Consumer complaint received 2018-02-22
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: MN
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:
After graduating from XXXX XXXXl & reaching the end of the repayment grace period, I consolidated my student loans in XX/XX/XXXX. That left me with two loans - consolidated unsubsidized loan and a consolidated subsidized loan. I have worked in qualifying employment for the public service loan forgiveness program my entire adult life and every day since since my first eligible payment in XX/XX/XXXX. I've only had two employers during that time, both are non profits. One is a XXXX XXXX XXXX and the other is a XXXX XXXX. I have tried to turn in employer certification forms annually or fairly regularly to ensure certification.

I have made made every payment except five months where payments were not made because my servicer ( s ) required me to take a forbearance so they could process paper work or transfer my loans between services. Of course, this adds another 5 months or separate monthly payments on the the end of 120 repayment obligation through no fault of my own. To the best of my knowledge the months that I was required to take a forbearance were : XX/XX/XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX, & XX/XX/XXXX, and XX/XX/XXXX. I believe that the XXXX forbearance was cause the company XXXX, who may have been my servicer at the time and the rest were compelled by XXXX who may have taken over my loan on or about XX/XX/XXXX. 

Determining what organization serviced my loan at what exact time leads to the second issue of my complaint. In addition to be forced to delay making qualified forbearance through delays in paperwork process and loans transferring described above, I've been asking XXXX for an accounting of every payment that I have made since XX/XX/XXXX and a determination of whether each payment qualifies for the PSLF program. It is XX/XX/XXXX and I still don't have that. I was given a record of payments since XX/XX/XXXXseveral times. I've been told I was in default ( which was never true ). I've been told that there were no records before XX/XX/XXXX. I've been told that I had previous servicers and they went out of business so there are no records any more. I've been told that their record review is inconclusive. I've asked the NSLDS who my previous servicers are and contacted them myself. One promptly mailed me the records, the other said they turned everything over to a different servicer and didn't retain any record of me at all. My bank statements list the withdrawal from the Department of Education, but not XXXX in name back in XX/XX/XXXX & XX/XX/XXXX. XXXX XXXX got 3 payments in early XX/XX/XXXX before transferring to XXXX. They mailed me their records, but they also list at the Department of Education on the withdrawal transaction with my bank. The bottom line is that XXXX has me at 62 qualifying payments for PSLF when I should be around the 80 mark ( or higher if not for the forced forbearance months ) and they can't produce a complete records of payments made or their eligibility for PSLF after being asked for 4 years.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation