Consumer complaint received 2016-11-07
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with my lender or servicer — Don't agree with fees charged
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC. (OR)

Navient, the loan service institution that manages my federal student loans has repeatedly moved my loan out of Income Based Repayment ( IBR ) status, using a variety of rationalizations and excuses, upon which interest becomes capitalized to principle, in a series of ledger entries. Since I entered into the IBR program three years ago, my account balance has INCREASED about {$7000.00} in a period of just 3 years due to capitalized interest, which is NOT supposed to happen while a loan is in IBR. 

I did not know I had to renew the application annually, thus I did not provide them with a form, which gave them the first opportunity to capitalize interest. Rather than inform me of this, and help me avoid this occurrence, they used stonewalling tactics and obfuscation, which strongly implies this was a deliberate action on their part. 

I also filed for bankruptcy in XXXX annual period, upon which they put the loans on " hold '' without notification to me, despite the fact the student loans were NOT part of the bankruptcy petition to the court to have debts discharged, thus NOT affected by the bankruptcy. Navient used this as another opportunity to capitalize interest. 

IBR loans are not supposed to be subject to interest capitalization, according to the XXXX : " If your monthly payment is less than the amount of interest that accrues, any unpaid interest is capitalized ( added to your loan principal balance ) IF you no longer qualify to make payments based on income or you leave the plan. '' I did NOT voluntarily leave the plan, and I have ALWAYS qualified for IBR, aside from not filling out a form I did n't know existed. They made NO attempt to prevent this by proactively informing me, and when I tried to get information from them about the status of my loan, and what had happened to it, they obfuscated and stonewalled, acting exactly like an aggressive, combative, non-communicative collection agency. They were not helpful, but antagonizing and did not explain their actions. 

All of this could have been easily avoided had they spent less time in " collections '' mode, and more time in " helpful '' mode. They could have saved themselves hours of harassing phone calls ( daily, even on weekends ) if they had simply tried to help me from the outset to avoid the change in status of the loan. My income had NOT gone up during this period, but actually went down. During this period of three years I 'd lost employment, lost my housing, and I was receiving unemployment benefits at XXXX point. All of the financial stress and threatening phone calls from various creditors caused XXXX, and great XXXX. Navient took advantage of this and acted without properly warning me of their impending actions. My situation was exploited. 

I also am concerned that the 25 year period to have the loan discharged gets reset each time they take the loan out of IBR status. I will be paying until I am XXXX, as it is, but if the 25 year period gets reset each time they change the status, I will be on my death bed paying this loan from a paltry social security income. 

Navient has also not followed through with repeated promises to send me the account ledger with explanations of all actions they have taken with my loan since its inception. They simply promise but do not follow through. This has been going on for months. At this juncture, I can only conclude the news reports I 've read about deliberate attempts to increase principle balances is happening to me. It is obviously an internal policy of Navient to aggressively use tactics to capitalize interest and/or find reasons to charge fees. They have done this in my case by frequently switching the loan out of IBR, using any excuse that comes along, rather than working with the borrower to serve the borrower 's interests.