Consumer complaint received 2018-06-25
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: CA
Product: Debt collection
Sub-product: Federal student loan debt
Issue: False statements or representation
Sub-issue: Attempted to collect wrong amount

Complaint:
In XX/XX/XXXX, I received a XXXX Grant of {$4000.00}. The terms of the grant were as follows : 1 ) XXXX in a XXXX XXXX ( XXXX ) 2 ) XXXX in a high-needs XXXX ( XXXX  XXXX ) 3 ) Do so for four of the subsequent 8 years. 

I have XXXX XXXX in XXXX XXXX XXXX for the subsequent 9 years. The XXXX XXXX   website is a horrible thing, but I continuously sent in notes saying that I was working in a XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. I had other, larger, loans to forgive and I knew ( or thought I knew ) the terms of the agreement so I wasn't worried. 

At several points I noticed that there was no XXXX Grant link on my loan page ( when I could get to it -- the website is a horror, remember? ) and contacted them. At one point in XXXX, I talked to someone on the phone and arranged to submit three years of certification at once. Had I known of these issues, I would have submitted a fourth year -- I had plenty, it's just that I had three forms readily available. I thought I would just submit the fourth year in the XX/XX/XXXX, which is when I usually did paperwork. I did get warnings through this time, but I'd been getting warnings throughout the process. They reconverted my grant several times without ever indicating I was failing to do some essential thing. The essential thing, which was probably mentioned somewhere in the paperwork but was NOT mentioned in the phone call, was that I had to recertify every year. I never recertified, to my knowledge. All I ever did was call them up and ask to have it converted back to a grant because they'd screwed up and I was still teaching math in a Title I school. 

Then in XX/XX/XXXX when I went to submit the last year, I was told that I couldn't submit, that it was permanently converted to a loan, that there was no recourse. I argued with them for months, and at no point did they mention that I could have appealed to an ombudsman. They said that loans are never converted back to grants but they are, and I have the email showing they converted mine, and that they accepted three years after the fact. But they won't accept ONE MORE YEAR of proof. Instead, they have converted the grant to a loan and charged me nine years interest.

The " annual recertification '' is a joke. First, it's not routinely mentioned in the publication of the XXXX grant ( although I'm sure I saw it in the loan papers ). Second, I have told them every year I intend to teach. Third, they are denying me this entire grant and charging me interest because they refuse to accept proof that I've met the terms of the grant. In other words, they are hitting me with a XXXX penalty and 9 years of 6 % interest because I missed a deadline for one quarter of the evidence needed, even thoguh I have the evidence and tried to submit it long before they converted it formally into a loan.

This is a huge problem for many people, but I don't know that many who have been hit with 9 years interest who have likewise worked in the service area required for nine years.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation