Consumer complaint received 2017-02-15
Product: Student loan — Non-federal student loan
Issue: Can't repay my loan — Can't decrease my monthly payments
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC. (MI)

The majority of my student loans are with Navient ( formerly XXXX XXXX ) My issues with them started during the borrowing process but have come to a blowing point in repayment. Unfortunately when I went to college my parents were unable to pay for my education being the XXXX child to parents of an advanced age. I also did not qualify for a large amount of federal aid either because they were just above the income bracket. This required me to take out private loans if I wanted to further my education. However, given my age and lack of credit I did not qualify for loans on my own and it was required that I have a co-signer, my Dad co-signed for me although given his age and debt to income ratio he should n't have been able to. When I started repaying my loans, my Dad helped because he was still working and things were semi manageable as I had been able to enter into a payment plan via XXXX XXXX ( pre Navient transition ). When my Dad retired a year ago is when many of the problems started, I called Navient to let them know that my co-signer was retiring and he would not be able to help me with my payments since my parents would be on a fixed income. I was told ( in XXXX 2016 ) that they understood and that they would make note of that on my file and that it should n't be an issue. Fast forward 6 months and I call to re-enroll in my payment plan, on one particular call was re-routed 6 different times " to get me to the right person that could help me '' the lady I spoke to was n't terribly nice, I had to explain to her ( as well as all the others I spoke to my situation which meant repeating myself a lot! ) that I was calling to re-enroll in my payment plan, that there were notes on my file regarding my cosigner etc. I told her I had spoken to someone in XXXX about my co-signers retirement and had been told by the lady I spoke to that they understood and it would not be a problem. The lady that I was speaking with regarding re-enrollment told me that no one at Navient would have told me that, as they would lose their jobs. She heavily insinuated that I was lying and said that my co-signer had a legal requirement to help me with my loans whether he was retired or not. She then told me that they needed to re-asses my financial statement as well as my parents if I was going to attempt a payment plan, and in true Navient fashion she pushed me for a payment that day. Angrily I hung up and called back when I had the appropriate financial docs and a statement prepared at this point they had instated something called account managers which I learned later change monthly. After quite a bit of phone tag with Navient and my parents to coordinate all the appropriate info, everything was in and I waited a couple days for them to go over the numbers. When I called back to speak to my account manager, I was not eligible for the payment reduction and would have to pay the full payments of my loans ( {$1000.00} per month on a {$3200.00} per month income and mind you, these are not my only loans just the ones through this company ) I asked why that was because my wife and I 's debt to income was very nearly in the red and I was told by my account manager that her supervisor would not allow it as I had already been in a plan twice ( 1 plan =1 year of reduced interest and payments ) I explained to her that I could n't pay the total amount and have enough left to pay other bills and she said that on the credit union statement that they had received from my parents there was a $ XXXX IRA listed on the bottom and they were counting that as income. I let her know that it could n't be considered income since it was a retirement investment and their safety net, to which she replied that it showed that they could make the payments. I told her that that did n't seem ethical or make much sense since my debt to Navient alone is $ XXXX, it would only scratch the surface.