Consumer complaint received 2018-02-06
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: SC
Product: Debt collection
Sub-product: Private student loan debt
Issue: Communication tactics
Sub-issue: Frequent or repeated calls

Complaint:
In XX/XX/XXXX I received a call from the XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX  , XXXX. whom got my information from XXXX  XXXX XXXX, XXXX. Before this phone call I have never heard of them before. They stated that I owed {$63000.00} for a private student loan and asked me how I wanted to pay this debt. I had asked them which student loan they were referring to as I had been paying my loans for which I was getting statements for, they stated XXXX ( XXXX ). I then proceeded to tell them that I did not receive any sort of billing statements to my address from this loan and my co-signer also did not receive any form of billing statements. They stated to claim that they sent statements to both addresses. Along with not receiving any sort of statements for repayment, I also did not receive any sort of notifications from the original loan ( XXXX  ) that my in school deferment had ended and my loan went into repayment. Also I did not receive any sort of notification from the original Loan that they handing over my loan to XXXX XXXX, and they did not notify me of this either. When I asked for my billing statements from XX/XX/XXXX to present, they continued to ask for money, even after i said i did not have. I agreed to pay a minimum amount for one month in order to set up some sort of payment plan in the amount of {$520.00} and asked for a confirmation of payment immediately. I called on 3 different occasions after this payment asking for my confirmation, which i received exactly one month later when they called again asking for more money, and i told them the same thing that we do not have the amount they are asking. Again asking for all my billing statement from XX/XX/XXXX to present, they refused. Today my co-signer received a call demanding a payment of {$1100.00} by tomorrow. With only one source of income my co-signer could not afford to pay it, and the collection agency ran my co-signer 's credit report without her knowledge or consent to see what lines of credit she had available to make this payment immediately, thus her social security number that they had on file was used for this illegally without her knowledge to serve their purpose. As a consumer we have the right to our statements from XX/XX/XXXX which is when they claim that this loan went into repayment to present to know what our minimum payment should have been. I also did not get any sort of correspondence that my loan is being transferred from XXXX to XXXX to XXXX XXXX XXXX for collections. By not sending me statements, I lost the opportunity to refinance this loan at the time when repayment supposedly began thus collecting a larger amount of debt on interest and late payments. If they had sent statements to both addresses they had, at least one of us ( either me or my co-signer ) should have received them. The fact that none of us received statements and I received statements from all other loans and credit cards irregardless of when I moved ( my address was always changed with the post office ) just proves the point that they actually did not send any physical statements. The collection agency basically said that since this was a private loan in collections now, therefor I can't get my statements anymore or something along those lines. I have a private loan with XXXX XXXX which is now under XXXX and XXXX XXXX had notified me that my private loan is being transferred to XXXX  and I will be receiving a repayment statements from XXXX and not XXXX XXXX from now on. With XXXX  I was not given this sort of notification. 

As a consumer, I feel like the lack of correspondence from this loan company has put me a huge financial set back and accumulated unnecessary interest and late payment fees that I could have avoided if I had only received my statements when the loan went into repayment in XX/XX/XXXX. If they had sent statements to me and I was missing payments, they should have had other form of correspondence such as phone calls. Neither my co-signer or I received any phone calls that our payments are late or that our loan went into repayment. 

The collections is asking us to blindly pay this debt without even providing us proof of statements after asking them numerous times. They continue to harass and threaten us stating if we don't pay this immediately, they will report it to credit bureau. They call my co-signer at her work on a daily basis demanding money and not willing to work with us to come up with a reasonable affordable payment plan. 

I am still in school and work only part time with a minimal paying job which is negligible income. My co-signer is the only one working in her household as her husband recently lost job and underwent a XXXX XXXX thus has accumulated medical expenses as well.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation