Consumer complaint received 2019-07-22
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:
i re-certified for the Public Loan Forgiveness Program through FedLoan Servicing this XXXX. It is recommended that applicants do this each year, so that when the 120 payments/10 years is completed, it will be easier for loan forgiveness to go through. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I received a letter from fedloan title " Response to the Employment Certification Form You Submitted for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. '' The letter stated that " [ i ] n the next few weeks, we will calculate and provide you with notification of : the number of qualifying payments you have made during the employment period listed above ; the total number of qualifying payments you have made during all periods of qualifying employment approved to date ; the estimated number of payments that are still required, and the date you are expected to be eligible to apply for forgiveness. I NEVER received this notification from fedloan.

The letter continued : " After we calculate the number of qualifying payments you have made, keeping track of your progression toward PSLF is easy. Log into Account Access. Check Your Monthly Bill. Review the communication that we send you each time you submit a new Employment Certification Form. '' As I never received the notification of number of qualifying payments mentioned above, I reviewed the next month 's statement. The qualifying payments seemed off. I downloaded the XXXX spreadsheet showing each qualifying payment. I wrote message to fedloan stating that I should have 56 qualifying payments, not 31 on XX/XX/XXXX. 

" XXXX '' from fedloan stated " We apologize for not yet being able to provide you with the number of qualifying payments made toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness ( PSLF ). Since each account must go through a detailed review process, providing you with these details can sometimes take a great deal of time. '' I responded to the email message on XX/XX/XXXX requesting the status of my qualifying payment inquiry. I was notified on XX/XX/XXXX by email from " XXXX '' that " The payment review is currently already in process to review the payments that are marked as not qualifying. Unfortunately, there is not a current estimated time of completion for the review. We'll contact you after we complete our review. '' That was the last contact I had from fedloan. I followed up with an email on XX/XX/XXXX requesting the status of the inquiry and no one responded. My qualifying payments on each statement now says 48 and does not increase each month. Today, I have made 57 qualifying payments towards PSLF, and each month my statement says 48. 

Today, I downloaded my XXXX spreadsheet of payments. I do this every month. My principal balance of my loan has now increased by {$230000.00} for no reason- no additional loans have been taken out, no compound interest, etc. There is no explanation for 1. why my balance has increased by several XXXX XXXX dollars 2. why it has taken months for fedloan to calculate my qualifying payments 3. why fedloan never contacted me, as stated in their XX/XX/XXXX letter, with the number of qualifying payments made and my estimated forgiveness date.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation