Consumer complaint received 2017-01-20
Product: Student loan — Non-federal student loan
Issue: Dealing with my lender or servicer — Trouble with how payments are handled
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC. (WA)

I was steered into forbearance for the first few years of my loan repayment every time I called during financial trouble, instead of giving me options to reduce my payments. As a result I have used up all the forbearance allowed for my loans already. Throughout the course of the loan I would receive phone calls and correspondences claiming I was late on payments, yet I was on an automatic debit withdrawal program that THEY set up. They set up the withdrawal date after the due date so I received these calls and mail every month. I called Navient to point out the issue and have my debit withdrawal changed to a date before the due date of each month and even after several attempts to point out the issue to Navient it was still never fully resolved. 
In XX/XX/XXXX, I had a family emergency. I made XXXX trips to visit family and a change of jobs which created financial turmoil for me. I contacted Navient and took myself off of automatic withdrawal due to this financial hardship, otherwise I would have been left homeless. I was speaking exclusively with a woman, by the name of XXXX XXXX, who listened to my situation and advised me. I finally felt like I was talking to someone who cared. At this time I was asked to send in personal information to recalculate my payments based on my situation. I did this. While the company had this information and before they got back to me about what my new payments would be, my loan was sent to collections. When this occurred I was no longer allowed to speak to XXXX XXXX until my delinquency was resolved. I called multiple times to alleviate the extra accrued debt. The first phone call to collections, I was told to set up a payment and subsequent automatic debt withdrawal and that this would reverse credit degradation and put me back on track. I set up the payment for XX/XX/XXXX. I had to call back to set up the auto-withdrawal because I had just started my new job the week of the phone call and had yet to see what my paychecks were going to be like. I was extremely transparent with every member of Navient that I spoke to. I was asked to call back as soon as possible to set up the auto-withdrawal once I knew my income. I did this within 3 or 4 days of the first call. During this second call, I was told I was in delinquency again and that I had to pay {$1.00} to reverse that situation. I said okay, but questioned the man as to why and referred to my previous phone call and my payment set up for XX/XX/XXXX. He disappeared for ten minutes then returned and told me I was right and that I did n't have to pay the dollar. We then set up my automatic withdrawal payments through XX/XX/XXXX. Two weeks later I received a correspondence saying I owed {$1000.00} for three months of delinquency. I called Navient and reminded them of every conversation I had with previous representatives and they could not deny that those conversations took place. I did everything I could to communicate and resolve the issue. I did every thing asked of me during these calls to collections in order to resolve the debt. I left each phone call with the impression that I had done what I needed to do to reverse the situation. They acknowledged their mistakes, the paper trail of notes and recordings of these phone calls. Yet they did nothing on their end to alleviate the troubles their mistakes caused me. The representative I spoke to asked for {$860.00} immediately to resolve this and get me back in good standing. I reluctantly paid the {$860.00} and was told I would have to make additional payments of $ XXXX/month through XX/XX/XXXX ( on top of my regular $ XXXX/month payments ) to cover the accrued delinquency. The following month I received a cold call from Navient saying I was in delinquency again and that I would have to pay over {$900.00} to pay it off in full. So I did. I 've paid over XXXX towards my loans yet I still owe more than I borrowed.