Credit reporting during rehab?

[Anonymous]

Hey! So while I’m disputing with Navient, I set up the rehab process to get my “defaulted loans” out of collection. The thought behind this was if Navient doesn’t fix their error, I would have to rehab my loans and all this disputed time would be wasted. Anyway my defaulted loans were reporting monthly on the first with negative status. Now that I’m paying the rehab payments (1st was 4/15), there was no update to my reports on 5/1.

I was hoping they would update it and say paying as agreed or something. Do they do that? Or do they continue reporting a negative status the entire time? Or just not report at all? My rehab is with Great Lakes (now called Ascendium), if it makes any difference. Will it continue to hurt my credit and drive my score lower if they don’t update to paying, or if they do update with more negative statuses?

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Don't quote me but I think it's going to stay the way that it is until you finish the rehab and the default is removed. Once the new loan reports you get a boost and again if you get lates wiped.
It's good to start the process if all other efforts end up failing, but to be honest I don't think it's going to matter because I don't see a solution taking the almost-year that rehab is going to take to finish.
I do think that if you don't hear back from the advocate by early afternoon you should call them. If you don't have results, go ahead and file that complaint with the Ombudsman. It will get the official process started and the complaints take a while.
If you can afford legal advice on this whole situation, that would be a good idea to look into as well. I did mine without it but mine wasn't in default. The more complicated their mess, the less likely they'll want to clean it up imo. Hopefully tomorrow will go well for you.
Also, I know the collection fees seen like a small thing in the big picture right now, but don't let them walk away from fixing this in full. This means the collection fees should but be added to your loan. This could easily be hundreds of dollars. If your goal is paying the loan off in full, this will only extend this time. The tax refund should also be applied to the loan, and since it's likely more than the interest payments due, make sure they apply it to your principal. This is a long way down the road but I think it's important that you don't let them cut corners because I've found it you do it'll only lead to having to clean things up later.
When I filed my CFPB complaint and got my solution from my servicer, not only did they give a proper solution, the next few calls I was sent almost directly to a specialist who uncharacteristically bent over backwards to make sure any new problems were fixed. They can fix it if they want to.

[Anonymous]

Thankfully I already filed a case with the DoE Ombudsman! Last Friday when the woman who answered the phone in the Navient Advocate’s office told me that Navient didn’t see fault and my case hadn’t been assigned an advocate after all, I contacted the Ombudsman group. She “didn’t think this warranted an advocate,” so I escalated to the Ombudsman group! Of course then on Tuesday an Advocate called and said she was assigned to me.

Tomorrow afternoon the Advocate is supposed to call me after her review of my files. I really hope she sees my perspective. But if not, at least the Ombudsman group is already in possession of my documents and will also be taking a look.

I’ve been researching consumer protection lawyers who specialize in credit reporting and have experience with student loans. I believe I am right and it is not my fault if studentloan.gov didn’t send my application or there was some sort of glitch and it got lost. I can’t be held accountable for their errors. All I care about is that I applied, received confirmation, and then received an email at the end of the certification period saying what the new payment would be unless I re-applied.

I am concerned that they won’t want to help because of trying to figure out what I actually owe. A year of monthly late fees, the collection fee I’ve already been assessed ($2,500-ish), and who knows what else. My tax refund was applied but I will definitely look to make sure it didn’t go to interest because I know that isn’t allowed!

[Anonymous]

Here’s my pity party post:

This is so frustrating to me because I’m basically chugging along alone in life. I’m a single mom to a 11 year old and we have no family nearby. I started a business after grad school that has been very successful and is poised to grow well. The only reason my loans were in a zero payment is because I was my grandpa’s power of attorney and he had dementia. He needed to go into memory care as he was too aggressive to live at my home and I’m all he had.

Before I was able to get him declared incapacitated he gave away all of his resources and sold his house for basically nothing, so he had very little to pay for his care and his decisions made him ineligible for any state medical assistance, and Medicare doesn’t pay for that. Social security was only $1700 and his needs cost me $5-6k per month. The burden fell to me because I’m all he had, and he couldn’t live with us. So I had to divert everything I could, prioritize which of my own bills to pay each month, and provide for my kiddo while keeping my business afloat. I had to use all of my business savings and that makes me feel horrible because I’m literally a profit strategist! I teach my clients to become profitable and to not do what I was doing. But thankfully I had it because he couldn’t live with me or I would have had to quit working to care for him full time.

My grandpa passed away at the end of February, and so I have caught up my own bills and paid almost all of my debts, aside from student loans. When he died I had a $947 electric bill because I had to keep putting it off or paying a tiny amount (and I didn’t know my furnace motor was dying so it became SO inefficient!!).

Life is getting easier financially now that I’m catching up; and i’ll be able to pay a lot toward my loans now. I’m already hitting my other set of loans 4x the minimum payment. Those are also federal loans, but the messed up set was FFEL or whatever and the good set is Direct.

I just feel frustrated that I have this mess to clean up with Navient because I feel like I did the right thing and took the right steps, and I had to do it to be able to take care of my daughter and my grandpa. But I feel like I’m being punished for Navient’s mistake and it is really disheartening. I just want to be assured that I can rent a nice place for my kiddo and I if my current landlord decides to give me a 20 day notice any time soon!!!