Consumer complaint received 2016-08-03
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)

My Student Loans were in default. The {$200000.00} in loans doubled, doubled again, and continued to increase. My Student Loan Debt reached XXXX. There was no way to repay it. We took the loan companies to court and asked a Bankruptcy Court Judge to please see that repayment of the growing debt represented an undo burden - there was no way to repay it and the student loan servicers were not willing to help us. The judge said there was nothing he could do but that it was the most egregious case of negligence by lenders he had ever seen. When the loans were originally paid to us, off the top of every loan, XXXX was taken by the loan servicers before I received the checks to cover what they referred to as 'miscellaneous fees. ' With mounting debt, we waited for my husband to turn XXXX years old, drained his retirement account, and settled {$700000.00} with {$100000.00} cash. It was all we had. The Federal Loans from the Department of Education and XXXX XXXX, however, told me they would not accept settlements. Several were turned over to collection agencies for what the loan servicer ( Navient ) called 'loan rehabilitation. ' The Loan Rehabilitation companies are OWNED by Navient. I paid $ XXXX/month for 9 months to the Loan Rehabilitation Company. I was assured by Pioneer Credit Recovery that a portion of my payments went to pay down the interest and a portion went to pay the interest, the rest went to pay their 'rehabilitation fees. ' They lied. ALL the money I paid them went to pay their exorbitant recovery fee. No interest and no principle was repaid during that time. In addition, thousands of dollars of new debt was added to my loans when those loans exited 'rehabilitation ' and were retrieved by Navient . Most recently, I received a credit alert telling me that all the loans I have made on-time payment on for over a year ( $ XXXX/month ) saw increases to all of the balances. I called Navient. Navient can not explain to me what happened. They still do not know what happened and are refusing to fix it. What credit we were able to recover over the last 12 months was obliterated. I lost XXXX cherished points on my credit reports in one fell swoop because of Navient 's actions. And no one can tell me with any certainty what happened. TO ALL WHO WILL LISTEN : Student loans are a racket. This is fraud. Plain and simple. My husband is XXXX. I am XXXX. We do not own a home and can not own a home because of Navient 's repeated actions that damage any improvement we make on our credit reports. We have completely given up on the dream of ever owning a home again. I still owe {$160000.00} to Navient ( Dept of Ed and XXXX XXXX ) and I do not think I will every be able to repay it. Mystery fees keep replacing any principle I pay down, increasing the balances to their original amounts. We have been working very hard for the last 10 years toward credit recovery and every gain we make is wiped out by yet another mysterious action by Navient. And the Federal Government does nothing. Absolutely nothing. We have never felt so powerless. We really thought that is something this egregious happened, some entity would step in to help us. We were so wrong. I tell everyone, " If you can not attend college and pay for the whole thing yourself, with no loans, DO NOT GO. ''