Consumer complaint received 2018-02-07
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Problem with customer service
Company: ACS Education Services (NC)

ACS and now Conduent have exhibited nothing but incompetence in the years since the servicing of my loan was taken over by the company.

With my original servicer, I maintained one account and made one payment. Upon the transfer of my account to this company my loans were split into two accounts, which I was not made aware and therefore did not make payments on one of them for a few months. Additionally, I now make a payment per loan instead of one payment for all loans. Two accounts, multiple loans per account.

This bifurcation of accounts seems to be a minor inconvenience, however, it proved problematic again a year later when I submitted paperwork for IBR re-certification. Again, it was not made clear to me that, even though I am but one person submitting paperwork to one company, I have to submit two applications. One of the accounts was put into IBR, the other was not and I had to defer and re-submit the information. 

Additionally, the process for re-certification requires paper. That's right, in 2018 I'm still printing forms ( TWO! ), writing with ink, and mailing the forms in hopes ( fingers crossed! ) that they'll be received and processed. I have another servicer - AES - with whom I fill out an online form and receive confirmation that all is complete in the same 24 hour period. With ACS/Conduent, it takes weeks.

Further, regarding re-certification, this past year I re-certified with both forms for each account, making sure to write the account numbers on the forms. Weeks later I received notification that spousal certification was required with NSLDS. Knowing how things usually go with ACS/Conduent, I followed up with an e-mail via the web portal to Customer Care ( Yes, one for each account! ) to ensure that the NSLDS spousal certification was complete and my IBR re-certification could be processed. It wasn't. I received notification that my loan payment would triple. I contacted customer care, worked with them to resolve, and ultimately figured it out. 

Two interesting things have happened during this last round of confusion : 1 ) After my application was received and spousal certification complete and conversation had with Customer Care to resolve the re-certification issues, the customer care associate who I was working with called, having confused me with another borrower and told me information that did not relate to my accounts. I was confused and explained who I was. She called back later to explain that my IBR had been accepted and she had made a mistake. I thought I was out of the woods. I apparently am not. 

After this last confusing conversation with customer care, I logged into my account and noted that my payment date had changed from the XXXX of each month to the XXXX. I adjusted my budget to account for this, but ACS/Conduent strikes again : here it is XX/XX/XXXX and the funds have been taken from my account. This is absolutely unacceptable and I will be scrambling to ensure that my bank account does not overdraft. 

None of this makes any mention of the fact that my account, though having been on auto pay for years, frequently reflects late fee charges. I once reached out regarding these and was assured that they were cleared. I logged in and some of the charges for some loans were cleared. I needed to call back once again to have the rest cleared again. Since then, I've seen late charge fees listed and just throw my hands up.