Consumer complaint received 2016-10-07
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: PA
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with my lender or servicer
Sub-issue: Received bad information about my loan

Complaint:
FedLoan Servicing incorrectly used the REPAYE family size criteria for my application rather than the IBR Family size despite my submission of the annual IBR repayment application. 

I filed an earlier complaint with FedLoan Servicing, however, this complaint raises substantially different issues of which I was previously unaware which I sincerely hope that FedLoan Serving ( with the assistance of the CFPB ), will evaluate and remedy. 

By way of brief background, the Department of Education makes an income based repayment plan request portal available at XXXX. This portal allows borrowers to submit a variety of income based repayment plans that are currently in effect. These plans come under a variety of acronyms, including " IBR '' ( income-based repayment ) and " REPAYE '' ( revised pay as you earn ). Each of these plans has different income and family size criteria which is used to determine an appropriate monthly payment for borrowers with substantial student loan debt. Because of the variety of choices, the Department of Education allows borrowers to decide which of these plans they would like to pay under per 34 CFR 685.210 as the various plans have different impacts on a family 's finances. 

The most recent income based repayment plan is the " REPAYE '' plan, and it appears that even though the Department of Education 's XXXX portal allows borrowers to submit different types of repayment plan requests, FedLoan Servicing defaults to only using the family size criteria of the REPAYE plan ( even if borrowers submit different types of requests ) which results in a systemic miscalculation of borrower monthly payments. 

With respect to my personal circumstances which bring about this complaint, my federal student loans are held with PHEAA, d/b/a Fedloan Servicing as I am currently on an income-based repayment ( IBR ) plan. On XXXX XXXX, 2016 I submitted my annual IBR application recertifying my income information via XXXX, however, I realized that I accidentally did not click " married '' ( which is also used by the portal to add a person 's spouse to their family size ), so I attempted to file XXXX corrections on XXXX XXXX, 2016 and XXXX XXXX, 2016 to fix the error, but unfortunately both were denied. 

However, the denial reason was specified only as " you are not eligible to recertify at this time '' - it was not until FedLoan Servicing provided me with correspondence on XXXX/XXXX/2016 and XXXX/XXXX/2016 ( after receiving my initial complaint on XXXX/XXXX/2016 ) that they clarified that they had used the REPAYE family size criteria rather than the IBR family size criteria. The differences are as follows : 34 CFR 682.215 - Income-based repayment plan. 
( 3 ) Family size means the number that is determined by counting the borrower, the borrower 's spouse, and the borrower 's children, including unborn children who will be born during the year the borrower certifies family size, if the children receive more than half their support from the borrower. 

34 CFR 685.209 ( c ) ( 1 ) - Revised Pay As You Earn repayment plan. 
( iii ) Family size means the number that is determined by counting the borrower, the borrower 's spouse, and the borrower 's children, including unborn children who will be born during the year the borrower certifies family size, if the children receive more than half their support from the borrower. Family size does not include the borrower 's spouse if the borrower is separated from his or her spouse, or if the borrower is filing separately and is unable to reasonably access the spouse 's income information. 

As you can see in comparing the definitions above, the IBR family size requirements are different than those for REPAYE. FedLoan Servicing incorrectly and unliaterally used the REPAYE family size criteria for my application ( excluding my wife from my family size thereby increasing my monthly paymen

Company response to consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief