Consumer complaint received 2017-10-17 00:00:00
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Struggling to repay your loan — Problem lowering your monthly payments
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC.
State: DE

Complaint narrative:
The basis of my complaint/inquiry started with a phone call to Navient this evening to help me understand exactly what was happening with my student loans. I have been paying {$590.00} for a while now and I called to find out what some things meant on my account that I had seen on their website. By my own admission, I had never really explored their site before this weekend. I always just went on and made my payment without really looking into all the account links throughout their page. 
Basically, I was questioning what some of the charges were on the account and the rep was very helpful in explaining them. I asked her how much of my payment is going to interest and how much to the principal balance. She seems a bit confused and said, your interest payments are {$620.00} per month so you arent even making enough to cover the interest now. When I asked her why my payment was less than what was needed, she explained that the plan I am in has increasing increments so I wont likely hit the principal for many years. I was confused as to why it would be set up that way. To me it just didnt seem logical to pay all these years without really making a dent in the balance. I continued to question why my loan was shown to be pain in 30 years when I thought I was on a 10-year program, she explained thats what my program is not the 10 years. To say this was a bit of a shock was an understatement. She went on to say that my payment is set to rise again in about 10 months. When I calculated this, I will not pay these loans off until I am XXXX years old. I will likely pay my mortgage off before my student loans! 
I also asked about getting a better interest rate to see if that would help the problem. She said that my rate is set by the government and that I might have had high rates prior to the consolidation because they average them out. We talked for a bit and she offered some suggestions for better management. None of them really lower the payment, they increase it but its still a 30-year loan term and none are favorable for me or provide any incentive to pay more than the agreed upon amount. Theres no incentive to pay extra or try to pay off early because I cant come up with a large enough sum to impact the interest and hit the principal. From what I understand, I can send in thousands of dollars and its likely only take a few dollars off the principal due to the interest. 
I dont understand how this is a favorable loan for a borrower? For example, I send in an extra {$80.00} a month on my mortgage and Ive been told on their website that from doing this over the last few months, I knocked 3 payments of the length of my loan. I was anxious to try something like this for my student loans but it sounds like it would be a total waste of extra money that would be better spent on another bill. 
In hindsight, if I had been better educated in the beginning, I likely would not have consolidated. I would have worked to pay the smaller loans off first then chipped away at the bigger ones. I was led to believe the consolidation was in my best interest. Obviously, it was not. A while after that, I called to see if I could get a more reasonable payment, and thats where this {$590.00} loan payment came from. Obviously, whatever this program I am in is not the best for me either. In exploring their website, none of the program seem favorable to students upon graduation. How are you supposed to pay these loans off? I have the financial means to make a monthly payment but its as if I am being punished because I found the job that I took these loans out to study for! 
I am lucky that I have a finally found a fantastic job that Ive been working at for about a year and half, but I will never reap the rewards of this job with this type of loan setup on my education loans. I am not unwilling to pay my debt. I have no problem with paying a monthly payment ; how is this interest even allowed? I think the really amount of my loan debit is half to of what my total balance is these rest is all interest. Is there anything I can do to have more favorable options available to me? Can this ridiculous interest be capped so that when I making almost a {$600.00} payment, some of this money is reducing the loan balance? How is paying 20 years with of interest and 10 years worth of principal payments a fairly structured loan?

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation