Consumer complaint received 2016-05-10
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: MI
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:
I have made my student loan payments on time for the full amount since I got out of school. I have several different student loans based on the years in school and I have XXXX loans being serviced by AES ( American Education Services ). The loan issue that I am complaining about is being serviced by AES. On XXXX/XXXX/15 I went on their website and submitted an ACH payment change request. The notice that was on the change request says the following " Your existing Direct Debit agreement will be stopped. By submitting a new agreement, we will not debit your monthly installment until the new agreement takes effect. Processing the new agreement may take up to 3 days during which time you will not receive the interest rate reduction ( if applicable ). you may be required to submit payments manually until you receive notification from us stating when the direct debit service will resume. '' After reading that statement I set up a manual payment to ensure my payment would not be late. The ACH payment change request I submitted was for an increase of {$490.00}. Despite the fact that the notice said my existing direct debit agreement will be stopped AES took out my normal direct debit amount and the manual payment ( in essence 2 payments instead of 1 ). After a month I received no written or verbal communication from AES so I called their toll free number and inquired as to why it was taking to long to make a simple payment change and I was informed that " it had to go to a payment change committee to decide if they will allow me to have my payment increased. '' I was baffled that they would possibly not allow me to pay additional money so that my loan can be paid off sooner. They told me to wait longer and I would receive a letter within a couple weeks. After another month ( now 2 months after the initial request was submitted ) I still had not received any communication from AES so I called their toll free number again and spoke to employee ID XXXX who besides being quite rude said they could n't determine what the problem is with my request. He guessed that I should submit a manual form and mail it in. After I explained I already submitted a form 2 months ago online he said that I should just mail a form in ( despite not providing a form ) and said that the website was broken. I did not want to mail in a form for security reasons as the electronic form is more secure which is why I originally utilized their online account. I asked what he could do to fix the situation and all he said it submit more paperwork and see what happens. I asked to speak to the office of the president and a representative ( employee ID XXXX ) took my information on what I wanted my new payment to be and said he would send it to the ACH department for them to review. The representative said they would try to get back to me within 7-10 days. This issue is still not resolved and it is making me feel as though they wo n't increase my payment which will allow me to pay my loan off sooner since that will decrease the amount of interest they receive on the loan. I wish I could request a loan transfer so none of my loans are serviced by AES!

Company response to consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief