Navient does this delightful thing (read: terrible) where they group loans together into billing groups to make paying them easier. Sure having less due dates seems less stressful. You write one check and payment goes to a bunch of loans, instead of having to write a bunch of checks. But let’s be real, how many people are writing paper checks to Navient? No, we’re doing everything digitally.
On 10.20.17 the payment page on my Navient portal looked like this:
As you can see, most loans have a box where you can enter a payment amount that will go specifically to that loan. This gives the indebted a lot of control over where their payments go. However, there are a few loans (1-01, 1-04, and 1-05) that are paid together. Any payment amount for that group of loans just goes to all of those loans in the following order: outstanding interest for each loan in order, then principal for each loan in order.
On 10.28.17 my payment portal changed. I was no longer able to make digital payments to specific loans. I emailed Navient asking why. They didn’t respond. I emailed again on 11.1.17. They didn’t respond. On 11.2.17 I called to ask about why my payment portal changed and if they could switch it back. I spoke with someone who was not helpful at all. Ultimately they said they couldn’t ungroup my loans because I was enrolled in auto-pay. So I made the decision to go off auto-pay in order to have the loan I am making targetted payments towards ungrouped. He did this.
Loan 1-10 became its own loan and I was able to send my twice-monthly extra payment towards that loan. This is what my payment portal looked like on 11.3.17 (I did actually make a payment of $1,041.64 that time!).
By taking my loans out of auto-pay to make this change, I lost the .25% interest reduction on all my loans for about 10 days. It took about 10 days for my auto-pay request to go back into effect after the loans were ungrouped. It seems like a small amount, but it all adds up.
But wait! It gets worse!
Just as auto-pay went back into effect and I was about to set up my next targetted payment, all my loans go grouped back together. (I don’t have screenshots I was so angry). I had spent all that time off auto-pay for this change to not be permanent. It was infuriating. I really felt that Navient’s practices and policies were unethical and were an attempt to squeeze as much money out of me as possible.
On 11.15.2017 I called them again.
(side note: I prefer emailing so I have a record of the communication, but this time I wanted an immediate response).
I spoke to a lovely representative named Dave, who explained the whole situation to me. Apparently, the previous rep set up the ungrouping in a way that is temporary, but Dave could put in a request that would permanently ungroup my loans. So we did that. However, it’s going to take a few days for these changes to be pushed through to my portal. As of right now (11.19.2017 at 8:57pm ET) the changes have not gone through. I will update when they do. Hopefully, they will be permanent this time.
It pays to be persistent. Don’t let your loan servicer win. If you want something a specific way ask and ask again if you need to.
The Life of My Debt 
One thought on “Billing Groups Suck”