Consumer complaint received 2018-02-25
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Trouble with how payments are being handled
Company: GREAT LAKES (CA)

Hello, My complaint is with regards to my payments on 3 of 6 accounts I have with Great Lakes loan services. I am currently on deferment and I am aggressively paying towards decreasing the interest and principal on 3 unsubsidized loans I have with Great Lakes. These loans are named XXXX  XXXX, XXXX XXXXXXXX and XXXX   XXXX. 

Unfortunately, I do not have a record of the amounts owed for each of these accounts prior to making my first payment on XX/XX/XXXX ( below ), so I do not know if the money was allocated as I had authorized. 

On XX/XX/XXXX I authorized the following payment with clear acknowledgement from the representative of how the money was to be allocated with verbal read back : XX/XX/XXXX payment confirmation # XXXX of total payment of {$1000.00}. {$960.00} towards interest on tXXXX XXXX with {$34.00} towards principal on XXXX XXXX 

As of XX/XX/XXXX the balances for each account was as follows : XXXX XXXXXXXX Total Balance : {$6000.00} [ Principal Balance ( {$5400.00} ) + Interest Balance ( {$610.00} ) ]. 

XXXX XXXX Total Balance : {$8700.00} [ Principal Balance ( {$8700.00} ) + Interest Balance ( {$12.00} ) ]. 

XXXX XXXXXXXX Total Balance : {$4100.00} [ Principal Balance ( {$3800.00} ) + Interest Balance ( {$240.00} ) ]. 

OnXX/XX/XXXX I authorized the following payments with clear acknowledgement from the representative of how the money was to be allocated with verbal read back : XX/XX/XXXX payment confirmation # XXXX of total payment {$1100.00}. {$870.00} towards interest ( XXXX XXXX : {$610.00}, XXXX XXXX : {$12.00}, XXXX XXXX : {$240.00} ). {$320.00} towards principal ( XXXX XXXXXXXX : {$200.00}, XXXX  XXXX : {$120.00} ). 

OnXX/XX/XXXX I logged on to my account to see if the authorized payments had processed and found that the allocation of money was arbitrarily allocated. 

As ofXX/XX/XXXX the balances for each account was as follows : XXXX XXXXXXXX Total Balance : {$5600.00} [ Principal Balance ( {$5400.00} ) + Interest Balance ( {$190.00} ) ]. 

XXXX XXXXXXXX Total Balance : {$8200.00} [ Principal Balance ( {$8200.00} ) + Interest Balance ( {$12.00} ) ]. 

XXXX XXXXXXXX Total Balance : {$3800.00} [ Principal Balance ( {$3800.00} ) + Interest Balance ( {$3.00} ) ]. 

Nothing was paid towards principal on XXXX XXXX, which should have been {$120.00} as I requested as well as my request to completely pay off in full all interest ( {$610.00} ) on XXXX XXXX as of XX/XX/XXXX. 

Instead, {$470.00} was allocated to XXXX XXXX, which is not what I requested and {$40.00} was allocated to XXXX XXXX, which was also not requested. 

I was told over the phone that there would not be a problem fulfilling my request because there were no restrictions on the way I chose to allocate my payments. I purposely requested to pay the total interest accrued on the three accounts ( XXXXs XXXX, XXXX and XXXX ) in order to avoid any underlying complications. 

The way Great Lakes has distributed the money was unauthorized and causes confusion and frustration in determining the progress towards repaying my school loans.