Consumer complaint received 2020-03-18
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: FL
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:
My loans transferred to FedLoan Servicing because I am contemplating PSLF in the distant future. I didn't want this transfer to occur, but that is the Dept. of Education process. I was informed by email by FedLoan Servicing on XX/XX/20 that my loans were being transferred. When I called them, I was told by a FedLoan Servicing customer service agent that I would need to re-request for an income driven repayment plan in order to keep the plan I had under the previous servicer ( XXXX ). I requested on XX/XX/20. My online account and mail communication said I would receive an answer back by XX/XX/20. I did not have a payment due in XXXX XXXX XX/XX/20 should have been the due date ) because in this transfer process they applied a forbearance of some sort without asking me. I made a normal payment equal to my previous months on XX/XX/20 to FedLoan Servicing. I did not receive any notification about my request by XX/XX/20. I called to inquire and was offered that they could expedite the inquiry into the request and that would take 10 days. By XX/XX/20 I still had heard nothing back about my original request or the expedited inquiry. I was no showing a balance due that was over 10 times larger than my normal payment. I called on XX/XX/20 to try to get to the bottom of this. From initial call until the end of the interaction was 2 hours and 54 minutes, the vast majority spend literally waiting with hold music and I also waited for initial call back. Over an hour of this wait was just because the person who answered my original call literally can't answer anything about income driven plans. Once I was connected to an appropriate agent ( XXXX ) her computer promptly froze and she booted me back to the queue. Over 30 minutes later she was the agent that picked my call back up, and again, conveniently, her computer froze. Because there was only 30 minutes left during their normal hours of operation, I asked to speak to a manager. This manager at least had a working computer and seemed twice as competent as anyone I have every spoken to at FedLoan Servicing. It turns out they never expedited my inquiry into my income driven repayment request ... instead they sent an inquiry about whether my XXXX payment could be counted as a qualifying payment for PLSF. This manager acknowledge to me that they never should have given me a huge bill for XXXX because my existing plan wouldn't have reset until XXXX anyways. She put in an expedited inquiry regarding my original request from XX/XX/20. She advised me that I probably shouldn't pay the full amount due because I should never have been billed for the much larger amount that was not consistent with my original income drive repayment plan. I made a payment on XX/XX/20 that was equivalent to what I have been paying for months. I don't have an estimate of when they will process my income driven repayment request at all. I assume in XXXX I will now be billed for 10 times what I had been paying each month, despite my income only rising a few percent in the past year.

Company response to consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief