Consumer complaint received 2016-10-11
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: RI
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Non-federal student loan
Issue: Dealing with my lender or servicer
Sub-issue: Trouble with how payments are handled

Complaint:
While I have tried to get AES to see reason ( see attached letter ) they are insisting on maintaining their slanderous position with the credit reporting agencies. As AES 's false statements are of a civil nature, I would have to take them to court, incurring substantial cost, in order to force them to report fairly and honestly. However, as the federal agency charged with protecting citizens from having lies and slanderous information reported on their credit reports, I implore you to force the credit agencies to strike all false information from my credit report. 

As anyone with eyes can see, these are XXXX invoices consisting of multiple consolidated loans against each. To report that I missed XXXX and XXXX payments, respectively, instead of XXXX payments total, is a lie and a violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. 

As the credit reporting agencies always seem to take the side of the reporting company ( which, I understand, pays a fee in order to report credit information ), citizens such as myself look to the Federal Credit Reporting Agency to protect us from what amounts to a monopoly on credit information, which we have extremely limited control over. 

Where is the equity in the system when XXXX missed payments can drop a credit score from XXXX to XXXX ( more than XXXX points ), especially when the payments were missed due to lack of a monthly billing being sent by eh creditor. 



This letter concerns late payments made by me for the reference ( XXXX ) and ( XXXX ) accounts, which are for the following Loan Sequences, respectively : Account Number : XXXX XXXX XXXX Loan Sequences : XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX Account Number : XXXX XXXX XXXX Loan Sequences : XXXX XXXX While I admit that the XXXX 2015 payments for these accounts was made more than 30 days late, I did not receive a bill for XXXX. While I agree that I still would be responsible to make the payment, like most people, I pay my bills when I receive notification in the mail that it is due. 

When I called to dispute the information you reported to the credit bureaus, and informed them of the above, they advised that the XXXX billings for both accounts was sent out, according to your records. That XXXX be, but I did not receive them. I was also informed that I could set up automatic deductions from my bank accounts. I declined, as, due to identity theft concerns, I do not have any automatic deductions from my bank account. 

Once this error was made clear to me, I made sure that both accounts were up to date, as they are now. 

During the call, your representative indicated that she did not have the authority to remove the derogatory information from my credit report. She also stated that it was not legal to remove derogatory information from a credit report, which is not true. 

The derogatory information that AES reported to the credit bureaus is both unfair and in accurate. It is unfair because, as stated above, I did not receive a XXXX 2015 billing. It is inaccurate because it reports XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX late payments, when in fact there were only XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. As shown above, and as detailed in the attachments, I only have XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX accounts with AES. These accounts represent XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX Sequences, respectively, but they are not separate payments. Because this false derogatory information was reported to the credit bureaus, my credit score dropped XXXX points overnight. This represents slander, and resulting harm. 

Based on the above, I demand that AES remove the false, inaccurate and slanderous derogatory information from by credit reports. If this is not done within XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX days, I will initiate legal action against AES and the credit bureaus for slander, with appropriate demands for monetary damages. 

I strongly advise you to take immediate action as directed herein.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation