Just in case you missed it, we did a Facebook live where we discuss your student loan servicers.

Check it out for the most update to date information on your student loan servicers and the need to know information they won’t tell you when you graduate!

Nick:        Welcome to Episode Three of Student Loans, Ask Me Anything, with Marques McBride. My name is Nick Bentley, and I’ll be your host today. What you are about to hear is a recording from August 9th, 2017. What we discuss in this episode, is Student Loan Servicers, how they effect you, and why they may, or may not have your best interest in mind when it comes to communication with them about your repayment plans. We’re going to discuss Betsy DeVos, and what a single payer loan servicer would mean for you, if that gets approved. And we’re going to discuss some of the outstanding lawsuits against Navient, and how those can effect you. And what other services are out there that you may want to switch to, and then why they are not willing to help you through the process, and why it makes sense for them to keep you right where you’re at. Enjoy.

Nick:        All right guys, welcome to this week’s Ask Me Anything. With me always is Marques McBride.

Marques:  Here I am.

Nick:        in the house, ready to go.

Marques:  Yes.

Nick:        And today… Again guys, this is the Youth Student Loan Center — we help students lower their Student Loan payment, get in to new repayment plans, all of that stuff that we focus on. But we are doing this to answer a lot of questions, and give some insight into some of the things that they just don’t tell you about when you graduate college, and when you go through the repayment process, and after you come out of your grace period — what are your options, and all of that.

So guys we’re live right now, so go ahead, if you have any questions, chat them in. But the subject of today is going to kind of be two-fold.

Number one, I want to talk to you guys about Betsy DeVos, who is the Director of Education under Donald Trump. And what’s been transpiring with what she’s got going on. And then also why what she’s got going on matters, and how it can effect you.

Because it would, and it can potentially all of us, in a pretty big way.

Marques:  Yes. It can.

Nick:        So, Marques why don’t you go ahead and tell them about what was happening in the Student Loan industry — A) where we’re at currently; why Ms. DeVos was trying to do what she was doing. And then what the effects, and potential impact that it could have on you, your student loans, and what’s kind of transpired with some of the other guys.

Marques:  Yes. You know, when it comes to student loans, you have the Department of Education, but they don’t want to do all that work on collecting on the debt, on all of these different loans and stuff, so they got these different companies that does the collecting for them that are called “servicers.”

Nick:        OK.

Marques:  OK, there’s all kinds — you got Navient, Fed-Loan, Nelnet — I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of Sallie Mae somewhere —

Nick:        Yes

Marques:  — back in the day. They’re not there any more — they’re called Navient.

So — they have these different companies that collect on the debt.

Nick:        So you mean, you go get a loan for your student loans, like for dorm or books or whatever they give it to you for — it’s not actually not actually the government that is collecting the debt from you after you graduate; they basically… They contract out these other companies to collect from you.

Marques:  Exactly. You know, they’re hired by the Department of Education.

Nick:        OK.

Marques:  They collect on the debt.

So what she was proposing was that she gets rid of all the different servicers and there’d just be one select servicer, one select —

Nick:        — that was a government entity.

Marques:  — that was a government entity.

So the problem with that is — a lot of people that have difficulties reaching their servicer and trying to make a payment and trying to get the right bank, or they’ve been misinformed, or had some sort of just bad customer service experience or whatever — it limits them, because they don’t have an option to switch to a different servicer; they’re just kind of stuck.

So if you have a bad relationship with that company and they always give you heck every time you call — you’d be stuck, and it’s kind of bad.

Nick:        What do you mean by — a bad relationship?

What would something like that look like? Because a lot of people… The word servicer just means the people that are actually collecting on your debt. But you come out, and you have to pay these guys; you start getting bills in the mail from Navient, Nelnet, Fed-Loan, whoever — and can you explain what a bad relationship would be like?

What would you look out for if you were paying those guys back? And what are some of the struggles that you might come across dealing with some of the different ones out there?

Marques:  Right. So…

A lot of times, if you call in… I’ve heard from different personal stories, even with people that we help, that they’re not able to get someone on the phone; they’re always redirected different places. Hold times — things of that nature. When they get somebody on the line, they’re not really informative. They end up with a higher payment than usual.

You ever called a place — a company — you call and you get that first person in customer service, and they don’t really know exactly what’s going on. They’re kind of feeling their way through, they’re kind of sounding like a robot they’re reading a script?

Nick:        Sure.

Marques:  But you call back, the same day or the next day and you get that one person that’s just absolutely amazing, that goes the extra mile, and things of that nature. So it’s kind of iffy.

But right now, how there’s different servicers — you can consolidate and end up with a different servicer if you’re not pleased with where you’re at right now.

Nick:        OK.

Marques:  If that would have happened, you would have been just stuck with one.

Nick:        Or if… One of the things that I heard about, yesterday actually — I think you were telling me about this; we were going to chat about this today — was the fact that, these guys at Navient, were actually knowingly putting students into the wrong repayment plans.

And why and how that is such an unethical thing to do today, and B) how it really screws people out of the options available.

I don’t know if you want to talk about Navient, and maybe give a little back story to that and then —

Marques:  Let’s talk about it.

Nick:        If people do have Navient — A) how can they overcome what’s going on right now? What do they need to know about it? And C) what can they do to get away from that?

Marques:  So this is the thing, servicers — their main job is to collect on the debt. That’s what they’ve been hired for; that’s how they get their money, and that’s what they do. So it’s not in their best interest for you to get a low payment, or a zero dollar payment, or your loans forgiven. So if you’re calling them for help — the first mind for them is, “OK, sales. I have to get some kind of payment out of them.”

The story was that there were some representatives that — when a person calls in, instead of them advising them how to save money, or get a lower payment, or what have you, they were either A) place them on forbearance for a year…

Mind you — you only have 36 months of forbearance time rights, and if you use forbearance, the interest is accruing, so the balance is getting higher.

Nick:        There you go.

Marques:  So advice like that, where it seems like it’s a help for you, but it really is a vested interest in them.

Nick:        Yes. Because they want to continue to hold the note.

Marques:  They want to hold it, and they want it to grow.

Nick:        Yes. Exactly.

Marques:  There was another story where — a person calls in — hey I’m going through it; can I get under something that’s based off of my income? — and the way that they project all the information to them, that caused them to have a payment that’s higher than —

Nick:        Than it needed to be.

Marques:  — than it needed to be.

Nick:        Their job is to get the money. So get the money baby, and let’s move on.

Marques:  Yes. And so they’re not… You’ve got to understand their motive. Not talking bad, or anything like that, but that’s just what they’re paid to do, is to collect under that.

So you’ve got to understand that.

So people — when they call these places and they get these type of experiences — they look for — OK, I need help. Where’s the real help? And if this would have monopolized to just one servicer, there really wouldn’t be any options to escape.

Nick:        Outside of that.

Marques:  If that servicer that they chose was or something like that.

Nick:</