Consumer complaint received 2017-01-18
Product: Student loan — Non-federal student loan
Issue: Dealing with my lender or servicer — Received bad information about my loan
Company: AES/PHEAA (VA)

I have two significant complains with AES/PHEAA : 1 ) I graduated college in XX/XX/2008, and after my six month grace period for repayment ended, I was not in a financial position to repay the full amount on my student loans. I had moved to XXXX and with the exorbitant cost of rent, could not afford a $ XXXX monthly student loan payment. I called AES/PHEAA to inquire about my options to lower payments. They steered me into a program called " Modified Graduated Repayment Program '' or something to that effect, which successfully lowered my monthly payments. It was n't until nearly 18 months later, after making thousands in payments, that I realized my loan balances had not lowered at all. In fact, and I could be mistaken, but I believe some even increased in balance ( I ca n't recall if there was additional forbearance granted on some of the loans or not ). Apparently I had been making interest-only payments. When I called AES/PHEAA to inquire and ultimately change the repayment schedule, I even asked the person why someone would willingly enter into that type of interest-only repayment program and he admitted, " I do n't know, I would never do it ''. At this point, I had wasted thousands of dollars in loan repayments and I wed just as much or even more than when I started. I was clearly steered into a repayment program with horrible, even predatory, terms and was not aware that any other options existed or that income-based repayment could have been possible. I am still paying the price today as my balance is higher than it should have been and I have been charged the related extra interest all these years. 

2 ) On numerous occasions in recent years, I asked AES/PHEAA to apply or allocate additional principle ( I regularly paid more than required ) solely to my private loans. I have a mix of private and federal loans and wanted only the minimum applied to federal loans and everything to go towards paying down my private loans, which remained high due to the mistakes described above. Instead AES/PHEAA ignored my instructions and my federal loans are now entirely paid off ( and have been for nearly a year ), while I still have $ XXXX in private loans. As a result of AES/PHEAA 's mistake, I will no longer be eligible for future student loan incentives ( that only applied to federal loans ) through my employer that could have totaled in the thousands. 

As you can see, AES/PHEAA guidance and poor management had the direct result of costing me thousands of dollars. I can not speak to their motivation, or if it was intentionally predatory in nature, but their actions resulted in me paying thousands more in interest than needed and the elimination of my federal loans at the expense of keeping my private loans active, which I assume is better for them. 

I recently shared these same concerns with AES/PHEAA, but have yet to hear back. Ideally, I would like either a balance reduction and/or for my payments to be allocated as intended so that my federal loans are re-instituted on schedule so that I can once again receive student loan incentives from my employer. 

Thank you in advance.