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<blockquote data-quote="rickyb" data-source="post: 4952689" data-attributes="member: 56035">Anthony&nbsp; Fiorentino:&nbsp; &nbsp; Well,&nbsp; Ralph,&nbsp; we&nbsp; filed&nbsp; these&nbsp; lawsuits&nbsp; because&nbsp; I&nbsp; realized&nbsp; that&nbsp; what&nbsp; was happening to me was happening to thousands of people. What happened is I tried to enroll in an income-driven&nbsp; repayment&nbsp; plan,&nbsp; and&nbsp; because&nbsp; it&#039;s&nbsp; based&nbsp; on&nbsp; your&nbsp; income,&nbsp; you&nbsp; have&nbsp; to&nbsp; provide documentation of your income, your family size, [and] number of dependents each year, once a year, to your&nbsp; loan servicer. And like I said, these are&nbsp; private entities that get millions of dollars from&nbsp; the&nbsp; Department&nbsp; of&nbsp; Education&nbsp; to&nbsp; service&nbsp; the&nbsp; loan.&nbsp; Well,&nbsp; what&nbsp; I&nbsp; was&nbsp; noticing&nbsp; was&nbsp; for&nbsp; three years in a row, for some reason, my application to renew my plan was rejected for one reason or another. Sometimes I would be told that the income documentation was insufficient even though I followed all the instructions on the application to a T. Sometimes I would be told, you checked this box here but this box here and those are inconsistent, so we can&#039;t accept your application. Or sometimes the loan servicer would just delay processing the application until months after the plan expired because it only runs for one year at a time.&nbsp; And&nbsp; what&nbsp; many&nbsp; people&nbsp; don&#039;t&nbsp; know&nbsp; is,&nbsp; when&nbsp; you&#039;re&nbsp; kicked&nbsp; out&nbsp; of&nbsp; one&nbsp; of&nbsp; these&nbsp; income-driven repayment plans, all of your accrued interest&nbsp; capitalizes. So let&#039;s say you have&nbsp; a student loan of &nbsp;&nbsp;$10,000 principal and $2000 interest. What they&#039;ll do is if you don&#039;t renew the plan by the annual deadline, you get kicked out of the plan. [Then] your monthly payments go up thousands of dollars, and&nbsp; now&nbsp; they&nbsp; take&nbsp; the&nbsp; $2000&nbsp; of&nbsp; interest&nbsp; and&nbsp; they&nbsp; tack&nbsp; it&nbsp; onto&nbsp; the&nbsp; principal.&nbsp; So&nbsp; now&nbsp; you&nbsp; have $12,000 of principal balance and now you&#039;re going to pay interest on that interest for many years to come. And this is one of the ways that the debt starts to spiral. So we had to bring these class actions against these companies to ensure that that wouldn&#039;t happen anymore. And we found some of our plaintiffs by working with Alan Collinge, who you know Ralph; he&#039;s featured in the Scared to Debt documentary. It&#039;s wonderful six-part series that really gives a lot of great information on how we got to this point. It&#039;s directed by Mike Camoin.[URL unfurl=&quot;true&quot;]https://secureservercdn.net/198.71.233.254/c03.434.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Ralph-Nader-Radio-Hour-Ep-386-Transcript.pdf[/URL]</blockquote>

[QUOTE="rickyb, post: 4952689, member: 56035"] Anthony Fiorentino: Well, Ralph, we filed these lawsuits because I realized that what was happening to me was happening to thousands of people. What happened is I tried to enroll in an income-driven repayment plan, and because it's based on your income, you have to provide documentation of your income, your family size, [and] number of dependents each year, once a year, to your loan servicer. And like I said, these are private entities that get millions of dollars from the Department of Education to service the loan. Well, what I was noticing was for three years in a row, for some reason, my application to renew my plan was rejected for one reason or another. Sometimes I would be told that the income documentation was insufficient even though I followed all the instructions on the application to a T. Sometimes I would be told, you checked this box here but this box here and those are inconsistent, so we can't accept your application. Or sometimes the loan servicer would just delay processing the application until months after the plan expired because it only runs for one year at a time. And what many people don't know is, when you're kicked out of one of these income-driven repayment plans, all of your accrued interest capitalizes. So let's say you have a student loan of $10,000 principal and $2000 interest. What they'll do is if you don't renew the plan by the annual deadline, you get kicked out of the plan. [Then] your monthly payments go up thousands of dollars, and now they take the $2000 of interest and they tack it onto the principal. So now you have $12,000 of principal balance and now you're going to pay interest on that interest for many years to come. And this is one of the ways that the debt starts to spiral. So we had to bring these class actions against these companies to ensure that that wouldn't happen anymore. And we found some of our plaintiffs by working with Alan Collinge, who you know Ralph; he's featured in the Scared to Debt documentary. It's wonderful six-part series that really gives a lot of great information on how we got to this point. It's directed by Mike Camoin. [URL unfurl="true"]https://secureservercdn.net/198.71.233.254/c03.434.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Ralph-Nader-Radio-Hour-Ep-386-Transcript.pdf[/URL] [/QUOTE]

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