Consumer complaint received 2025-03-03 00:00:00
Product: Student loan — Private student loan
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Trouble with how payments are being handled
Company: Nelnet, Inc.
State: IL

Complaint narrative:
My son recently graduated from XXXXXXXX XXXX. 

He had 2 loans with a company called XXXX XXXX. XXXX XXXX was bought out by XXXX, a Nelnet company. In his last year, we took out a third loan with XXXX since that's where the other two loans were. 

When he graduated I was on him about making payments on time, credit score, etc. since I was the co-signor. He was vigilant and promptly went to XXXXXXXX XXXX website and created his account via their dashboard. He began making payments on time and all was good. However, I as the co-signor started getting late notices from XXXX. When I asked my son if he was making payments he said yes and showed me his bank drafts to prove he was. The late notices kept coming until a delinquency notice saying he was 148 days past due on a loan. We initially thought it was just correspondence crossing in the mail. Then I received a notification that my credit ( XXXX score ) was hit very badly and that my credit dropped to XXXX!! We investigated and realized there was ANOTHER PORTAL that XXXX uses for some reason. The third loan was the same dollar amount, interest rate and due date so we thought it was one from his originally created dashboard. It was not and was a stand alone directly with XXXX that we had to create another account to see. All the while my son never received a call, nor emails nor paper correspondence on this note because he hadn't created an account on their separate portal. However, I was receiving paper notifications as the co-signor. They had my email but I never received notifications or calls. 

I called to ask what was going on and was furious about my son 's and my credit hits. I spoke to 3 people with no resolution, initially. They stated that loans they buy are on a separate portal even though they are the custodian and that another portal exists for loans direct from XXXX. That manager stated that they were working on merging all loans to one dashboard and conceded it was something they're looking to complete soon. I explained the situation about my and my son 's credit and asked that they re-age the loan to show us in good standing and that we would immediately make a payment so that reporting shows us in good standing. Since the damage was done with past reporting they offered NO solution nor willingness to help fix this oversight. I asked for a higher manager to call. I asked if the had my number on file but she had a wrong number... it was an old work number I had supplied 4 years ago. She said well that's on me to keep up to date. Again, no contact with my son in any form. 

The higher up manager called and I explained the situation again but he claimed they did their due-diligence and they have document call ATTEMPTS with no contact, nor anything sent to my son and I certainly didn't receive any calls as they didn't have my correct number but did have my email. He didn't want to re-age, nor explore any ways to bring us current as good customers. I asked what would happen if we just decided not to pay him considering our credit was already screwed up by them. He said he couldn't advice me on that. I said the last President was giving out government loan forgiveness ' like candy and we're stuck paying them because we have a private loan ... that's fair ( not! ). Knowing student loans can not be vacated even during bankruptcy we made payments to bring the account current but the sting of their poor portal design, contact with us and the disgusting credit hit is unforgivable. I let them know I would probably pursue legal action but thought I would try this route first. 

Overall, we're honest, hard working people that took out loans to seek a better station in life for my son. EVERYTHING in this country revolves around good credit and I pushed for years to get mine in the XXXX arena only to have this ONE agencies eff us to the point of poor credit risk now. In and of itself that's disgusting and should be reviewed as well. I ask that XXXX be held accountable and take responsibility for some of this, catch up our reporting to repair our credit and fix their portal garbage. When I sign onto my bank account I see my entire relationship with ALL accounts on one screen. They don't invite me to sign off... then sign on to see my savings account. It doesn't make sense. Please help.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation