Rant: Navient and stonewalling customer support
Posted: February 23 16, 5:03 pm
These Navient [expletive] are the scum of the earth.
For anybody who doesn't know, Navient is a private loan servicer for federal student loans. My wife has a balance with them. In times of personal and health related stress, she made some late payments and was assessed late fees. That time is now over, the account is up to date, and all payments have been made in full on time for over a year now. Nonetheless, several months ago a late fee of $6 randomly appeared on the account. Since it was a small amount, we just went ahead and paid it, but the same fee again appeared on the next monthly bill. After spending a total of probably 3 hours on the phone with several different representatives, I finally got one who said they would correct the issue so that the previous payment would cover the late fee. Instead, this person apparently made some kind of computer error, and the next bill came back not with a $6 late but now with a $300 late fee. After spending many more hours on the phone, sometimes getting a representative that would promise to correct the issue, no correction was made.
I finally talked to a supervisor who again attempted their standard long hold times with stonewalling procedure but ultimately told me to write a letter to headquarters documenting the problem. I have done so. Of course, they did not bother to respond to the letter until a month later when I spent another hour or so on the phone with them. The response is a form letter, the only content of which is, "We have reviewed your account and unfortunately the late fee(s) you referenced in your inquiry cannot be removed from your account because your late fees were assessed in accordance with your promissory note."
This comes after I had included in my letter copies of my statements showing that the account originally had no outstanding late fee and included printouts from their website documenting how the previous payment allocations had been altered resulting in this new late fee. They did not respond to one bit of the substance of my letter.
Anyway, I've probably lost everybody already with this screed, but I wanted to ask for advice.
Anybody have any experience or idea about what to do if you just get completely stonewalled by customer service dealing with an error they made? In my opinion, the charges violate the terms of the loan contract, but if they just refuse to do anything about this, I'm kind of at a loss. I could contact a lawyer, but I'm guessing that would end up costing much more than the $300 at stake. In my fantasy world, we get to declare the whole loan invalid due to their failure to maintain proper record keeping.
For anybody who doesn't know, Navient is a private loan servicer for federal student loans. My wife has a balance with them. In times of personal and health related stress, she made some late payments and was assessed late fees. That time is now over, the account is up to date, and all payments have been made in full on time for over a year now. Nonetheless, several months ago a late fee of $6 randomly appeared on the account. Since it was a small amount, we just went ahead and paid it, but the same fee again appeared on the next monthly bill. After spending a total of probably 3 hours on the phone with several different representatives, I finally got one who said they would correct the issue so that the previous payment would cover the late fee. Instead, this person apparently made some kind of computer error, and the next bill came back not with a $6 late but now with a $300 late fee. After spending many more hours on the phone, sometimes getting a representative that would promise to correct the issue, no correction was made.
I finally talked to a supervisor who again attempted their standard long hold times with stonewalling procedure but ultimately told me to write a letter to headquarters documenting the problem. I have done so. Of course, they did not bother to respond to the letter until a month later when I spent another hour or so on the phone with them. The response is a form letter, the only content of which is, "We have reviewed your account and unfortunately the late fee(s) you referenced in your inquiry cannot be removed from your account because your late fees were assessed in accordance with your promissory note."
This comes after I had included in my letter copies of my statements showing that the account originally had no outstanding late fee and included printouts from their website documenting how the previous payment allocations had been altered resulting in this new late fee. They did not respond to one bit of the substance of my letter.
Anyway, I've probably lost everybody already with this screed, but I wanted to ask for advice.
Anybody have any experience or idea about what to do if you just get completely stonewalled by customer service dealing with an error they made? In my opinion, the charges violate the terms of the loan contract, but if they just refuse to do anything about this, I'm kind of at a loss. I could contact a lawyer, but I'm guessing that would end up costing much more than the $300 at stake. In my fantasy world, we get to declare the whole loan invalid due to their failure to maintain proper record keeping.