Consumer complaint received 2019-03-19
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: KS
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:
In Fall XXXX, I had enrolled in the Public Student Loan Forgiveness program and had my loans transferred to XXXX  XXXX. At the time I had enrolled, my loans were 'paid ahead ' through XXXX/XXXX XXXX. In late XX/XX/XXXX, I received statements for payments on XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX of XXXX totaling $ XXXX. This was a few hundred dollars more than I was paying for my Income Based Repayment plan through my previous loan servicer ( XXXX XXXX ), so I attempted to contact customer service via email to verify the amount was my IBR amount and to determine my paid ahead status ( thinking it may have just reset due to the account transfer ). However, no one ever replied to these concerns and I was forced to pay for the amount. I then received my statements for XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX totaling approximately {$470.00}, an amount that made much more sense to me, but raised questions about the previous bill. I signed up for Direct Billing and made a note to contact XXXX regarding these issues. 

I contacted XXXX  XXXX via phone and spoke with a female representative for over an hour. I can not find the note I had written with her name and employee number. It was determined that the loans were still in paid ahead status and my XXXX and XXXX payments would continue to pay me ahead further, disqualifying the payments from the PSLF program. Additionally, they could not tell me why the XXXX amounts were significantly higher than the confirmed monthly IBR payment of {$470.00}. The representative I spoke with stated at one point, " it seems we are still transitioning payment information from your previous loan service provider ''. At that point, I attempted to disable Direct Billing myself, but was not able to do so. I expressed a desire to disable Direct Billing at that time ; however, after discussing things further with the representative ( a female, I did not write down her name or employee number ), the following plan was confirmed over the phone : 1 ) The first payments would be refunded as they were requested during a " paid ahead '' period. 2 ) The " paid ahead '' status would be removed so future payments will qualify for PSLF and 3 ) Direct Billing would NOT be disabled. This plan was confirmed 3 times before ending the hour long phone conversation. 

XX/XX/XXXX rolls around and I wake up to an email ( time stamped at XXXX XXXX ) from XXXX saying I had a message in my XXXX account. I logged into my account and the message ( dated for XXXX ) stated that my Direct Billing was disabled against my wishes and that my payments were past due. I tried calling that morning to talk to someone, but no one at the call center I was routed to was in the office as it was closed due to adverse winter weather. In a worried state, I had decided to make manual payments to ensure payment was not delayed further. Later that afternoon, I attempted to call XXXX again and was able to speak to a supervisor, XXXX ( employee # XXXX ), about the issue. He stated the representative I previously spoke with had disabled my Direct Billing, which had been decided AGAINST doing and confirmed multiple times during the phone conversation. He did confirm that the paid ahead status was removed and future payments would qualify for PSLF. He reinstated my Direct Billing, confirmed that my XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX payments would proceed through Direct Billing, and stated that he would have my XX/XX/XXXX payments backdated for XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX due to their error ( they have not been backdated as of XX/XX/XXXX ). 

XX/XX/XXXX and XXXX roll around and I assume that my bills had gone through Direct Billing as I was told would happen. Later that week on XX/XX/XXXX, I noticed the payments had not been withdrawn from my account. I was told that XX/XX/XXXX would be withdrawn on a weekday following the Sunday bill date, but that didn't explain the delay in payment and why the XX/XX/XXXX ( Monday ) bill would not have been processed normally. Sure enough, I logged into my XXXX XXXX account to see that the XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX bills are past due. As it was past XXXX XXXX, I called during business hours on XX/XX/XXXX to determine what was happening. I spoke to an " escalation representative '' as " XXXX does not have supervisors '' according to the initial representative I spoke with. I was able to speak to XXXX ( employee # XXXX ) briefly before my day began. However, during that time she was only able to confirm that direct billing was approved on XX/XX/XXXX and would not have been used for the XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX dates as the bills were drawn up on XX/XX/XXXX. However, when I had checked my billing statements prior to the XXXX bill dates, I had confirmed that my direct billing was approved and saw no notification anywhere that direct billing would not be used for the XXXX statements, especially after speaking with XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX, who assured me it would process through Direct Billing. At that point, I had to get off the phone and begin my work day seeing patients and asked XXXX to call me back later in the afternoon after digging further. Later in the afternoon, XXXX called me back and could see that Direct Billing had previously been used shortly after enrolling in XXXX, which ruled out her previous excuse of Direct Billing being approved after the bill draw date. She then advised me NOT to make a manual payment and that she would reach out to the Direct Billing department to determine why payments were not processed through Direct Billing. She said she would contact me when this has been resolved. 

Over the following weekend, I received a letter dated for XXXX stating that a loan rebate program I had previously been eligible for was disqualified due to late payments in XX/XX/XXXX, which should not be the case as XXXX had said the manual payments would be backdated. This continuous error cost me around {$120.00}, which is pennies compared to my total loan debt, but still a XXXX consequence of their mistake. 

XX/XX/XXXX comes around and I still had not heard back from XXXX. I tried calling her again, but had to leave a voicemail on her extension ( ext. XXXX ) also adding concerns about the rebate letter received over the weekend. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I tried two more times to contact XXXX to follow-up on the issue, but was unable to reach her. At that point, I decided to make the manual payments, knowing it will likely muddy things up further, but I kept being reminded by XXXX that the payments were late and prior to XXXX, I had never missed a payment on anything. Not one single late payment.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation