Navient being sued by the Feds

[hightower]

Interesting.  The remainder of my loans are still with Navient.  The article is kind of vague on exactly what Navient allegedly did though.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/business/dealbook/student-loans-navient-lawsuit.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&click Source=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

[hightower]

Much more detailed

[childay]

Not surprised.  Navient / Sallie mae was absolutely horrible.  I find their rebuttal that this is some sort of political scheme amusing.  They have a long history of sheer incompetence and terrible customer service.  Whether they did anything illegal I have no idea but my experience was very negative.

[Zaphod]

I havent had a servicer that didnt practice these tactics, and SM/N was one of them, ACS the other, but I think they've already gotten in trouble.

[Dilaudidopenia]

Absolutely disgusting.  And I'm sure none of those poor borrowers are going to recoup any of that which was stolen from them by these incompetent bureaucrats.  I had similar issues with FedLoan before I privately refinanced.  I remember the time something that they did somehow flipped all of my loans into "default" and I was receiving automated scary emails saying pay up or else.  No one in their "customer service" department was able to help and they even said that they had no mechanism to prevent a report being sent out to the credit bureaus (wtf?!?!).  Luckily no report was ever sent.  It took daily multiple emails and phone calls from me before they rectified the situation.  Never received an apology.

[docnews]

This is why I refinanced in residency. Navient was intentionally making it hard to pay EXTRA on my loans. It was getting bad enough where I informed them I was recording the phone call (just like they do) and you should hear how mad that makes them. I consider myself very financially educated in comparison to my peers. I know how to do the math and follow the rules. The most egregious screw up is they changed my auto debit amount without notifying me. Basically they stole right from my bank account (luckily I keep enough buffer to pay for life). I read them back their own policy word for word on how many days they must notify me of such changes and they still did not budge. I never chose Navient and they know that. They have no incentive for customer service. Prior to this I always thought the school loan complainers were just irresponsible people. The monopoly that our government created needs to be nuked. Now I've worked with DRB and Elfi and they haven't even required 1 phone call. Refi now!

[ndayev6]

I had the same experience with my wife's student loans. At that time it was Sallie Mae. She had several loans with them but they never kept them in separate lots. I had to specifically ask them to separate them on the website and after they did it became clear that all of the extra payments were automatically tunneled to the lowest interest rate loans. Horrible customer service.

[AMedStudent]

Hey, is there any one federal loan servicer that sucks less than the others? I'm getting ready to consolidate in a couple months, and they say upon consolidation I get to select my servicer. I'm just curious who has had good or bad experiences and with which companies? I've already crossed Navient off my list. My loans are with MyFedLoan and the 2 times I've had to interact with them in the last 5 years, I've found them to be totally incompetent but not necessarily malicious.

[Zaphod]

AMedStudent wrote:

Hey, is there any one federal loan servicer that sucks less than the others? I’m getting ready to consolidate in a couple months, and they say upon consolidation I get to select my servicer. I’m just curious who has had good or bad experiences and with which companies? I’ve already crossed Navient off my list. My loans are with MyFedLoan and the 2 times I’ve had to interact with them in the last 5 years, I’ve found them to be totally incompetent but not necessarily malicious.

Click to expand...

I think mohela has a nice interface/web site that makes things like extra payments, etc...very easy to set up. Some dont. However, theyre all pretty terrible.

[childay]

AMedStudent wrote:

Hey, is there any one federal loan servicer that sucks less than the others? I’m getting ready to consolidate in a couple months, and they say upon consolidation I get to select my servicer. I’m just curious who has had good or bad experiences and with which companies? I’ve already crossed Navient off my list. My loans are with MyFedLoan and the 2 times I’ve had to interact with them in the last 5 years, I’ve found them to be totally incompetent but not necessarily malicious.

Click to expand...

Mohela or Fedloan is much better than navient.  I dealt with all three between the spouse and myself.

[PPD]

I've used THE/mygreatlakes/northstar. Never had a problem.

[Layd]

Navient has led to nothing but frustration and at some points, anger, with regards to my student loans.

It's been so bad I cannot wait to refinance even if at the same rate just to get away from them. They are borderline criminal. Read the reviews on consumeraffairs.com.

Almost every single time they take action on my loans, something has been messed up. It has gotten so bad I am seriously wondering if their CS reps are instructed to deceit and rip off the customer versus them being extremely ignorant.

Let's give a few recent examples:

2016 I received my annual letter to re-certify for IBR, which I did before the deadline. Received a notification from Navient that everything was as should be, and no further action required on my part. Well, come time for my 1st payment and I see that I have a huge payment due equal to the standard repayment amount. Navient did NOT renew my IBR and as my account was drafted for my prior IBR monthly amount, I was left with a past due balance for almost 2 months until Navient could rectify this cluster. They assured me there would be nothing reported on my credit (as if I should believe them).

Forgot to mention, once my IBR lapsed and went into standard repayment, my interest capitalized. And I also lost 2 months worth of IBR repayments for PSLF (I am not doing PSLF however). It took multiple phone calls to Navient and probably hours on the phone for them to even understand what had happened.

After that fiasco, I had realized that I would be better off on RePAYE (I had previously asked their CS if switching to RePAYE would be advantageous for me and was told no, as the government does not pay interest after 3 years - ignorance). And I was well within my right to switch plans. However, I was seriously concerned about switching payment plans given Navient's prior performance. Reluctantly, I went through and applied online at studentloans.gov. As per the law, I was required to take a 1 month forebearance with minimum payment equal to my prior IBR monthly amount or $5. I selected monthly IBR amount to help keep interest down. About 2-3 weeks later I received a letter from Navient stating that I could not switch plans until I called them as I needed to make a payment, as I have previously mentioned. Ok, fine, I knew this already and had already instructed them on what to do when I applied for RePAYE. So again, I called, and was told in order to switch plans I had to make a payment of $4400 (I ************************ you not, to this day I have no idea how the rep came up with this number, as it is ever well above my standard repayment amount). After informing the rep (more than once) that all I had to pay was my monthly IBR amount (or less, if I chose) she took my payment over the phone as if there was never any issue. Once again, raising the question in my mind whether this was another tactic by Navient to extort money, hoping they are dealing with people who don't know the rules. Anyways, I was told everything was in order and to call back once the payment goes through to confirm that my switch to RePAYE was being processed correctly. Again, I thought this was odd, why should I need to call to confirm they are doing their job correctly (something they are presumably doing for many others).

I wasn't going to take any chances and called back after the payment processed. This time, I actually received a CS rep who was well educated and actually seemed like she had my interest in mind. She confirmed my plan change was processing but to my amazement, I was informed that the prior rep had incorrectly set up my required forebearance for 2 months instead of 1! Another genuine Navient error, or tactic to prolong forbearance and interest accrual?

Navient is the worst company I have ever dealt. I did not detail the time during residency when they failed to adequately inform me of my IBR re-certification and then took it upon themselves to automatically deduct the full standard repayment amount from my bank account (auto draft) without my approval. I take partial responsibility for that as I should have been more proactive in ensuring my re-certification was done in a timely manner.

Out of my sheer frustration with this company, I read many of the reviews on consumeraffairs.com only to see many others having the same issues as I have.

 

[Travis @ Student Loan Planner]

One reason I think why student loan consultants such as myself have jobs is bc of how bad the loan servicers are. You shouldn't have to pay for competent help and guidance in terms of student loan repayment strategy, but consider that Navient gets a flat fee from the government for providing service to each account. Hence, there's no incentive to help you the borrower. They get some economics from collections on past due accounts I believe, but none of that involves providing good customer service.

Navient told a client of mine they were on REPAYE when they were actually on PAYE and we had to challenge them on the phone about it until they corrected their mistake.

Consider this, the rep you're talking to has had a few weeks of training and just got off the phone with a borrower who makes $20,000 a year and has $15,000 in student loans and is past due by 2 months. Then they have a call with a highly educated physician with $300,000 in debt in her second year of fellowship and they're expected to provide great guidance on REPAYE vs IBR and PSLF? They're never going to be able to do that.

Contrast that w a call center like Vanguard where the company makes more money the more you have with them, and they assign flagship reps to the high value customers who have more training and expertise than the standard new hires. To be fair to the loan servicers, I think they have a somewhat impossible job based on the money and incentives Congress allotted to them.