Consumer complaint received 2019-04-25
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Received bad information about your loan
Company: AES/PHEAA (CA)

On XX/XX/XXXX I contacted Fed Loan Servicing regarding a late-payment notice I had received via email.This was unexpected as I had been making direct withdrawal payments for Direct subsidized loan ( XXXX university dept ) through their Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program ( I work for a XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX ) since XX/XX/XXXX. I was informed by a FLS representative ( employee ID XXXX ) that a new loan I had taken on the previous year ( I had completed a XXXX through the XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX in XX/XX/XXXX ) was not represented in that automatic payment. He also mentioned to me that in order to qualify for PSLF I needed to reapply for the program every year, even if my employer remained the same as in previous years. I explained that this was the first time I had been informed of this requirement, but I was assured that once my reapplication was approved, they would retroactively apply payments made in the intervening months towards the PSLF. 
The FLS rep then suggested I apply for loan consolidation and income driven repayment so I would be able to make one easy and affordable payment each month. He showed me where to find and fill out the applications for IDP through studentloan.gov and loan consolidation services ( PHEAA ). He explained that once the applications have been submitted I would be notified in a few weeks via email that my new monthly payment had been calculated. 
In the intervening weeks I successfully re-certified my employment as qualifying for PSLF, but was informed it would take a few additional weeks to determine how many remaining payments I would need to make before my loans were forgiven through PSLF. 
Today I received a notice that I have made 0 qualifying PSLF payments over the last five years. I assumed this was a mistake and called FLS to inquire. I was then, for the first time, informed that since my loans were consolidated I had forfeited five years of qualifying PSLF payments and had to restart my 10 year repayment plan. This will cost me more than {$10000.00}. It was further explained that FLS had sent a " consolidation may impact forgiveness '' notice with this information to my FLS inbox in the weeks following I had submitted my application for consolidation, but that they did not email me directly. Every other notice from this inbox was also emailed to me directly, so I had no idea their was important information being sent to the FLS inbox, especially since the representative I spoke to never mentioned checking this inbox for important information. 
I trusted the the FLS representative when he recommended loan consolidation, and since he knew I was in the PSLF program it is inconceivable why he wouldn't inform me I would be losing thousands of dollars by doing so. The FLS representative went on to inform me that my only recourse is to open a police report claiming identity theft and have my loans unconsolidated through the courts. The fact that an FLS representative suggested I lie to the police ( my identity has obviously not been stolen ) in order to re-qualify these last five years of payments shocked me and opened my eyes for the first time that I am dealing with an extremely corrupt organization. 
The complexities and of these interdependent repayment, consolidation, forgiveness plans can not be overstated, and after spending more than an hour on the phone with FLS reps today I still don't understand what I signed up for an why. I was told consolidation was a simple way to repay my debt, which is all I've ever wanted to do. That said, I support my family on a non-profit salary, the PSLF program was ( and is ) essential to my family 's financial security moving forward, and now I simply have nowhere to turn. Please help. 

confirmatory documentation available upon request