Consumer complaint received 2017-01-19
Product: Student loan — Non-federal student loan
Issue: Dealing with my lender or servicer — Trouble with how payments are handled
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC. (IN)

The details of the " smart option student loan '' issued by Navient were never fully disclosed from the beginning. Now that I am out of school with around {$65000.00} in private loan debt on top of {$25000.00} in federal loan debt I make a payment of {$1200.00} per month which is twice my mortgage payment. I have contacted Navient multiple times to either get my interest rate reduced, ( XXXX of my loans are at 9 % or higher ) or extend my payment plan to longer than 10 years all of my requests for information have either been denied or skated around with answers that do not help me. I have no options for longer payment plans or reducing the interest rates on my loans according to Navient besides putting them into forbearance. However, I was informed that I can reduce my interest rates by a whopping 0.25 % if I switch to auto pay. " The Smart Option Student Loan '' has no options for longer repayment periods, this was never disclosed to me when I signed up for the loans. They were marketed as being easy loans to pay off in ten years with other repayment options available. There are no other repayment options available on this loan besides forbearance according to Navient. At the time of getting my loans my father ( cosigner ) was out of work which caused my interest rates to jump 3 % -4 % from one year to the next. Now that I am paying the loans by myself and have released my cosigners I should have the option to lower my interest rate or make principal only payments since my parents paid on the interest in advance while I was in college. This has also been puzzling to me, all through college my parents made " interest only '' payments on these loans until I started paying on them after I graduated. These payments were explained to us as advanced payments on the interest that would kick in after I graduate. What happened to all of these interest payments? Navient should be allocating my payments each month to pay more toward the principal of my loans instead of the interest that was supposedly pre-paid. Another issue I have with Navient is the way they allocate your payment each month across all of your loans. I would like to pay less on the principal balance of my loans with lower interest rates and instead pay more on the principal of my loans that are at 9 % interest or above. You do not have this option with Navient which automatically distributes a set amount of your payment to each of your loans based on your repayment plan. I have tried to get answers from Navient about allocating payments and changing how my loans are paid each month with no results. Navient 's customer service is absolutely horrible, their " call center '' is in a non-english speaking country and the people there barely no any answers as they just read scripted answers to the most asked questions. Overall I can afford my loans and I realize it is my obligation to pay them back so I am going to keep making my payments on time. Right now I need to take home more money each month so I can save for bigger purchases but I have no options to lower my payment through Navient. If I could just extend my repayment period form 10 to 15 years, or pay the majority of the principal off on my loans that have 9 % interest or greater I would have a much lower payment each month. If I would have know there was so much hidden information and fine print applied to the " Smart Option Student Loan '' I would have never signed up for one of them. I want Navient to step up and give me more options for repayment.