Consumer complaint received 2015-08-27
Product: Student loan — Non-federal student loan
Issue: Dealing with my lender or servicer — Trouble with how payments are handled
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC. (MA)

This complaint applies to Navient servicing my private + public loans. These are existing loans in repayment that I used to pay for my education at XXXX. 
I am leaving the country shortly for military activation. For over a month, I 've been trying to get Navient to apply a military deferment to my loans. Despite repeated communications, for the entirety of this time I have been evaded, misled, and outright lied to. As of now, XXXX/XXXX/2015, there is still no deferment on any of my loans. 
My first request was sent in through Navient 's online document system. I uploaded my orders and text stating that I was applying for a deferment. After over a week, I received a series of documents from Navient stating that SCRA benefits had been applied to my account, with no information on deferment. 
I called Navient 's military service line that day. I was told that although they received the orders, they had n't understood them as a request for deferment - apparently, they did not bother reading the clearly stated request sent in with the orders. I was told that if I sent in an email requesting deferment, it would be processed within XXXX business days, maximum. Since my loans were in various states of repayment at this time ( expiring from IBR, coming out of forbearance etc ) I wanted to make sure that Navient 's delays would not punish me with " missed '' payments or harm my credit. I was assured that when the deferment was applied, my outstanding payments would be folded back into the principal of the appropriate loan and nothing would be delinquent. 
Following that phone request, on XXXX XXXX, I sent in another request per the rep 's instructions, via email. I attached my orders and detailed my request in the email. Over the next week, myself and my co-signor got email notifications about delinquencies on my private loans as I had allegedly missed payments. I called in again to the military service line during this period and was assured that we could ignore those notices and that the deferment would shortly be applied. 
After XXXX business days, there was still no deferment. Navient continued to warn and threaten re : late payments. I called military service on Monday, XXXX XXXX for a XXXX time. I was told that the XXXX business days promise was just an estimate, and it was just taking them longer. 
At this point I was becoming frustrated with the entire process and I noted to the rep that while I had received repeated spoken assurances about the state of my deferment request, I had not received anything in writing backing up that my request was even being considered. This practice is very disturbing to me : Navient has the power to arbitrarily decide that they had never been considering my deferment application in the first place, and all the paperwork would back up their case rather than the truth. 
In response to this concern, the rep assured me that the servicer handling my deferment request would send an email that day verifying that they were in fact processing it. That email never arrived. I then sent an email to Navient detailing my frustrations ; they did not respond. 
During the following day on the XXXX, I received another batch of notifications from Navient, once again stating that SCRA benefits had been applied, with no information about deferment. Again, delinquency and late payment notifications were sent as well. I then called a XXXX time. 
This time I was told that they had messed up internally with the request, had to reprocess it, and now needed a further XXXX business days. I got no answer on why I had n't received the promised email, but I was promised a followup phone call on the status of my loans. That phone call never came.