Consumer complaint received 2019-12-27
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: IN
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Struggling to repay your loan
Sub-issue: Problem lowering your monthly payments

Complaint:
After several phone calls I received a voicemail and returned the phone call to the XXXX XXXX XXXX XX/XX/XXXXXXXX. I had also just received my first loan payment letter stating I had a payment that was going to be due in the next month. I had the semester off during Fall'XX/XX/XXXX but already enrolled for Spring 'XX/XX/XXXX. I was confused by the notice and the phone calls from this company. I had gone ahead and called the XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX  XXXX back to see what the deal was with their calls. I spoke to a man named XXXX. He already had all of my account information which seemed both alarming yet reassuring to me. I felt that the knowledge of what I went to school, the company my loans were through and the history of my loan payments made things seem more legitimate. There were very few errors in the details he told me regarding my current loans and status. I am very skeptical so this is an incredibly embarrassing situation for me to be in right now. Going through the process of giving him the information of the company I currently work for, the approximate yearly income I was making and a few other details that did not seem to be too sensitive, not my SSN, DLN, account numbers or anything of that nature. He informed be that I qualified for a public service loan due to the hospital where I currently work. He then informed me of the payments I would be making for the first five months and so on. These numbers seemed way way to good to be true, so I continued to ask some more questions about the adjustments, where to see this information posted and so forth. He informed me that everything would be visible through the loan website where my government loans were taken out of. This was easy to do! What had I been waiting on? What a deal! What I was not expecting, because there was no permission and no bank account information given, was to find in the following week for {$450.00} to be taken from my account. This occured the following month as well. In an attempt to immediately address the problem I called the company who is in charge of my loan to inquire, as well as my bank. Due to the XXXX holiday these places were closed. Following the XXXX holiday a second withdraw was made. This again was not something that was approved or authorized by me. This is being done through a bank account that the account numbers have never been shared and I am the only name on the account. I have no idea on how this happened. I immediately tried contacting the SFLA company to see what was happening. I called their listed number, XXXX and waited for the prompt to enter XXXX XXXX 's ext. in, that prompt never came. I sat and listed to the hold music for over 1 hour and no one every answered the phone. I have filed a fraud notice with my bank for the grand total of {$910.00} transactions on XX/XX/19 and XX/XX/19, for an investigation or at least fraud protection to be set in motion. Please look into this company and shut it down.Thank you.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation