Consumer complaint received 2022-07-13
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: AZ
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 have a previous complaint against this same entity, FedLoans : XXXX. This issue is different, but perhaps they are screwing with me as a result of my prior complaint to you ( and my many complaints to them in the interim ). 

My current issue is that FedLoans appears to have deliberately refused to discharge my loans. In the interest of not going into the many years of difficulty with FedLoans, the following is a summary of the past year : On XX/XX/XXXX, I received notification from FedLoans that they had done a comprehensive review of my eligible and qualifying payments based on changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program made by the Department of Education. By way of background, after 120 qualifying loan payments ( essentially 10 years ) in public service employment, loans are supposed to be forgiven under that program. FedLoans review letter said I had 122 eligible payments, but that only 116 had been qualified/certified. In short, it seemed like they had recounted all of my payments through the last date I certified my employment ( XX/XX/XXXX ), and that only the six ( 6 ) month period from XX/XX/XXXX through XX/XX/XXXX needed additional certification ( i.e. those six payments were " eligible '' but not qualified '' ). If I certified my employment for that period, I would have 122 qualifying payments! Hooray! 

Because in theory I now had 122 of the 120 loan payments required to discharge my loans, on XX/XX/XXXX, I submitted a final employment certification form to FedLoans and application for forgiveness ( it is the same form, you just check a different box ). 
Despite receiving the notification they had done a complete review of my loan payments only a couple of weeks before, I did not hear anything back from them. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I wrote to ask what they were doing. I did not receive any response. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I wrote a second time to ask what they were doing and why it was taking them so long to certify the 6 remaining payments and discharge my loans. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I received a response by e-mail that they had recieved my application on XX/XX/XXXX, and that I would receive something once they finished their review. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I received an e-mail from the Department of Education that my loans would be transferred to XXXX beginning early XXXX, but that the process could take all the way through the summer. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, almost 3 months after I submitted the application for forgiveness, I received notification from FedLoans that they had completed their review! The letter was dated XX/XX/XXXX. The letter said I did not qualify for forgivness. It said I now had 128 eligible payments, but only 119 of them had been " qualified. '' The second page of the letter showed their records of my employment. They counted up until XX/XX/XXXX ( the date of my previous certification of employment ), and then they counted only the XX/XX/XXXX date. In other words, they only gave me credit for one additional date of employment ( the date of my application ), instead of for the full time period from XX/XX/XXXX through XX/XX/XXXX, which is the time period for which I had submitted certification of employment along with my application of forgiveness. Again. This took 3 months. They ignored the information on my certification and application. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I called FedLoans in the morning. The first person I spoke with told me that they didn't know why I had received a letter denying my application. Then they told me it was a mistake and I should ignore it. Then they said that on their end it showed my application was still being reviewed and I should again, just ignore the letter they sent me ( which said they had reviewed my application and denied it ). I asked this person to send me something in writing explaining this. They said they would need to transfer me to the public service forgiveness line ( which was the line I called in the first place ). While on hold, I elected to get a call back rather than sit on hold longer. I missed the callback. When I called back, I sat on hold for about 20 minutes. I explained what happened and was transferred back to the public service forgiveness line. I sat on hold for over an hour. The next person who answered listened as I explained what happened. Then she put me on hold. She came back a few minutes later to let me know she was talking to her supervisor. Then she put me on hold. When she came back she said she did not know why they only counted the one day from my application for forgiveness. She said she had submitted for all of my payments to be reviewed again ( as an aside, this will be the third, or maybe fourth time?, in the last year they have recounted everything ( I requested it the first couple of times ) ). She said it would take at least 10 days for FedLoans to even know they needed to review my account, and after that it could take a long time for the review to be completed. I explained this does not make any sense. They had notified me they had done a comprehensive review in XXXX and I sent in my application in within a couple of weeks thereafter. They should not have to do anything other than count the remaining payments and see if they are greater than 120 ( they are much greater. They know it ). 

In short, there is no way for them to have done this on accident. They waited 3 months to add one day to my qualified loans. They ignored the information on my application and denied it without reason. Now they are going to review everything again, which will take months, and it seems like my loans will likely be transferred to XXXX before they finish the review ( if they even begin reviewing this at all ). There is no way for that to be an innocent mistake. They are acting in bad faith and there is nothing I can do to make them stop and process my application.

Company response to consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief