Consumer complaint received 2021-07-23
Company: HEARTLAND PAYMENT SYSTEMS INC
State: NY
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Sub-issue: Problem with customer service

Complaint:
To whom it may concern, My name is XXXX XXXX, and I graduated from XXXX University with a XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX in XXXX of XXXX. I also graduated from Vermont  XXXX XXXX in XXXX of XXXX with an XXXX XXXX XXXX in XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. 

I took out many loans to attend both of these schools, with every intent of paying them back. The issue at hand regards a Federal Perkins Loan of {$2000.00} that I took out in addition to several private loans in order to attend XXXX. Heartland ECSI was the servicer for this particular loan. While I did complete a virtual exit interview with Heartland ECSI at the end of my last semester at XXXX, by the time the 12 month grace period had ended, this loan had slipped to the back of my mind. 

At this point, Heartland ECSI began sending physical notices through the mail that the grace period had ended and payments were due. However, these notices were being sent to my previous residence ( my Mother 's house ). While my mother informed me that I was receiving mail from Heartland ECSI, I had assumed that is was in regard to a nearly identical loan that I took out during my time at Vermont XXXX College, which I have not missed a payment on. I checked my account online, and there were no perceivable issues. A point can be made here that Heartland ECSI 's website/repayment interface is confusing. They require you, the borrower, to set up separate loan accounts under the same username, which I had done for my Vermont XXXX College loan, but not my XXXX loan. Therefore, when I logged into my account, there was nothing regarding late payments or anything of that nature. At that point I chalked it up to a glitch and figured if there was an issue, I would receive a phone call or an email. 

Unfortunately for me, I did not receive any additional correspondence, and the loan went into collections. This was very poor timing, as I was trying to refinance my student loans at the time due to the fact that my minimum private student loan payments were around {$1800.00} a month. Because I had delinquent loan on my credit report, I was immediately rejected by any refinancing lender. At this point, I figured I should try contacting XXXX to see if I could receive any assistance with this issue, as I saw it as a simple miscommunication with joint accountability which could be easily resolved. I also brought up the issue to one of my peers, who told me that he had had the same exact situation happen to him. He told me that he simply disputed the delinquency status on his credit report, and got the issue resolved with relative ease. This gave me hope. 

Yet again, unfortunately, things did not go my way. I disputed the delinquency status on the loan twice through Transunion, with no luck. I contacted XXXX twice, the first being a voicemail left with the XXXX XXXX XXXX ( XXXX ) department of XXXX. The department felt no obligation to respond to me directly, and went directly to the collection agency ( XXXX XXXX XXXX ). The second being a very descriptive email to the then President of XXXX at the time, XXXX XXXX. Mr. XXXX assured me that this would get taken care of, and told me that someone from XXXX would be in contact. This amounted to no progress whatsoever. 

At this point, frustrated as can be, I abandoned my efforts to try and reason with unreasonable people, and set my sights on doing whatever it takes to be approved for a refinance. While my income has been a little over {$50000.00} a year since starting my current job in XXXX of XXXX, {$1800.00} a month, on top of rent and other basic expenses, had me living paycheck to paycheck during this time. Luckily for me there was a global pandemic happening and Federal Student Loan payments were frozen. I truly do not know what I would have done if they were not frozen, because that would have been an additional {$200.00} a month. 

So I did what I had to do, and borrowed {$2800.00} ( {$800.00} added to the balance for collection fees ) cash from my mother to pay the full balance to the collection agency. But it doesn't stop there, as it can take about to a month and a half or so for a credit report to update. This being said, I patiently waited for my credit report to update, only for it to show a balance of {$6.00} remaining on the delinquent loan. Despite wanting to pull my hair out, I paid the remainder of the balance, and waited an additional month and a half for the credit report to update. Finally, on XX/XX/XXXX, I applied for a refinance and didn't get immediately rejected. Now, I have been making monthly payments for my now consolidated private loans of about {$1000.00} a month, with an interest rate of about 3 % instead of around 8 %. 

I do not hold any bitterness towards XXXX XXXX XXXX, as they were only doing their job. They also pointed me in the direction of a non-profit student loan lender ( XXXX ) to refinance my student loans. The big takeaway from this is that I think that XXXX and Heartland ECSI should take their respective accountability, as I have done. This situation could also have been very easily remedied and was not, and as a result, I suffered extensive unnecessary hardship.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation