Consumer complaint received 2022-10-04
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: MO
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Sub-issue: Trouble with how payments are being handled

Complaint:
I have two student loans in repayment with AES. One is subsidized, the other is unsubsidized. I have been paying on these two loans through AES for about XXXX  years. For the first XXXX years or so, they would apply my monthly payment to both loans. One loan amount is larger than the other. The larger loan had a corresponding larger amount of my payment applied to it. 

However, around the beginning of this year, XXXX, I noticed that they stopped applying my payments to both loans. AES started to only apply my payment to one loan, thus letting the interest just build and build on the other loan. This would mean that I would never finish paying of my loans, as one just continued to grow rather than getting paid down.

On their website, they do provide a page in which it states that I can choose which loan to make a payment towards, or how to apply my payment to my different loans. However, They group my two loans together, so I can only make a payment on both of them at the same time. But, again, they stopped applying my payment to both loans. They only apply it to one, and let interest build on the other. Thus making me pay much more in the long run and increasing the total amount of money they will receive from me in the long run.

I have called them once and emailed them through their website 3 times about this. They have gone back and changed how my payments were applied. However, they continue to not apply my payments towards one of the two loans. In my emails I have asked them to apply my payments to both loans. I have asked them to go back to applying my payments the way they used to. I have told them that I am not able to choose how much of each payment go to which loan because they have the two loans lumped into one payment. I have pointed out to them that they are ripping me off and that they are unethically changing the way the apply my payments in order to make more money for themselves in the long run. They have corrected the previous payments after I contact them each time. But they are seemingly refusing to go back to applying my payments they way they used to. And they are seemingly refusing to go back to applying the payments I have repeatedly requested them to.

So, if I don't pay attention each month and message them, I will just rack up interest upon interest on one of my loans and end up paying them a lot more money than if they would apply my payments to both loans as I have requested them to do and as they used to do. 

For instance, I made a payment on XX/XX/XXXX. I'm not 100 % sure on the amount, but I believe it was a {$650.00} payment. For this {$650.00} payment, they applied it all to only one of my two loans, despite both loans being selected to pay towards. This now leaves the loan that they did not apply any portion of my payment to with about {$190.00} in interest, on top of the principal. They are doing this on purpose so that this amount continues to increase and I never pay that loan down. 

Can you help me so that this unethical company can't keep trying to steal money from me?

Company response to consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief