Consumer complaint received 2026-01-07 00:00:00
Product: Student loan — Private student loan
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Trouble with how payments are being handled
Company: Stratus Financial LLC
State: FL

Complaint narrative:
My son XXXX started attending flight school a little over XXXX  years ago in XXXX, and also got a private school loan from a company called XXXX. For the XXXX  year and a half, his mother, XXXX, helped him manage the loan since they both live in XXXX. But, as the loan increased in interest and complications, I took over managing the loan for XXXX. I originally co-signed the loan with my son because his mother could not. When I took over helping with the loan, I found that the website was not easy to access. Apparently, the loan company had had several issues in the past several months with their portal login and had had to change the portal several times because their clients could not access it. In that time, they also sent my son emails informing him that he had late payments, even though their website was inaccessible and you could not make payments over the phone. In the current portal login, the user has to be redirected from a mortgage company website, and when you get to the main page, it does not inform you of your past payments or when the interest will increase. Even when I have made recent payments, there have been no records of how much I have paid, how much goes into the loan, or the interest of the loan, and although you can request a confirmation email when you go back to the page, the confirmation number you are given to prove you have paid can not be used. There is an XXXX sheet on the webpage that does have details about the loan, but it does not explain how payments are broken up or why certain times, the payments are divided into different amounts, even though we pay the same amount each time. When we have complained about this multiple times, there were no changes, and the same answers have always been given, that they would get back to us with the information corrected. Or they inform us that everything is mentioned on the loan we signed, but that isn't true either. For the past several months, someone from the XXXX ( we assume because of the area code that shows up on the unknown number ) has been calling from an unknown number demanding we pay for late fees and more interest. Each month, it is someone different. Sometimes we hear chickens and roosters in the background, or babies crying, or sometimes it is a man who will not discuss the situation and only repeats the same thing over and over again. During these calls and in a few of the emails, we are always informed that we have not made any payments and have had to show proof from our bank account that a payment was made to the loan company and that they received it. We also have shown proof from the emails that their website has sent that a payment was made with the confirmation number that does not work to them as proof. When we have tried to contact the main office, which is in XXXX, they rarely call back for follow-through with the information we need until they want to collect the payments. Then that person tells us the same thing we are always told. Another issue on the website is that you can not see if you owe late payments or any payments because it only ever shows the full amount of interest we need to pay and the complete loan amount owed. There is no clear documentation of said payments, and they only ever restate the contract that we signed. XXXX of the reasons why no complaints have been made sooner is that the flight school my son attends is run by a man who informed his mother that he is good friends with the person who owns the loan company XXXX, and she had been afraid that they would hold our son back from completing his courses if complaints were made. So now that his school courses are complete, I see no further reason not to report this loan company.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation