Consumer complaint received 2022-04-05
Product: Student loan — Private student loan
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Trouble with how payments are being handled
Company: AES/PHEAA (OR)

Hi, I am reaching out for assistance on a trifecta of frustrating issues around my student loans and what I expected was going to be their forgiveness. 

To give you necessary background, I graduated from XXXX XXXX in XXXX and worked for the City of XXXX from XXXX, then the Oregon Employment Department from XXXX, and finally the regional workforce development board ( Worksystems, a 501 ( c ) 3 nonprofit ) from XXXX until present. I only took out/received federal loans for my education. They were consolidated when I left school because I was advised to do that - but when they were consolidated, they began to be serviced by American Education Services, a subsidiary or sister company of PHEAA - and therefore became ineligible for PSLF forgiveness as well as other things like deferral of loan payments during the pandemic. ( I could go on a rant about the privatization of public services here but I will leave that for another day. ) I diligently made monthly payments for almost that entire period ( save a few periods early in the Great Recession where I deferred payment due to economic hardship ) and have made well over 120 monthly payments.

Here are the things I am seeking help with. 

1 ) When I re-submitted my PSLF paperwork in XXXX thanks to Biden 's TEPSLF eligibility expansion, I requested that my payments be put on hold until a determination was made on my eligibility for the TEPSLF program ( an option they clearly put on the TEPSLF paperwork ). Currently, I am seeing information on the XXXX website that they will expect me to start payments on XX/XX/XXXX because that is when the COVID relief program ends for student loan payments. Can you please help me verify that I do not, in fact, need to make payments? Because I have already made far over 120 monthly payments, I do not want to make any more that aren't necessary.

2 ) I received a letter from Fed Loans saying that they approved ( or recognized ) 2 payments as being eligible for ( TE ) PSLF over my 6 years working for the Oregon Employment Department. This is distressing for many reasons - first because they have not approved my other clearly eligible employers, and second because I worked at XXXX for 6 years and to only have 2 payments deemed eligible while I made years and years of payments is maddening. 

3 ) For years and years, American Education Services ( AES ) told me I had to pay {$110.00} a month and deducted that from my bank account even though their website always said that I owed {$100.00}. I spoke with multiple customer service reps over that time, and they all gave me a hand-wavey, not understandable reason why they were deducting {$110.00} and that it was the correct amount.

However, after multiple inquiries about whether I could defer payments during COVID, I finally got someone who was able to help me and give an answer that synced up with what I read in newspapers. They told me that even though they were servicing my federal loans, they did not follow the student loan relief guidelines under the CARES Act. They were, however, able to give me a 2 month pause and apply payments I had already made to future months. When I started repaying, lo and behold, they began charging me {$100.00}, which is what I had inquired about multiple times with them. 

There are 3 things this last

item brings up : 1 ) Am I not getting credit for my monthly payments because they were overcharging me monthly despite my repeated inquiries around why they were charging {$110.00} vs {$100.00}, and therefore I was not making the appropriate payment amount? 2 ) Because they paused my payments for 2 months and applied the payments I had already made towards future months because of that deferment, shouldn't I be refunded that money? Where did it go and under what pretense? 3 ) The amount of my student loans that will be forgiven ( assuming it actually happens ), will now be considerably less since they were charging me an additional $ XXXX for 17 years. That comes out to roughly {$2000.00}. I know on some level this might seem like nitpicking, but I do NOT want to pay a private company who didn't even do/keep their basic paperwork correctly ( they kept trying to make me sign a document to confirm my loan 's interest rate for *years* and after I didn't they eventually dropped my interest rate a full percentage point ) and is basically making money off of the public education system.

I have sent multiple inquiries to AES about the {$100.00} vs {$110.00} discrepancy in the past few months ( after they started charging me {$100.00} post-deferment ) and they have not responded. 

Because that ~ $ XXXX from those monthly overpayments I asked about multiple times would've been forgiven with XXXX, I believe I should have it refunded. And regardless of the TEPSLF, if I did not need to pay that, it should have been transferred over to FedLoans when I consolidated and transferred the loan to them. Even if the public system continues to mess up, I would rather pay interest to them than a private loan servicer. 

I'm sorry for the lengthy and wordy letter, but as someone who has done constituent services before myself, I wanted to make sure I gave you all the pertinent info, so hopefully this was helpful. Of course, if you need any additional information or have any additional questions, I'm happy to supply it/answer them.