Consumer complaint received 2017-04-13
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: PA
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with my lender or servicer
Sub-issue: Received bad information about my loan

Complaint:
My issue is two-fold : 1. I paid off XXXX of my XXXX outstanding loans in full, and then re-adjusted my auto draft amount in order to still be paying the same amount that I was prior to paying off that loan ( I always pay extra in so as to knock down some of my principal ). I was informed at this time that since I altered my auto draft payment amount, the next month 's payment ( due XX/XX/2017 ) would not be automatically drafted. I waited until XX/XX/XXXX and up until that time, no pending auto-payment was shown, so I manually entered XX/XX/XXXX payment so as not to miss that month 's payment. On XX/XX/2017, after the auto-draft amount had been showing zero for the entire time since I updated my auto-draft amount, my bank account was double drafted. My loan servicer had taken the amount that I manually entered, and also took an auto-drafted payment that I had been told would not be taken this month. It is XX/XX/2017, and I am still waiting on the duplicate payment amount to be credited to my bank account. It is unfortunate that 1-the loan servicer had been so misleading in their information regarding the auto-draft payment not being taken this month so that I was charged twice, and 2-that the loan servicer has delayed my refund for this long. It is a significant amount of money that I am waiting on. 

2. After paying that XXXX loan in full, I received a notice of repayment, along with a " Disclosure of Loan Repayment Terms. '' This " disclosure '' states as follows : " The repayment schedule for some or all of your student loans changed. Please review the new Repayment Schedule information of the back of this letter. These new terms take effect on the due date listed. We will send a bill approximately 20 days prior to your due date. 
Why did this occur? 
There are several reasons that this change may have occurred, including, but not limited to : -A deferment or forbearance recently ended -You requested to change your repayment plan -Your due date was changed -Interest was capitalized ( added to the principal balance ) on your loans -Your interest rate changed -Your previous monthly payment amount was not sufficient -We recalculated your Income-Driven Repayment schedule '' This disclosure was referencing the fact that I had paid off XXXX of the XXXX loans in full, and in doing so, my loan term was recalculated. I am currently on a graduated plan, meaning that my payment is scheduled to increase every 24 months. My original loan term was 120 months ( 10 years ). After paying this XXXX loan, my loan payment was recalculated using a term of 102 months ( I have been in repayment for 18 months ). With this recalculation, my monthly payment was increased from $ XXXX/month to $ XXXX/month. Again, I was grossly misled. There was no information stating that this change would occur before I made the decision to pay this loan in full, there was no information provided to me regarding this monthly payment change during the process of paying off this loan, and there was certainly no information provided to me after the fact. This " disclosure '' letter not only did not include a reason that pertained to me for changing my repayment plan, it also did not give me any specifics regarding why MY payment had increased. When I contacted my loan servicer, I was told that the only way to decrease my monthly payment at this point was to change my payment plan to one that had a longer repayment period-I 'm sure this is the option they would have liked me to choose, since the servicer would then make way more money off of me. I am appalled with how this system thanks their students who are trying to do the right thing when repaying their loans. I am also appalled with the lack of transparency of the loan servicer and the sneaky ways that they try to squeeze more money out of the borrower.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation