Federal loan servicer: who's best, who's worst? (Navient, FedLoan Servicing, Nelnet, Great Lakes)

[theWUbear]

Hi all,

When going into income-based repayment for federal student loans and stating you are interested in PSLF, studentloans.gov asks you to choose your student loan servicer. The options are Navient, Nelnet, Great Lakes Educational Loan Services, Fedloan Servicing (PHEAA). This question hasn't been asked here since 2003, in a thread that is no longer relevant due to a change in the choices.

Obviously, the choice of servicer can make a huge difference in a person's quality of life - a terrible company that you have to micromanage to make sure things are being done correctly vs a helpful company that is on top of your loans and your payment plan.

Anyone know which is best? Which has a reputation as terrible?

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[RangerBob]

I wasn't aware you had a choice...

I do know if you submit PSLF-certification then your loans will be transferred to FedLoan once you submit those forms (as long as the program sticks around--Trump is proposing eliminating it). I have my loans with them. They've overall been pretty good, but I do still have to double check things. They messed up my consolidation loan, which in their defense I complicated a bit by adding a loan to the consolidation loan (which was allowed and easily done online), but they forgot to adjust the interest rate again (which would've been in my favor). I tried explaining relatively simple math to multiple phone reps and then multiple supervisors, and tried asking the Dept of Education for help (they just said "well, you submit the consolidation form to us but we just forward it to the loan servicer who processes, to call them...) It ultimately took getting my med school's financial aid director involved, who had a contact higher up in Fedloan, who then took a closer look and agreed with my financial aid director and I that the consolidation was not handled correctly. They then retroactively adjusted everything, which was great. It was a bit annoying, but otherwise everything else has been smooth enough.

I never think good things when I hear of Navient, as that's a branch of Sallie Mae.

Great Lakes sound vaguely familiar. Maybe I had my first set of Federal loans with them in med school but they got transferred. If it's who I had then they were pretty well known for good customer service, but otherwise I don't know anything about them.

My wife has loans with NelNet. She loves them and they seem to have better hours. We haven't run into any problems with them.

This is all from a sample size of 2, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Hopefully others can chime in about their loan servicers. You can do a google search too, but most of what will probably pop up are issues people have with the companies--people rarely comment on their loan servicers and put up glowing reviews, though you never know.

 

[mvenus929]

Navient isn't a branch of Sallie Mae, it is Sallie Mae. They changed their name something like 4 years ago. That's who all of my loans have been through and the only issue I've had is them sending me a bill for a full payment when I had submitted paperwork for PAYE. That was easily taken care of with one phone call.

 

[calvnandhobbs68]

I've never had problems with Navient so far, but i just set them up to autowithdraw loan payments monthly at the beginning of residency so havent had that much interaction with them. I also was not aware hiu could choose your loan servicer.