Consumer complaint received 2019-07-08
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: TX
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:
My federal student loans were serviced by Navient until mid-XXXX XXXX, at which point they were transferred to FedLoan Servicing. This transfer was due to my submission of documentation for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness ( PSLF ) program. As I understand it, I had no choice in whether my loans were transferred because FedLoan is the only servicer for loans being considered for the PSLF program. The last payment I made to XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX ( for the due date of XX/XX/XXXX ) was not reflected in my FedLoan records, but a customer service representative told me in XX/XX/XXXX that it could take up to 90 days to transfer payment history. She advised me to continue making payments as usual, even if it said my payments were late due to the missing XXXX payment. It would eventually update with the XX/XX/XXXX payment and the subsequent months would also update so that they would be counted as on-time payments, she explained. 

I contacted FedLoan again in XX/XX/XXXX and was assured that the payment history would update soon. In XX/XX/XXXX I called again to request an update and was told it should update soon. In XX/XX/XXXX, after calling again to ask why my payment had not posted, a customer service rep confirmed that FedLoan had the payment from XX/XX/XXXX ( processed in XX/XX/XXXX ) but it was unapplied to any month and therefore was not counted as a payment. She assured me that she would fix this. I made additional attempts to resolve this issue in XX/XX/XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX, and XX/XX/XXXX. In XX/XX/XXXX I had a lawyer attempt to resolve the issue. 

This unapplied payment and the resulting " late '' payments '' have STILL not been corrected. I have made numerous attempts to resolve this with FedLoan over the past year and a half, but no change is ever made. I finally made a double payment in XX/XX/XXXX to bring the account current, as I was worried the constant late status of my payments would negatively affect me. I have now received a notice that one of my loans is no longer eligible for the special grant/forgiveness program offered through my college due to late payment, which is upsetting because I have not missed any payments there is just a payment that has been misapplied for over a year, and FedLoan appears incapable of rectifying the issue. Also upsetting is that I was assured several times that my eligibility for PSLF would NOT be affected ; however, I am now discovering that is not the case because qualifying payments can not be made more than 15 days late. I have made every payment on time or early, but because FedLoan did not apply my XX/XX/XXXX payment, every subsequent payment through XX/XX/XXXX was marked as late. Given that a year and half is a long time to resolve an issue of how to apply a payment, and as evidenced by their lack of action even after being contacted by legal aid, at this point I can only assume that FedLoan is unwilling to properly handle my loan and does not care how their actions have impacted me.

Company response to consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief