Consumer complaint received 2024-02-26
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Received bad information about your loan
Company: EdFinancial Services (MD)

On XX/XX/2024, I logged into my EdFinancial account to check whether any action needed to be taken on my student loan. My account was in forbearance until XX/XX/2024 due to previous low income and the general forbearance provided to all student loans. 
When I logged in on the XXXX, I saw a notification on my account screen that said I had to recertify my income soon to stay on the IDR plan and that not doing so in time would cause my plan to change to another plan. I had logged in on my mobile phone and looked around the account page to understand the date by which I had to do this, but could not find any information on a due date. It was a Friday evening and the Edfinancial services customer support time had passed. Worried that this notification meant that I needed to do this right away to stay on the IDR plan, I submitted the application to recertify my income with my current income. The next day, I received a notification about a payment being posted on my account and saw that my account was taken out of forbearance because of the submitted income recertification. 
I then went online to other forums and understood that recertifying earlier took me out of forbearance. There was no indication that this would happen on the Edfinancial website, during the submission of the recertification, or anywhere in the portal for me to have foreseen this happening. My understanding was that this submission was required to keep my on the IDR plan beyond XX/XX/2024. 
I was extremely worried as I was not financially prepared to make these payments and so immediately sent an email to Edfinancial, but decided to make a call this morning. On making a call to Edfinancial, I was told that I should have done my research before submitting the application and that they can not revert the account status back to forbearance. I was told that my confusion has caused this and there was no way to resolve now and that I should have called in first before submitting the application. I asked how I could have found the information regarding when I needed to recertify and the gentleman told me that looking under 'Tools and Requests ' and clicking 'Printable Account Information ' would have shown me an account summary. This is not at all intuitive to someone trying to find account information- I had looked under 'Account Summary ', 'Loan Details ', 'Account History ', 'Repayment Options ' and the 'Inbox '. There is no record of the forbearance period on my account or in the printable account information I was directed to even today. All I see is that my forbearance period ends in 27 days and a payment is due. 
The online forums I ended up looking at directed me to file a complaint here to get this issue resolved as it seems to have happened to others as well. I saw a thread where the student was able to get it resolved with your help. So, please do help me out. I had it all planned out to start payments in XXXX. The incomplete and misguiding information on the account landing page with the warning message to recertify soon has led me to take these steps that have now put me in this very unfavorable position. Kindly help me as you have helped other students who faced the same issue.