Consumer complaint received 2017-06-09
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: MA
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Sub-issue: Don't agree with the fees charged

Complaint:
Renewal of my Income Driven Repayment ( IDR ) forms was due by XX/XX/XXXX , 2017 and I submitted the required forms on  XX/XX/XXXX , 2017. On  XX/XX/XXXX , 2017, I spoke with  XXXX  ( ID   XXXX   ) who stated that he was confident that my paperwork would be scanned and in their system within 1-2 business days, and applicable for the payment due on  XX/XX/XXXX . Apparently this  XX/XX/XXXX  payment was never extracted from my account and  XXXX  was mistaken about the timeline for the processing of my IDR forms.
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I received my first phone call from Fedloans on  XX/XX/XXXX , 2017, and the representative I spoke with asked if I would like to address the {$3100.00} delinquency on my account. Believing this to be a scam to get me to volunteer details of my account, I informed the representative that I would address any delinquency online.
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I have not missed a monthly payment, even following the adjusted increase in monthly dues thus my assumption that there was no possible way I could be delinquent on my Fedloans repayment. However, despite their claim that the processing time for IDR forms is, at maximum, two weeks ( and  XXXX  claim that the forms would be applied to my payment scheduled for XX/XX/XXXX  ), my information for IDR was not processed and applied until  XX/XX/XXXX , 2017. This meant that there was a period from  XX/XX/XXXX  to  XX/XX/XXXX  during which the standard repayment option was being applied to my total loan amount an amount on which the interest was capitalized during that time that Fedloans was not processing or applying the forms I provided on  XX/XX/XXXX , and making the now increased payment of {$520.00} I paid on  XX/XX/XXXX  insufficient to address the {$3100.00} interest fee being submitted to me for payment.
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Per my conversation with a representative from Fedloans on  XX/XX/XXXX , 2017, according to their policy, had my IDR monthly dues not increased as a result of increased income, this capitalized interest fee would have been dismissed. However, because my monthly payments increased, I am now required to enter in to Forebearance for my inability to pay these funds for which my payment is being deemed delinquent.
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Not only did I not receive a phone call from Fedloans until  XX/XX/XXXX , 2017 following my non-responsiveness to electronic communication via their paperless inbox feature ( which I will admit to having disregarded because my automatic debits did not fail to be withdrawn ), but because of the length of this delinquency, I received a message that Fedloans is likely to have reported this to credit reporting agencies and my credit score has likely been negatively affected.
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In addition, because I am working for a not-for-profit organization ( actually, at a VA hospital at present ) and my loan status was being deemed as delinquent from  XXXX  until  XXXX , the monthly payments I made of {$520.00} in the months of  XXXX ,  XXXX  and   XXXX   are ineligible to count towards my 10 years of payments while working for a not-for-profit organization.
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I am very frustrated by the inaccuracy of the information I was originally provided by   XXXX   during our conversation on XX/XX/XXXX , 2017, the lack of communication on the part of Fedloans to inform me of the delinquent status of my loan, and the illogical procedural steps that permit interest to be capitalized for their borrowers who have submitted paperwork acknowledging an increase in income, penalizing those who are proactive and forthcoming with increases in income and willing to, appropriately, increase their monthly payments due to the loan servicer.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation