So I live in Puerto Rico and was happy to see an email titled, "contact us if you need payment help due to recent natural disasters." So I called them and it turns out the offer was for "disaster forbearance", which allows you to not make a payment for up to 3 months, but the interest that accrues would not be capitalized (rolled back into the principal of the loan). I was on auto-payments, but signed up anyways just in case. I asked them not to cancel my auto-payment.
Well, I check a week later and see that my auto-payment was indeed canceled. No worries, I thought, I'll just make a manual payment. My hope was that my entire payment would go towards principal since it was an extra payment I was not required to make. Well, I check the payment and it turns out that not only did it not go all towards principal, but LESS of my payment went towards principal than before the disaster forbearance. Huh???
Apparently what happened is that when the auto-payment was canceled (against my wishes), the .25% interest rate discount I was receiving for having auto-pay was also canceled. So my interest rate actually increased when I signed up for disaster forbearance. How big of a deal is this? Well, had I not signed up for disaster forbearance and instead just skipped my November payment, taken a late fee, and made a double payment in December, I would have been better off than I am having signed up for disaster assistance.
I called Navient to explain to them how their "disaster assistance" has hurt me, instead of helping me. The call was escalated several times and eventually all I got is a "we'll see what we can do". To me, this is insanity. How Navient can possibly advertise "disaster assistance" only to increase someone's interest rate and punish them for having signed up just kind of blows my mind. Here's my payment history to show the difference.
TLDR: If on auto-pay, Navient's "disaster forbearance" will eliminate the .25% interest discount you get, leaving you with a payment that reduces the amount going towards principal.
Submitted November 21, 2017 at 02:12PM by michugana http://ift.tt/2zq4evz
