Consumer complaint received 2019-04-17
Product: Student loan — Private student loan
Issue: Problem with a credit reporting company's investigation into an existing problem — Investigation took more than 30 days
Company: HEARTLAND PAYMENT SYSTEMS INC (ME)

I have had a small XXXX student loan from my school who used XXXX XXXX as a servicer for the loan. When I first started paying this bill in XXXX I set it up on auto pay immediately as all of my bills are. I have NEVER missed a bill out of all my car loans, mortgages, credit cards, and over my other 30ish accounts. This past year I had closed a bank account of mine to consolidate some things to make it easier for me to control my finances. As I went through each one of my accounts making sure the ones being paid out of that account were being transferred to a new payment plan. I came across this student loan. Which was at the end of its term only owing a few hundred more dollars. This loan typically was paid every couple of months or quarter I believe. As i went in to update my account for the new bank account info for auto pay I put everything in place and set it up for autopay. Or so I thought .... The company is telling me now that the auto pay I set up just went through as a one-time payment only. Which I was not told or made aware of. I was not called, or notified of any delinquent payments since that moment until in XX/XX/XXXX I was going through my tax info for the year of XXXX and went into that account to see that it was past due ... to my complete surprise. The due amount I believe was {$200.00} which I immediately paid in full upset that it was past due. Again, I am a XXXX XXXX XXXX and am very strict on my own credit and personal finance. I take pride in the fact that I've never missed a payment. Once it was paid I was still never notified that they had sent a delinquent letter to the credit bureau. Never heard from a collections agency or was notified that my auto pay was not functional any longer. I understand that this is entirely my responsibility. However, had someone from the company just called and told me my payment was a few days past due and not on auto pay I would have done what I did in XXXX of XXXX and just paid it off immediately. I am writing this now because as of last week it was the first time I have heard that this bill was on my credit report showing serious late payments of 30 and 60 days. I am currently applying for another mortgage and when they pulled my credit they notified me of this issue. To my complete shock, I am now caught in a stressful situation over this misunderstanding and malfunction or glitch in the system for their auto-pay ( which I'm assuming is the case. ) As you can see from my credit history I have every payment on auto pay. This mistake will cost me over {$8000.00} more on my loan. I have reached out to the company to see if they can help me and they have denied it completely and told me to have it investigated. Which is unfortunate to me seeing how that was the last payment for this loan and the loan has been closed out entirely. So I went the entire installment and the last payment gets messed up and is greatly affecting my credit score. It is the only thing that is messing with my score according to my lender. I am hoping cfpb can help me resolve this issue and see that it was a miscommunication error.