Consumer complaint received 2021-07-08
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: WA
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Sub-issue: Problem with customer service

Complaint:
I am currently participating in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness ( PSLF ) program as I am a public servant. Part of the requirements in order to be eligible for PSLF is submit a employer recertification form every year. I've been doing this for 7 years now, with no issues. However, this year I've had issues with Fedloan Servicing ( my current loan servicer ) accepting my PSLF form. I have submitted this form 4 times now and each time I receive a response that I am missing information of some type despite have the correct information on the form. Every time I talk with customer service they also insist if I resubmit my form again any issue will be corrected. I have resubmitted my form four times now and the issue is still not resolved and the issue continues to change each time despite me not changing any information. I first submitted my PSLF re-cert on XX/XX/2021 and received an email that my signature was invalid. It was an electronic PIV signature that I've previously used in past years without issue. Myself and my supervisor resigned with a digital signature ( drawn digitally ) and resubmitted. On XX/XX/2021 I received a notification that my signature was once again invalid and my employer did not fill out section 4 of the form for non-government employees ( which is incorrect ; section 4 was not needed since I was a federal employee and it was clearly marked that I was and the form instructs you to skip section 4 if you are ). I called Fedloan about the form and they said that the digital signature needed to be a " wet signature '' and that the section 4 error was a mistake and to ignore. The only issue was the digital signature. I asked why the change in not accepting digital signatures as they have accepted them in the past and that we were also in a pandemic so getting a " wet signature '' was near impossible since we are all working remotely. The service agent referred me to their supervisor and they said the same thing that the " rules changed '' and now only " wet signatures '' are accepted. I was fortunate enough to see my supervisor briefly while being XXXX out for work and they were able to sign my form that day so I resubmitted it again on XX/XX/2021 with now a " wet signature ''. No other details were changed on the form. This last time, my supervisor resigned the form and there is the tiniest little ink smudge by their signature date and my form could not be validated because it had been " altered '' ( I've provided form as reference ). I spoke with XXXX from Fedloan Servicing ( Employee ID XXXX ) who said that because of this ink smudge that my supervisor would either 1 ) have to resign the form and initial it or 2 ) call Fedloan to verify. This is incredibly difficult to do as both my supervisor and myself are XXXX on different disaster events where we're 1 ) not working together in the same physical location to get them to resign 2 ) we are busy responding to events where the ability to call in to verify this is a burden and not possible within the timeframe that Fedloan has their call lines operating since they're on XXXX  time and we both work XXXX time hours.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation