Consumer complaint received 2024-04-22
Product: Student loan — Private student loan
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Problem with customer service
Company: AES/PHEAA (PA)

This complaint is being submitted due to PHEAA 's failure to service past requests which have been requested many times. Several Agents over the phone have stated that the paper mailings would be converted to electronic communications. However, the company still sends paper mail. Despite my many attempts at getting the company to stop sending paper mail and instead send to the email address on file, they continuously send mail. In speaking with different representation, this is a common problem with PHEAA. They somehow have no means of operating in an orderly fashion and their methods of handling requests are quite obviously misguided or not formulated in a way that actually follows the requirements of a Student Loan servicer. As a result of their disturbing failures, borrowers consistently receive Representatives who appear out of their mind or extremely unqualified to handle requests that should easily be forthcoming whenever presented with the opportunity to help borrowers over the phone. Representatives who are unstable or emotionally impaired should not be dealing with requests from borrowers over the phone especially those Employees who seem to turn things into a personal vendetta whenever I challenge the Representatives with serious questions. 

Commentary which can corroborate this damning claim : Communication Breakdown With Borrowers What about when you receive bad information straight from your servicer? Communication through customer service is a big part of loan servicing. Failing to communicate important information to a borrower is an obvious mistake by a servicer like AES, but communicating wrong information is just as bad, if not embarrassing. 

Heres what we found : A borrower stopped making payments on their loan, and AES failed to reach out to the co-signer. After five years, during which interest continued to accrue, AES finally spoke to the co-signer, who informed them that the borrower had died. The co-signer then started making payments on the loan. End of story? Not quite. AES keeps asking the co-signer for the deceased borrowers contact information. 
Another borrower writes she decided to pay back her loan in full to get it off her plate. After she paid via a phone call, she was given the impression the whole balance was paid. AES continued to send her bills. 
One borrower just wanted access to their payment history and the amortization schedule ( or how long it would take for the loan to be paid in full ) of a private loan. AES failed to provide either. Another borrower wanted to get a payment history on their federal loan, but AES had not provided it. 
One borrower received a letter that they were delinquent on their payments. They had auto-pay set up with their bank account and had been paying their loan on time for 9 years, so they were confused. AES had suddenly turned off the auto-pay, the account became delinquent, and was reported to the credit bureaus. When the borrower called to rectify the issue, the customer service rep said their account would be reviewed and the credit agencies notified. Nothing happened. Time and time again, the borrower reached out, was promised resolution and nothing happened. The case is marked closed on the CFPB website, but again, its hard to know if its a happy resolution. 
One person wrote on behalf of their daughter who said {$10000.00} worth of payments made over 17 months had been deemed lost by AES. The parent and daughter provided evidence of the payments to AES, including the bank statements showing the date and amount debited to the servicer. Still, AES insisted they did not have any of the money. Despite all this, in order to regain good standing with the loan, the daughter set up a new payment plan. The daughter successfully made one payment, but the second payment was lost and the whole issue began once again. 

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