Consumer complaint received 2017-01-13
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with my lender or servicer — Received bad information about my loan
Company: AES/PHEAA (NY)

I am in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and my student loans are in income-based repayment. My IBR plan started in XX/XX/XXXX and I pay $ XXXX. I was told I would have to re-certify my income before XX/XX/XXXX to keep my payment at $ XXXX. FedLoan Servicing services my loans. In XXXX and XXXX of XXXX, I used FedLoan Servicing 's e-mail portal to send a secure message requesting a change in my payment date. I received e-mail confirmations from FedLoan Servicing that my requests were received and would be addressed, but I did not hear back from FedLoan Servicing. I called FedLoan Servicing on XX/XX/XXXX to follow up on my inquiry and to add direct debit to my account as part of a promotion to receive a reduction in my interest rate. At that time, the agent told me that I could not change my payment date until my re-certification. She also told me that there was no record of my XXXX and XXXX e-mails, even though I have e-mail confirmations of receipt from FedLoan Servicing. To date, I have not received confirmation of the reduction in my interest rate as a result of the direct debit. I called back in XX/XX/XXXX to check on this and to follow up on my IBR re-certification, as I had not received notice of this yet in my paperless inbox. I am signed up to receive all of my correspondence via e-mail. The agent told me in XXXX that my interest rate should be reduced soon. She also told me it was too early to re-certify and I would receive notice of re-certification around the first of the new year. I received an e-mail notification in XX/XX/XXXX that a message was waiting in my paperless inbox. I checked the message expecting it to be my re-certification notice and was shocked to discover that it was actually a notice stating that I did not re-certify for IBR in time and as a result my new payment would be {$590.00} beginning XX/XX/XXXX. I was very upset at this because this is in direct contradiction to what I was told in XXXX. I would have re-certified timely had I been notified. As soon as I got this message, I immediately re-certified my income. I also called FedLoan Servicing because I received another message stating my new payment of {$590.00} would actually begin XX/XX/XXXX and not XX/XX/XXXX. I made {$18000.00} last year and {$590.00} is a significant amount of money to be taken from my account on such short notice. I called FedLoan Servicing to see if they could accept the {$360.00} for XXXX and fast-track my re-certification as I was told by their agent that I would not have to re-certify until XXXX and never received a reminder e-mail to re-certify. The agents at FedLoan Servicing said there was nothing they could do to change the payment for XXXX and they had no record of me calling in XXXX or e-mailing them in XXXX and XXXX. The only thing they could do was defer my payment until next month, which would mean I would lose a month of payments for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. This is entirely unfair as I was given the wrong information by their agents. Additionally FedLoan Servicing lied to me and told me they sent me a reminder e-mail on XX/XX/XXXX and mailed me a printed application in XX/XX/XXXX. I am signed up for electronic notifications and never received a re-certification notice in the mail. I also checked my spam, trash, and archived messages and have nothing from FedLoan Servicing regarding a re-certification reminder in XX/XX/XXXX. I have dozens of other e-mails from FedLoan Servicing and believe they are lying to me. When I requested a copy of this alleged e-mail, they did not provide this to me. All they sent me was an e-mail saying they sent me an e-mail on XX/XX/XXXX. They did not provide me with the actual e-mail.