Consumer complaint received 2019-05-13
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: FL
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Sub-issue: Received bad information about your loan

Complaint:
Fed Loan Servicing aka Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency ( PHEAA ) enacts extremely deceptive tactics against student loan holders. Fed    Loan Servicing plans and executes illegal and falsified obstacles at every stage of repayment. The egregious misinformation, deception, horrific customer service, and fraudulence at every step of the needlessly insurmountable barriers Fed  Loan devises to confuse and take advantage of unwitting people are conduct that needs to be investigated and brought charges against. They have even instituted call centers where the customer service employees willingly lie and deceive callers so they can quickly get them to agree to various changes, such as IDR to IBR repayment plans and then they never do what they said they were going to do. They are destroying peoples lives in this country. Literally, it seems it is somehow legal for these organizations to destroy peoples lives in the name of profit for their organization and shareholders. 

In XX/XX/XXXX I called to check on my account and resubmit my information for the repayment plan. At that time, they said I should change mine from IDR to IBR since it would better fit my current income better. I completed all the paperwork and completed the income verification via the IRS connection. All the paperwork was completed and sent in. I called to check XX/XX/XXXX and they said everything is fine and that all I needed to do was send in a check for {$71.00}. I sent the check in. I followed up with another phone call to verify they received the check and that everything was ok. They said based on my income the payment would be around {$41.00} per month. They said that the repayment program I was being enrolled in is the 20-year loan forgiveness program. I said that I had been in the 10-year loan forgiveness program since I was working in public service state government jobs for over 7 years. Then they said I only have 5 years on file. Then we talked about how many years was going to be subtracted from the now 20 years. They said that when it is complete that the student loans would be forgiven and there would be no income tax, nor any other tax charged to me. I said okay, I will enroll in that program. They said that in XX/XX/XXXX my account would show that I could pay the {$41.00} per month payment. I have checked back with them every two weeks to see what is going on with the account and why the payment is not available in the account. It is now XXXX and the account still does not allow me to pay {$41.00}. 

Please help bring enforcement action and justice to the criminals at Fed  Loan Servicing and Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency. Just because they have the word assistance or servicing in their deceptively named companies does not mean they are actually helping anyone other than themselves get richer and make their shareholders richer. They are predatory lenders. They are predatory lenders taking advantage of uneducated and unwitting students in this country. 

Unfortunately, I can only assume that enough lawmakers agreed to allow these criminal organizations to charge upwards and over 7 % interest rate on student loans while the bank interest rate has been at historically low nearly 0 % interest rate. So not only do the banks get to benefit from peoples uneducated decisions and suffering, but also the lenders. It is an unfortunate society where it continues to support and encourage organizations to institute predatory lending and use deceptive tactics such as call centers, etc. to illegally misappropriate students information, misled customer account status, falsify employee numbers, institute processes that ensure inordinate wait times, and many other deceptive tactics used so they can continue to take advantage of student loan holders. 

I am not sure why these types of practices are supported by the United States Education Department and the United States Congress. I can only speculate that the government administrators and lawmakers are somehow incentivized by the corrupt practices of the loan servicers and providers. I believe they should not be that way because they are destroying peoples lives. I hope that you will help bring justice and resolve these issues and concerns.

Company response to consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief