Consumer complaint received 2021-02-23
Product: Student loan — Private student loan
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Trouble with how payments are being handled
Company: Meritize Financial Inc. (CA)

I obtained a student loan from Meritize in XX/XX/XXXX. The payments were deferred until several months after graduation and were scheduled to begin in XX/XX/XXXX. I signed the " autopay enrollment '' on XX/XX/XXXX and received confirmation of it via email from Meritize. When my funds were disbursed, Meritize withheld {$8700.00} of the total amount I had signed the contract for. After nearly one month, I finally received the funds after getting the Chief Sales Officer involved in the case. In XX/XX/XXXX, my former school advised that I needed to contact Meritize. I contacted them and was told that my payments were late. They had apparently tried to contact me using old contact information ( which had already been updated with them a few months before ). I said that they payments were supposed to be automatically withdrawn per the autopay enrollment that I signed in XXXX. Meritize had no answer for me as why this did not happen. I was told to contact their loan servicing company, XXXX, for more information. I contacted XXXX and was told that they did not have the form, yet they had all my bank account information. I asked how they would have that if they did not have the autopay form I filled out and the representative said they would have no other way to have that information. I made a payment at that time as I wanted to research with my bank and confirm that no other money had been withdrawn. After the phone call I forwarded the autopay enrollment form ( from XXXX XXXX to both Meritize and XXXX. The next month XXXX XX/XX/XXXX XXXX, I noticed that the autopay had once again not been deducted. I contacted XXXX and was told that the payment I had made in XXXX was not necessary, as there were no payments due. I asked why and the representative could not tell me. I called my contact at Meritize to ask why there were no payments due. She did not answer, and I left a message on her voicemail. I called XXXX back to confirm the date of the next payment due and was told payments would be due in XX/XX/XXXX. I repeated that that was indeed in one year, XX/XX/XXXX, and the representative confirmed. I emailed my contact at Meritize, advising that I had left her a voicemail earlier and that per XXXX, there were no payments due until XX/XX/XXXX. After that time, I received monthly email statements from Meritize/XXXX, showing that no payments were due. In XX/XX/XXXX, I received several emails all at once from MeritizeXXXX advising that my payments were due in XX/XX/XXXX and were now several months late. I also received a certified letter in the mail. I emailed Meritize and included the email statements from MeritizeXXXX from XX/XX/XXXX through XX/XX/XXXX showing that no payments were due. I also noted that no one from MeritizeXXXX  had contacted me prior to this time which they obviously would have done if any payments had actually been due. I advised them to correct the issue immediately. They did not respond and instead put a negative mark on my credit report.