Consumer complaint received 2022-01-06
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: MS
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Problem with a credit reporting company's investigation into an existing problem
Sub-issue: Problem with personal statement of dispute

Complaint:
Hello. I have written around 4 or 5 letters to AES XXXX American Education Services ) concerning this issue and I hope that you can help. I am a healthcare provider with a spouse who lost his job due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this, although struggling to make ends meet, I have managed to make my monthly payments. I am in a property with rent payment that is {$2300.00} a month. This takes my entire paycheck. We are finally in the process of finding a home to buy and are building. It will give me a much cheaper monthly payment. We are a few weeks from closing and I received an alert that my credit score had dropped XXXX points due to a negative remark from AES XXXX I was XXXX days late on my payment. I was totally unaware. I thought the bill was paid after I was fraudulently tricked into signing up for a loan consolidation program. My account was hacked by this company, I had to get new debit cards, and on top of that, I did not have access to my email for a while. Usually when a bill is late, AES will contact myself or my coborrower. I have yet to receive any phone calls reminding me to pay and did not receive emails to remind me. I immediately paid the bill to get the account current on XX/XX/2021, the same day I found out, in the amount of {$150.00}. I then signed up for automatic withdrawal to avoid this. I called AES and they said they could not reverse the negative remark but I could submit a dispute. I asked for a good faith reversal via letter and have been denied 4 times. I receive the same response with no elaboration, despite not being contacted by phone per policy. Even when I logged on to pay the bill, there was a warning to pay right away to avoid the account being reported to the credit bureau. Oddly, not fair as the warning was there, but they had already reported me to the bureau with little effort to contact me or the coborrower. I know it has to be reported, but the credit bureau said I could still request a good faith reversal. I advised AES that this occurred and has dropped myself and my coborrowers credit score. That same coborrower, my Mother, was willing to help me get the home due to the negative remark, but it is now on her credit report as well. She was not contacted by AES prior to this happening. I will be XXXXXXXXXXXX  as this will now prevent me from purchasing my home and we have already ended our lease. I ask and beg that you please help me to resolve this as we were set to close in 1 month. I have young children and an ill husband and parent. I have signed up for automatic payments to show my good faith, and the first automatic payment of {$76.00} was withdrawn on XX/XX/2021. It is not fair that I be penalized when I was never contacted by phone about the account being late, and my coborrower was not called as well. I can provide phone records to prove that I was not contacted. The account is current. I only ask that the negative remark be reversed so we can purchase our home. Please help. God bless.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation