Consumer complaint received 2022-10-15
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Received bad information about your loan
Company: EdFinancial Services (CA)

I have been having a really unpleasant experience with EdFinancial Services with the whole student loan refund process. My main issue with it has been how unclear they are with what to expect. It almost feels like they intentionally leave customers confused so they are discouraged to go through with the refund. I almost wish that I had not made any payments and just taken advantage of the no interest, but I personally hate owing money and I like to getting payments over with as soon as I can. Before I go on, I wanted to make it a point to stress that this has nothing to do with the customer representatives that I have talked to. They have both done a great job and I am starting to believe that they are just as clueless with this process as we are. 

My first phone call to them was back on XX/XX/XXXX when I initially requested the refund. I paid a total of {$5400.00} back in full, but my first payment of {$200.00} took place on XX/XX/2000 which was before the XXXX cutoff date so it did not qualify for forgiveness. So I told her that I wanted {$5200.00} refunded so that I can apply for forgiveness right after. Without hesitation she said that they would send me that money. Although I knew that I had given her the right amount it just made me nervous that she did no research or confirmed to me that what I was telling her was correct. After that I asked her a few questions such as when I should expect the refund to be processed or if this anything else that I had to do. She had no answers for any of the questions that I asked her. Again, I don't think she was doing a poor job helping me, but she really did not know any of the answers to my questions. The last thing that she told me was that I should expect a check to arrive at my house but she did not know when or when my loan would be re-opened so that I can apply for the forgiveness. Since then, I have just been very nervous about requesting the refund. I received no confirmation of the transaction through email or text or anything so I feared that the request did not go through. 

The uncertainty just kept making me nervous so on XX/XX/XXXX I decided to call back to get an update. Fortunately, the rep the helped me did confirm that the request I had made was on file so that made me feel a little better. I asked her some of the questions I asked the first time around with the hopes that she would have more answers but I still did not get much. Just like the first time, I was told they are getting high volumes of requests and that there isn't really a timeline of when to expect it to happen. This time she did say my refund would go back to electronically, which is preferred, but the first rep told me that a check was going to be sent so that's another thing that I am not sure about now. So it did feel encouraging to know that my request wasn't forgotten or ignored but I am still in the same situation with the uncertainty. 

I've gone online to see if others have had the same issues with EdFinancial and it looks like this has been a pattern with many of their customers. It is very disappointing to have to go through all this especially knowing that the customers of other servicers have been getting their loans reinstated in a matter of a few weeks. Right now I am honestly more concerned about my loan reinstating than getting the actual refund so that I can apply for the forgiveness and eliminate much of my concern. I don't want to deal with any potential interest charges that can come from waiting too long. This is something in my current situation that I would like eliminated so it would be nice if I can get EdFinancial to reinstate my loan soon. Hopefully, this helps customers going through the same issue in the future as well.