Consumer complaint received 2018-06-13
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Received bad information about your loan
Company: AES/PHEAA (NY)

I am unsure of the exact dates and amounts but I do have a close estimate. Last year I have started and completed a student loan rehab program on 11 student loans. I was paying XXXX a month I owed roughly 36k and XXXX of that was interest. When my accounts where sent to XXXX XXXX the XXXX interest was not capitalized. I immediately asked about my monthly payments changing to a higher price once the rehab was finished. I called XXXX XXXX and they stated they will let me know when the payments change. A few months later they went up to XXXX a month. I could not afford this and I startd the process for an Income based repayment plan. The representative I started the process with said with the information I gave him he could estimate my payments being around 150 a month and we just have to submit all the information requested of me and wait for approval. This took weeks. I was approved for XXXX a month roughly. When I called back to ask why it was so much, XXXX XXXX then told me it was because 2 out of the 11 loans had to have a seperate request submitted. I do not remember the reasoning they gave me. This is where my complaint starts. I said I do not understand why I wasnt told this information from the beginning of the first process. From the beginning point of starting my first IBR request process to now was a few months. I spoke with a representative around XX/XX/XXXX about wanting all my IBR plans to be on the same 12 month cycle. She suggested I continue a forbearance until all my requests for all 11 accounts were approved. I did not really understand what capitalization was at the time but what I did ask her was my account was showing I owed XXXX and it now shows i owed XXXX? why was that? She told me not to worry. Once the forbearance was lifted it would go back to XXXX. Now this whole situation was due to the fact of not being informed that all my accounts could not be requested for an ibr as a whole and 2 were needed  to be requested seperately. The forbearance was done to keep everything on the same timeframe. I never defaulted. I was never more than 60 days late the whole time these processes were going on and now all my interest has been capatilized even though the representative in XX/XX/XXXX told me that it would not stay at XXXX and go back to XXXX. I tried calling for resolution on the matter multiple times and nobody will help me. It is hard enough to afford a plan on XXXX and now next year the plan will be based on XXXX because I was given misinformation in certain instances and not enough information in others. These things need to be fully explained as well and not in some clause at the end of a phone conversation that is said to you fast or unexplained or both. I would have found a way to pay the XXXX payment until all my ibrs were in order for all of my accounts. This is an unfair practice of misinformation, or not enough information. I would like the capitalized interest taken off my account. I have been told there are class action lawsuits on servicers doing practices like this and there is a recorded phone conversation with a representative in late winter/early spring telling me the capitalized interest will come off my account once all of the accounts are on the same IBR time table and it is being paid again. The representative knew that it would only be in a couple months time everything would be up to date. My very last conversation a few weeks ago, the rep was explaining to me what capitalization was and I was talking to her about amounts owed showing on my credit report and she knew I was concerned about it reporting XXXX and she was misleading me in a conversation stating they report the balance to the credit bureau not the interest and as of this week all the capitalized interest is reported to the credit bureaus as well. The representatives do not give good explanations in general and do not seem to care that the customer is fully understanding of the situation either. They need to do a much better job. Owing this kind of money and not being given the proper information so you can make decisions in your best interest can create much more financial distress in a person 's life than needed.