Consumer complaint received 2016-06-24
Company: Nelnet, Inc.
State: MO
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with my lender or servicer
Sub-issue: Having problems with customer service

Complaint:
My wife became eligible for XXXX Loan Forgiveness in XX/XX/XXXX after XXXX for 11 years in a low income district ( a technicality at the state level kept her school building off the list of low income school but it was added retroactively ). We applied immediately to Nelnet and XXXX, the XXXX servicers for her student loans. A little over a month later we received the first round of rejection letters. We had followed the directions as they were written on the federal form and listed all of the qualifying school buildings she had worked in ( all certified by the same CAO in Section XXXX ). Both providers wanted separate applications for each school building while the instructions required only that all schools be listed. We followed the instructions of the servicers and reapplied. We were then rejected by both servicers because the database listed " XXXX '' instead of " XXXX XXXX XXXX '' which is what the CAO wrote when he filled out the form for a second time. We were also told that the school was not listed for all of the years the CAO listed for her employment. He listed all 11 years of service and within those years were 5 consecutive years that were listed. After a phone call to XXXX we were also told that we would need to submit a copy of my wife 's XXXX certificate and a letter from her principal stating she had XXXX ( both of which, according to the application ) were certified by the CAO in Section XXXX already and to only list the years that qualified her for forgiveness. The federal application does not ask for these items but a form added by XXXX on their website does. For our third application to XXXX and Nelnet we only listed the five consecutive years of service that qualified and included a printout from the database, included a letter from her principal and a copy of her XXXX certificate, had the CAO certify she had worked at the " XXXX XXXX XXXX. '' just as the database described it, and filled out the remaining parts of the form exactly as we had the first two times. We sent identical applications to both XXXX and Nelnet. Yesterday we received another rejection from Nelnet stating we filled out section XXXX incorrectly. We had checked the box stating we had applied for forgiveness previously with another servicer and listed XXXX and their contact information. The instructions said that if you had applied and not yet received forgiveness to the the forgiveness amount blank. Neither XXXX nor Nelnet raised this objection with the first XXXX applications. I believe I was, once again, following the directions as they were written but Nelnet wants another application with the other box checked. Thus they will get a couple more months of fees from the government and we will spend another {$500.00} in loan payments for a loan that should have been forgiven several months ago. XXXX will probably raise the same objection. It seems that a new objection is raised every time we apply costing us hundreds of dollars and added interest. The objections are often as a result of unclear directions on the federal form or the servicer just making up their own policies. Should XXXX again reject the application I will file an additional complaint. Had all of these objections been listed upon the first objection we would not be trying to track down signatures during summer break from people on vacation in order to make our fourth application.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation