1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

I just caught student loan servicer Nelnet lying. Again. Earlier today I tried to re-certify my mother’s Income Contingent Repayment plan for the loan she took out for me to attend college. Janaya, the representative I spoke to at StudentAid.Gov, explained to me that all income driven repayment plans are on hold due to a pending court decision. She went on to tell me that StudentAid.Gov has no control over what we pay on a monthly basis; that they can’t even see what our monthly payment is. She told me to contact our loan servicer, Nelnet, to make any changes in our payments once the court decision comes down. We’ve been repaying this loan for over a decade now and every year we hear the same thing from Nelnet: that they are merely the servicer of the loan and have no control over how much we pay. Every time we get a piece of mail from Nelnet, my mother’s jaw clenches and she handles the envelope like bomb squad tech handles a suspicious package. Every year we have to fight Nelnet so that we can have an affordable monthly payment. They always open by telling us how they can’t go any lower than their initial calculation, which usually varies from $700-800 a month. My mother is retired. How they can calculate that she can afford to pay this much every month is beyond me. It’s only after we’ve pressed the issue for days, sometimes weeks, that they give us a monthly payment between $300-350. Yet despite the fact that we’ve only ever negotiated our monthly payments directly with Nelnet, they have always insisted that they have no control over how much we pay. Their narrative has always been that they can only accept what StudentAid.Gov or the Department of Education will allow. If what Janaya said is true, then this is a flat-out lie Nelnet tells its borrowers to scam them into paying more. And I haven’t even mentioned the interest rates yet. Like I said - we’ve been paying back this loan for over a decade now. In that time, the principal loan amount has not dropped a dime. My decision to go to college has become, funnily enough, one of my biggest regrets. And the primary reason for that regret is the experience of dealing with student loans servicers like Nelnet. I feel like I should have had a lawyer with me when applying for these loans. I was sold on taking out loans by being told how manageable they would be. The reality of those loans has been anything but manageable. “Waking nightmare” is definitely a more apt description. Please look into this and do whatever you can.