismal amount of debt will create such incredible and undue hardship for the rest of my life that I may never be able to recover. 

It is time for navient to start honoring their responsibilities to the USDOE and the students with the misfortune of having their loans serviced by navient.