Consumer complaint received 2024-02-17
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Trouble with how payments are being handled
Company: EdFinancial Services (DC)

My student loan provider is EdFinancial Services and I have three issues with them. 

1. They turned off my auto-pay without telling me which resulted in a late payment 2. When I made a manual payment, they took out the payment twice instead of just once and told me it will take up to two months to refund their mistake. 
3. They applied my payment to one of my two consolidated loans, instead of evenly applying it to the two loans, and now are showing me as delinquent on one of the loans because of their mistake. 

I called the student loan provider in early XXXX to point out the double-debit from my bank account. They submitted the work order on either XX/XX/XXXX or XXXX for that issue. When I got my next statement it noted a delinquency on one of my two loans, which I discovered was due to a mis-application of my payment. I called about this issue and they submitted a second work order on XX/XX/XXXX or XXXX. Separately, on XX/XX/XXXX I submitted a complaint through the ombudsman website at the Department of Education 's office of Federal Student Aid. I've called both for more information, but neither has any updates and have said they have nobody they can transfer me to for any kind of update. They said I just have to wait until someone reaches out to me. 

To clarify the 3 issues I'm dealing with : I applied for the SAVE program last fall before student loan repayments restarted. When my repayment restarted I was not in the SAVE program yet. I had the auto-pay turned on. I was approved for the SAVE program on XX/XX/XXXX. This led to issue # 1. Once I was approved for the SAVE program they turned off my auto-pay and didn't inform me until they sent me my next billing notice and informed me that I was past due on my XXXX payment. My auto-pay had been set to the XXXX of each month and I got the notice on XX/XX/XXXX. 

I started making manual payments while waiting for my auto-pay to restart ( it's restarting this month on XX/XX/XXXX ) and this led to issue # 2. I submitted a manual payment for XXXX from my bank account and they deducted it twice from my bank account. I called them and they said they would submit the work order for it, and that it would take 30-60 days to refund my money. I asked if they could transfer me to someone in finance and they said there was nobody I could speak to. I called back on Thursday, XX/XX/XXXX at XXXXXXXX XXXX  and asked to speak to any kind of supervisor and was told they would call me back the same day. They called back Friday evening at XXXX and left a message indicating I had to wait until Monday to call back. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I received my latest bill that would receive the XXXX XXXX auto-pay and this led to issue # 3. The bill said my account was past due. I have two separate loans that have been consolidated together and my monthly payment is split between the two loans. They took my double payment and applied it entirely to one of the two loans, rather than splitting it between them. So, one loan is showing up as unpaid for last month and I've been getting notes that I'm past due on that loan. I called EdFinancial about that and they submitted the other work order. Late last week I got another notice saying I was 11 days delinquent. It's not an issue yet given the Biden plan allowing for no payment for up to a year, but if it's happening now, I worry about what happens if they mess up a year from now and my credit score takes a hit.