Consumer complaint received 2026-04-28 00:00:00
Product: Student loan — Private student loan
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Received bad information about your loan
Company: Stratus Financial LLC
State: FL

Complaint narrative:
My name is XXXX XXXX, and my son XXXX XXXX started attending flight school at XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX years ago in XXXX. To attend, he needed to get a private student loan, which he obtained from a company called Stratus Financial under the recommendation of the XXXX XXXX. I was the Co-signer for his loan. As the loan interest increased and things started getting complicated with Stratus, he asked me for help. XXXX of the problems was that we did not find the website easy to access. Before I began to help, his mom, XXXX, had been helping him, and they found that for the past several months ( From XXXX to XXXX of XXXX ), they couldnt use the Stratus student loan portal login and when they asked for help to get access either the links they would send them did not work or they would send us links to different website logins or to a mortgage company to access XXXX 's student loan and make payments. At XXXX point, we did not have a website to access ; instead, it was a link given to us through XXXX of the representatives ' emails that went directly into XXXX 's account. When we tried to access the link through a search engine, it would not work, and we began to worry that the representative had taken the account for his own. This was when we started to contact the main office in XXXX to make sure we were still paying Stratus. Stratus had told us that they had been having issues with their student portal login, and this was why they needed us to access XXXX 's account through the mortgage loan company. We found this strange. When XXXX ask me for help, it was because Stratus had started sending him emails telling him that he had late payments due for the months that he had not been able to make payments because their portal login was not working. We had asked if we could make payments over the phone or if there was another way to make payments, and they told us that it had to be through their website. We asked for the late payments to be removed because it was not on us that we couldnt make the payments. The other issue we had was that when we finally were able to access XXXX 's account through their mortgage website, it didnt show us the past payments ( we have screen shots from that time as proof that we have sent to Stratus ) or when the interest would increase. It also did and still doesnt show how much of those payments are going into the interest and principal of the loan. Instead, it shows random amounts taken out each month, but it never shows what the amount is going into. Even when recent payments have been made, it never shows how much we have paid, and although we can ask for a confirmation email that a payment has been made when you go back to the website, there is nothing to let you search with the confirmation number to prove what you have paid. Instead, there is an XXXX sheet on the webpage that shows details of the loan, but doesnt explain how the payments are divided or why. Its strange because we pay the same amount every month. We have called them and spoken to different people each time, even though they always tell us that we have an assigned person, but that person is always changed, and then we have to get started from the beginning. We asked them to explain the payments, and they will not ; they only state that all the information is in the loan contract, but it is not. We have also asked them to explain to us where in the contract it says it, and they always avoid the question and tell us they will get back to us. They never do. They have also continued to call us from unknown numbers demanding we pay for late fees and more interest. Sometimes they leave messages ; most of the time they do not. They have also continued to email us about the late payments even when we are discussing the issue with a representative. Sometimes they tell us that we have not made any payments, and we have had to show bank statements as proof that we have ( the bank account info is always blocked out ). We have also shown them confirmation emails from their website that we have made payments. The last issue we have with the website is that it does not show you the amount of the late payments we owe ; it just shows us the amount of interest and the principal amount we owe on the loan now, after the many complaints we have made in the past. The reason no complaints had been made sooner was that the flight school XXXX attends is run by a man who told his mom that he is a good friend of the person who owns the loan company Stratus, and she had been concerned that they would hold XXXX back from completing his courses if complaints were made. here was also a conversation with the owner of the flight school where he demanded that we pay the loan company to which we replied that the school had already received the money why would it matter to the school what happened with the loan company? To which the owner of the flight school stopped agruing with us and left the matter alone but this action only enforced the idea that the school might fail XXXX. Now however, that XXXX 's school courses are complete, we dont see a reason not to report the loan company Stratus , especially because we believe that they violate the XXXX, XXXX, XXXX, XXXX, and XXXX rights of the XXXX Student Borrower Bill of Rights.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation