Consumer complaint received 2023-01-10
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: CA
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:
On Friday, XX/XX/XXXX I received an email from PHEAA/FedLoan Servicing admitting to legal liability for failure to adhere to my Standing Instructions for my Federal Student Loans, during the period of service between XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX. Furthermore, in the final paragraph of the XX/XX/XXXX communication, PHEAA explicitly opened the door to further liability regarding additional issues with my account which may have been unrelated to standing instructions. Following my submission of supporting documentation, I have received a single check in the amount of XXXX to cover the failures in relation to my Standing Instructions. However, I had since documented numerous other forms of financial harm unrelated to Standing Instructions the XXXX} payment was clearly incomplete and inadequate compensation for the harm I have suffered. As a notable example, in XX/XX/XXXX, my loans were re-assigned to XXXX without my consent, following PHEAA 's unilateral decision to exit the federal student loan servicing segment. Following this unplanned transition, my federal student loan balances disappeared altogether from my consumer credit reports, and were only re-applied in the end-of-year context for XXXX. In the meantime, I was attempting to purchase my first home for my household, and was challenged to obtain full and accurate documentation to substantiate my loan balance and prove that I was a borrower in good standing in order to complete the mortgage approval process. Despite my repeated attempts to pursue further monetary compensation from PHEAA, I have been consistently stonewalled. On Friday, XX/XX/XXXX, PHEAA again sent me an email asking me to provide documentation that I had already submitted two months ago. I finally received a third notice earlier today stating that my case had been closed and if I had an issue with the closure to contact PHEAA customer service. I wasted nearly an hour today on the phone with PHEAA team member XXXX ( employee ID # XXXX ) who continued to insist that she could do nothing for me and that I had to contact XXXX, or otherwise the Department of Education to confirm the correct contact information for my current servicer/borrower relationship. XXXX 's malicious insistence that I could only pursue recourse from non-PHEAA representatives was further confirmed when I was told that XXXX 's supervisor from XXXX was present but categorically refused to speak to me since I was not an active PHEAA student loan customer. Since this entire framework to provide contact outreach and fair compensation persons for federal student loan borrowers such as myself explicitly arose as a direct consequence of PHEAA 's earlier unilateral decision to exit this line of business, the attempt of PHEAA to defer providing reasonable compensation can not be logically disputed and the firm is clearly defaulting on their legal obligations per their contact with the Department of Education, which governs their service work on my behalf and the current and future legal consequences of their specific failure to perform.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation