Consumer complaint received 2020-02-10
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: DC
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Sub-issue: Received bad information about your loan

Complaint:
I am currently on Income-Based Repayment ( my servicer is FedLoan ) and submitted an application for REPAYE on XX/XX/2020. I submitted the REPAYE application through the studentaid.gov website, then uploaded the application to the FedLoan website, along with my income documentation. On XX/XX/2020, I received an e-mail from FedLoan stating that it had " received [ my ] request to change or recertify [ my ] repayment  plan. '' On XX/XX/2020, I received another e-mail from FedLoan stating : " We received your request for an Income-Driven Repayment ( IDR ) plan. Unfortunately, we are unable to process your form at this time because your request was not complete. You still need to provide income documentation. If you have already submitted your documentation, you may disregard this notice. '' A few hours later, on XX/XX/2020, I received a third e-mail from FedLoan stating : " We received your request to change or recertify your repayment plan. We will process your request as soon as possible.... '' As part of my application for REPAYE, I requested the one-month forbearance during which I would pay {$5.00} as my monthly payment while FedLoan processed the application, so that I was not paying the much higher-monthly payment under IDR due to FedLoan 's delays. My monthly payment is due on XX/XX/2020. 

On XX/XX/2020, I called FedLoan to find out why the monthly payment was still listed as my regular payment, and not the {$5.00} payment. I spoke with XXXX ( ID # XXXX ). XXXX told me first that I did not submit income documentation with my REPAYE application, so FedLoan was not able to process it. When I told her I had submitted the documentation, she said that I submitted it to StudentAid.gov, but not to FedLoan, and that StudentAid.gov does not send any documentation to FedLoan. I clarified that I had uploaded my income documentation to the FedLoan website. XXXX then checked, and said she saw it, and that despite my uploading the documentation under a tab for " IDR applications, '' I had made a mistake about the tab under which to upload the documents, but that they would disregard the " mistake '' and process the application, and that it would take at least 20 business  days. This, despite my receipt of the above-mentioned e-mails stating that FedLoan was, in fact, processing the REPAYE application. 

I told XXXX that I had opted for the one-month forbearance during FedLoan 's processing of the application during which I would pay {$5.00}, and XXXX said that FedLoan would take over 20 business days to process that one-month forbearance as well. I told XXXX that the point of the one-month reduced payment forbearance, according to the application, was to cover the month that FedLoan would take in putting me into the new program. XXXX said that the Department of Education had put that language into the application for " legal reasons, '' but that FedLoan did not honor that language, and that FedLoan " could not help '' what the Department of Education put into the applications. I against stated that this language was in the application, and she said FedLoan had no control over what the Department of Education wanted to put in these applications and would not process the forbearance for another 20 business days. 

I also asked why I had not been placed into the REPAYE program ( which has a monthly payment at about half of what I have been paying ), and instead placed into IBR. XXXX said that I had not requested in my recertification applications each year to " get the lowest monthly payment. '' I asked how that was possible, and she said that, when a student checks the box for Question 1, which is a request to recertify the IDR plan, the application makes Question 2,  which is about getting the lowest monthly payment, disappear. XXXX said that FedLoan will not consider what the lowest monthly payment can be if Question 1 is checked ( which is what we have to do every year ). Therefore, I've been placed into an IDR plan with payments that are twice the amount that I should have been paying, especially since I am in PSLF. XXXX was really unclear about how a student should try to get the lowest monthly payment.

Company response to consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief