Consumer complaint received 2016-04-11
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: WV
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with my lender or servicer
Sub-issue: Trouble with how payments are handled

Complaint:
I am currently repaying under the income driven repayment plan. My repayment is under the Income Based Repayment ( IBR ) and I am seeking the Public Service Loan Forgiveness as I currently work for a qualifying XXXX. My loan servicer is FedLoan. My IBR requires me to certify my income yearly using my adjusted gross income ( AGI ) from my federal tax return. This year ( XXXX ) I was shocked to discover that my monthly payment jumped from {$140.00} per month in XX/XX/XXXX to {$1000.00} in XX/XX/XXXX. It is not even the XXXX XXXX, which I assumed I would have until at least that date to certify my income since that is the date taxes are due. Well I was wrong. My current IBR is still valid until XX/XX/XXXX, however there is some requirement that is hidden in some fine print somewhere that requires me to certify my income 90 days before my current IBR expired. As a result, all of my qualifying payments made toward my public service loan forgiveness have been wiped out, {$5000.00} of accrued interest that was not being added to my balance due to my IBR plan immediately got added on taking my balance from {$97000.00} to over {$100000.00}, and there is no willingness of FedLoan to reverse any of this in light of the fact that I immediately submitted my income certification and they received the request prior to my payment due date and well prior to the actual expiration of my prior year IBR plan. This is absolutely depressing. All progress I made toward paying my loans on time and working toward the Public Service Loan Forgiveness is gone, my balance is even higher, and there just seems to be no end in sight. There seems to be some reasonableness and common sense that should play into account. If for two years I have certified income low enough to qualify for under {$200.00} per month payments, and at no time in my life have I made enough to ever qualify to pay higher than that, why would FedLoan or any servicer assume that someone could afford a jump in payments of that much. I was told I received XXXX notices regarding the need to certify my income. I looked back and it appears I received XXXX notice giving me until XXXX/XXXX/XXXX to certify my income which came to my parent 's house ( listed as my permanent address since I enrolled in college in XX/XX/XXXX ). I had not even received all of my tax info by then and XXXX is before the date taxes are even due to the IRS. The other option to certify income is through submitting paystubs, which FedLoan uses to calculate my repayment based on my total Gross Pay before taxes, which results in a higher payment that I can not afford. They do not even take into account the Net Pay after taxes which would be a far more representative of my available income to make payments from. Given this was obviously a just a timing mistake on my part, I was able to submit my new income certification prior to the due date of my current payment and well before the expiration of my previous IBR income certification ( which if it is still valid why did my payment jump up before a year had passed since being certified? ), and I have been making on time qualifying payments for the past two years ... Is there no option for me to have the {$5000.00} of accrued interes removed and my qualifying payments toward my public service loan forgiveness reinstated? How many hoops do you want me to jump through??

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation