Consumer complaint received 2024-02-08
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Trouble with how payments are being handled
Company: EdFinancial Services (MA)

On XX/XX/XXXX, with student loan payments set to start up again, I enrolled in auto-pay with my loan servicer, EdFinancial to make monthly payments on my debt ( see attached confirmation email from EdFinancial ). The estimated start date in that email for my auto-pay was XXXX, XXXX. This email led me to believe it was a confirmation of my auto-pay enrollment ( I have since learned from contacting the company that it is actually just a confirmation that I submitted to apply to auto-pay but not confirmation that I am actually enrolled - I will come back to this ). In XXXX I received the first letter in the mail stating that I had missed a payment. As mentioned above, I believed from the email send on XXXX that I had been successfully enrolled in auto-pay. I reached out to my loan servicer to get clarity on why my auto-pay wasn't working. I made a manual payment of {$250.00} to cover my missing payment and a little extra on XXXX. At that time it was clear my auto-payment hadn't been working so I re-enrolled. See confirmation email attached. Once again there is no language indicating that I will need to make manual payments until I am told in new communication otherwise. The estimated start date for my enrollment is XXXX. When I called the EdFinancial Support line it took them 3 weeks to get back to me with a response. See attached email. At that time I was told that by re-submitting my auto-pay form I had been moved to the back of the line for processing. On XX/XX/XXXX I received yet another letter in the mail telling me I had missed payments in XXXX. I submitted another manual payment of {$250.00} on XXXX and then I spoke over live chat with a member of their team to get an update on processing time. I was given the same information that my auto-pay had not in fact, been confirmed, but they were only confirming I'd submitted paper work for it, they also again shared that re-submitting my enrollment would move me back to the end of the line ( I shared feedback that they should communicate that to borrowers who are confused about why their auto-pay isn't working as I was ). I also shared feedback that they add language to their confirmation emails that clarifies it isn't confirmation of enrollment but is actually confirmation just of form submission and that borrowers should be told explicitly that they need to make manual payments until they receive a different type of confirmation. 

Additionally I am struggling overall with the slow processing time. My conversation with an EdFinancial chat team member on XXXX I was told that the processing time is 2 months ( one month longer than indicated in the original confirmation email ). I submitted my original auto-pay enrollment on XXXX. XX/XX/XXXX is more than 2 months later with no word to have me expect anything awry with my auto-pay until I was told I missed payments. Once again XXXX to today, XXXX is more than two months of processing time and my auto-pay enrollment is still not processed, nor would today 's chat bot team member clarify how far along my application was and when I might expect to receive the right type of confirmation letter to turn on my auto-pay. She continued to just list " 2 billing cycles '' as the extent of timeline I should expect - and would not clarify when asked whether that meant from today ( XXXX ) or back from when it was submitted first on XXXX then again XXXX. 

Finally, a side note- in my chat bot conversation I shared feedback that this process felt disorganized and was told to refrain from being " inappropriate. '' Not only should servicers be there to clearly communicate their policies to borrowers, in advance of borrowers facing complications from those policies, but they should also receive feedback that these processes are harming borrowers without saying that very valid feedback is inappropriate. 

Thank you CFPB, I hope EdFinancial will change their communications strategy and seek to better fulfill their mission of supporting borrowers to pay back their student loans.