Consumer complaint received 2016-04-28
Product: Student loan — Non-federal student loan
Issue: Dealing with my lender or servicer — Received bad information about my loan
Company: Genesis Lending (MI)

I am a previous student that attended a XXXX XXXX XXXX campus in XXXX PA. I was enrolled in XXXX XXXX and graduated on XXXX XXXX. I was more or less told that in order to attend the school that I would have to take out " The XXXX XXXX '' in order to have all my finances for school set. My finacial advisor roughly 1 week before I was set to leave for school contacted me and told me this. He stated that it would be in my best interest to find a qualified co-signer just in case my credit was n't enough. My grandmother said that she would be willing knowing that she may not be needed. She did not sign any papers of any sort all they had from her was contact info and a SSN. The financial advisor contacted me the next day to tell me that everything was set. Once I started class they pulled all of us students out who had the Genesis Loan and told us that we would actually have to make payments while attending class, which was not discussed prior to applying for the loan. And as your organization knows by know what they did to students who could n't make payments on time. I was fortunate enough to find a local job ( without the schools help ) to help make ends meet. I worked 6 days a week just to get by. After my 3rd month I contacted Genesis and I told them that they needed to work with me on my payment amount because i was not going to be able pay the amount that they were aquiring. Which happen to be upwards of {$300.00} a month, they actually did agree for me to pay {$80.00} a month after going back and forth on a number. My grandmother contacted me after this was all said and done making me aware that she was actually placed on the loan as a co-signer without any idea of this happening. I called Genesis back once again extremely upset about this demanding that my grandmother be dropped as a co-signer. They told me then that would not be an option. Once I graduated and moved back home, I was contacted and made aware that my payments were going to skyrocket to roughly {$310.00} a month. This was on top of the federal loans i was now making payments on as well. After one year I contacted them again about possibly refinancing the loan with a balance at the time of around {$21000.00} and a 14.9 % interest rate. I was told that my loan did not qualify to be refinanced because it was not a credit based loan. So I then asked why I needed a cosigner and was not given a straight answer. Then again I told them to remove my grandmother from the loan, and they actually did at that point. At this point I began to search for financial institutions to possibly buy out the loan to help lower my monthly payment. And this was the time that there were whispers of a federal lawsuit against XXXX and no body would touch the loan. Then I found out that the loan was going to be sold to XXXX, this is the absolute worst company to deal with when it comes to private loans. Customer service was horrible, they too would not give you straight answers. Still they would not work with me on refinancing the loan. I saw the letter come out about the money being put aside for the relief for those students like myself who took out the Genesis private loan. So I decided to call XXXX to touch base in regards to the situation and they still to this day tell me that has nothing to do with the private loans and that is federal loans only. In XXXX XXXX I was actually able to have XXXX XXXX buy out the remaining balance on the loan. Over the 4 years of paying on the loan I did not make a dent in the balance on the loan at all. Taking out that loan itself has set me back so far in getting my families financial life on track. Now that I have basically cut the payment down to roughly a XXXX or what i was paying I can breather a little better these days.