Consumer complaint received 2022-03-08
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: WA
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Struggling to repay your loan
Sub-issue: Can't get other flexible options for repaying your loan

Complaint:
To Whom it May Concern, I take issue with the current policies governing Public Service Loan Forgiveness ( PSLF ) program. I write to request that you urge the Biden Administration to modify the PSLF program such that periods of full-time public service, combined with periods of hardship deferment or administrative forbearance, would count toward PSLF, regardless of whether payments were made during those periods.Please consider the grounds upon which I issue this request : The PSLF program was designed to incentivize people to work for non-profits serving their communities, and to help alleviate the burden of student loans that are particularly difficult to manage when working for non-profits, that historically offer much lower salaries than the private sector. As you may be aware, the actual administration of the entire federal loans program, and thePSLF program, has historically been chaotic and inconsistent across the multiple lenders who have passed around borrowers loans. I personally have a loan history that shows me as having an in-school forbearance through XXXX, even though I XXXX with my XXXX in XX/XX/XXXX. There is no longer any record of which company even held my loan at that time, and it may be one of many lenders who have gone out of service in the interim. It is not clear whether it will be possible to correct this error in retrospect, even if I were to offer to make up payments that would have been due had my status been correct.Additionally, we have received inconsistent, conflicting, and misleading information about qualifying for the program and managing our repayment. For example, many people, including myself, have been steered into periods of deferment or forbearance when we were having trouble making our required payments due to low income and/or high costs of living a common problem when working for a non-profit in expensive urban areas. If we had been informed instead that we might qualify for a repayment plan that involved an extremely low or even {$0.00} payment, we would be able to count those months or years toward PSLF. Instead, many of us were actively steered toward deferment/forbearance, rather than being advised of our variety of options, and the potential loss of time toward PSLF if we took the deferment/forbearance option. And many of us have multiple periods of brief pauses like these because our loans were being transferred to other lenders. What I would like is for you to introduce legislation to include these deferment and forbearance periods in PSLF eligibility, so long as borrowers are working full-time for an eligible employer. It shouldnt matter the reason administrative transitions, periods of being in school, periods of being low income if we were working full-time for a non-profit, we should receive credit for those months, particularly given the waiver program currently in effect, which will credit people for late payments, insufficient payments, non-payments, etc. so long as they had a bill due. Its unfair that if person A worked for a qualifying employers, and had a bill due but didnt pay it, theyll get credit for PSLF, while if person B worked for that same employer, but had a deferment or forbearance, they will NOT get credit.If my request can not be granted with relief via legislation as a good-faith compromise, I request that I be permitted to make retroactive payments, either spaced out or in one lump sum, for the months of qualifying employment in which I was in deferment/forbearance. I am certain that FedLoans could calculate what my payments would have been, and if I were able to buy those months back, it would get me much closer to forgiveness.As a XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, my employment history since the beginning of the PSLF program in XXXX has often been unstable as higher education itself has struggled financially and contracted. I have worked as full-time faculty teaching at non-profit universities for periods as long as three years, but I have also spent several years working for a predatory for-profit university when that was all I could get ; years cobbling together adjunct work from multiple non-profits ; and years XXXX as a XXXX and XXXX XXXX ( earning less, after all my employment costs including insurance, than at any of my non-profit positions ). I even spent six months unemployed after a sudden job loss, drawing down my savings to nearly zero while I frantically searched for work. As such, every month of qualifying employment for me is precious, and finding out that in many cases those months dont count because my loan status was ( correctly or not ) set to a deferment or forbearance is one part of what adds up to a devastating setback in achieving PSLF.I have never, even with a XXXX, earned as much as even the most basic entry-level XXXX XXXX for a XXXX XXXX company. The extreme housing costs that have predominated since the XXXX financial crisis have made it even more difficult than normal to live on a salary from a non-profit while in an urban area like the XXXX XXXX XXXX or XXXX. PSLF would make it possible for me to spend money on things that actually create economic activity, like professional training to improve my teaching and clinical work, and health care I have postponed due to financial stress. It would also dramatically improve my mental health by eliminating the crushing weight of more than a decade of chronic financial stress over the six-figure loans that, despite my payments, remain almost the same balance as when I graduated in XXXXThere are thousands of public servants with similar circumstances. Together, we request that that periods of full-time public service, even when they overlap with periods of in-school deferment o r ardship-based forbearance, would count toward PSLF, regardless of whether payments were made during those periods. We respectfully request that you urge Congress and the Biden Administration to take swift, decisive action on this matter.Thank you for your time, consideration, and service to the United States. 

Sincerely, XXXX XXXX XXXX, XXXX

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation