Consumer complaint received 2024-01-31
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)

At the end of XX/XX/XXXX I began receiving notices from Ed Financial Services that my first student loan payment would be due XX/XX/XXXX, approximately a week before the payment was due, stating that I owed nearly {$1300.00} that month. When I called customer service ( after being on hold for nearly 5 hours ), I was told this was incorrect and my account would be updated with the correct amount in around 45 business days. I was also told verbally that my first payment was actually due on XX/XX/XXXX ( not XX/XX/XXXX ), which was confirmed with updated due dates on my account. On this same day, I also emailed Ed Financial regarding the same issues, I did not receive a call back until XX/XX/XXXX. By this time, the past due amount of ~ {$1300.00} was still showing on my account and I was unable to pay my upcoming bill due on XX/XX/XXXX without paying the past due amount. When speaking with a customer service agent, she then told me that the past due amount was incorrect and would be removed from my account, however, that my payments were actually supposed to begin XX/XX/XXXX which I was never notified of. In order to avoid paying the incorrect late payments, she had me submit payment over the phone for both XXXX and XXXX totaling {$330.00}, as my correct monthly payments are {$160.00}. This monthly payment amount was confirmed by her as well as displayed as the amount due on my account. 

The payment of {$330.00} was posted to my account, however, it is now XX/XX/XXXX and my XXXX payments are still listed as past due. I contacted customer support for a third time and I was told that the past due amount was because my monthly payments were actually supposed to be {$900.00}, despite this being reflected nowhere on my account or in any communications I've had with Ed Financial previously. After restating that my payments show at {$160.00} on my end ( the same amount that I had submitted payment for for the previous two months ) I was then told that the agent could not figure out what was wrong and would submit a request for my account to be looked at. After which I informed her that my next payment was due on XX/XX/XXXX and I would be unable to pay it without paying the incorrect past due amount also posted to my account. I was then placed back on hold. She told me that their system was not matched up to what was displaying and she would need to put in a request to fix it, which I have been told by multiple customer support agents since XX/XX/XXXX, with no explanation of how or if the faulty past due amount would be removed from my account. The call ended with no resolution and being told a ticket has been submitted to look into my account. It has now been nearly 4 months with no resolution where I am being charged far more than my payments due and faulty missed payments are being applied to my account with the potential to severely impact my credit score. Additionally, I am unable to make upcoming payments as the system requires me to pay any past due amounts as well, which in my case are all incorrect. Attached is a pdf of my account and loan summary with a record of my XX/XX/XXXX payment at the bottom. There is no reason that it should take this many months for me to be able to accurately make payments on my loans.