Consumer complaint received 2018-02-14
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Trouble with how payments are being handled
Company: AES/PHEAA (VA)

Good afternoon, My complaint is just to have a record of the type of problems I've experienced consistently with XXXX XXXX. They service all of my Federal loans as well as my teach grants. Throughout the years I have had problems with the company losing my paperwork, claiming never have to received it, not contacting me about any problems or issues, or not correcting problems after I have called in and thought they were resolved. 

Two examples stand out in my mind. In 2016 I needed to reapply for income-based repayment. At the same time I applied to switch to the revised pay as you earn payment plan. I submitted paperwork in XXXX and needed to follow up with additional documentation. I printed the document available that I found searching their website through XXXX because I couldn't find it through their web page itself. When I mailed it in apparently it was the out of out-of-date form. I looked at the forms and they were the same as far as I could tell, but I printed out the new form and sent it in. This time, they said I missed filling out a section. Therefore I had to fill it out again and send it again. 

At this point, everything was technically my fault, but XXXX XXXX did not contact me in a time of effective manner through the process. I had to call in every time to check on the process. By the time I sent in the third form it was already XXXX, and my due date was at the end of the month. So I sent in the third form via certified mail, and the post office confirmed that the information was received by XXXX XXXX. XXXX XXXX claim to have never received the form. Finally, a customer service agent suggested that I faxed in the form because it was generally faster that way. I hesitated because I wanted to confirm they had received it, but did it anyway. I don't know why nobody had suggested this before. I suppose I also could have asked about this, but in general XXXX XXXX was not helpful in any suggestions about the best way of doing or accomplishing any tasks that they required. 

After I fax in the information, no one confirmed that they had received it, so I called in again. It took the customer service agent a while to find my information, but confirmed that the fax had been received. Although previous customer service workers had assured me that as long as I got the information in before the XXXX due date of the loan, I believe to be XX/XX/XXXX, everything would be effective for the month of XXXX. That was not the case. 

By the second week of XXXX, I called customer service again to follow up on the status of my application. At this time I found out that I needed to apply for immediate forbearance because the amount I was to pay, over {$900.00}, had not been adjusted. In fact, the paperwork needed to have been processed by XX/XX/XXXX, therefore needed to be received by XXXX XXXX around XX/XX/XXXX in order to adjust the payment amount So, I had the application for forbearance go through, which was effective immediately. It's frustrating that for some reason forbearance is the only service that be provided immediately. At the end of XXXX I followed up to make sure that everything was going correctly. I found out that my forbearance would continue until I was billed at the end of XXXX because they haven't processed my payment plan transition. Throughout this process not even one person was able to call me back to give me some kind of status update. Each time, I had to make room in my schedule for somewhere around an hour 's worth of conversation with XXXX XXXX due to the time on hold, the fact that I required multiple service escalations, and the fact that I had to reassess plane my situation every time, completely, for the new person I spoke to. Everything finally got worked out, but it is unbelievable to me that it took almost half a year for one change to go into effect. 

The reason I'm writing this complaint is because I have just gone through a similarly frustrating situation was XXXX XXXX   although at a different level. I recently applied to refinance three of my high Interest Federal loans with a private bank offering substantially  lower interest. This seemingly simple operation has resulted in multiple phone calls over the last three weeks. 

I gave complete information to my new private lender and they sent out the funds in three separate checks for the three separate loans that I am refinancing. XXXX XXXX received the first two on  XX/XX/XXXX. They applied the payments to all of my loans, not the loans the checks designated. I noticed this and called in to have it fixed a few days after the money posted to the account. The representative could not find the third check for me, but expedited the request to reapply the funds to the appropriate loans. The issue was resolved in a few days. He also noted that a third check was coming and it should be applied to the specific loan I had originally requested. 

When the third check was received by XXXX XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX, I noticed that XXXX XXXX again apply the payment to all of the loans instead of the single loan I wished to refinance with the funds. In addition, some of the funds had been applied to loans with a XXXX balance, showing overpayment on those loans. I called in on XX/XX/XXXX after my account was updated to reflect this problem. The customer service representative submitted a request to reapply the funds to the appropriate loan. He also commented that he marked the request as urgent and should be expedited. I made sure he knew which loan it was and he confirmed by repeating the date, the amount, and the interest rate attached to the loan. He said it should be done by Friday. 

Needless to say, I did not see my account updated on Friday. On Monday, XX/XX/XXXX, I emailed the company because I didn't have time to get on the phone with them. I was requesting a status update. On Wednesday, XX/XX/XXXX, I called to follow up again. This time I found out that instead of reapplying the funds appropriately as I had discussed on the previous Tuesday, XXXX XXXX that the money that they overpaid on my XXXX balance loans had just been processed to go back to my private bank. I spoke to three customer service representatives only to find out that they don't know if that action can be cancelled and reapplied to the appropriate loan. There is no one to contact me to update me with any information. Instead, I must again call back, waiting on hold until I get ahold of the right person, to see if they canceled the action in time. If they didn't, I'm going to have to work something out with my private bank. I don't know what that's going to entail, I don't know how long it's going to take, I don't know how many more dollars I'm going to have to pay in interest because of this fiasco, or if that's even information they will have for me on Friday. If they were not able to cancel the action in time, I'm going to have to wait for the whole holiday weekend to go through. If for some reason I have to reapply for additional funds from my private bank, they have to get sent to XXXX XXXX through the XXXX XXXX, and then XXXX XXXX has to apply them to my loan balance, and then I have to call back in so that they're reapplied correctly, it will be another process with XXXX XXXX   that has taken more than a month to resolve. 

My problems with XXXX XXXX can be boiled down to a few points. They have no time effective way of contacting customers in order to let them know changes have occurred, problems have been addressed, the status has been updated. They do not call or inform customers when something has been applied incorrectly, when they are sending funds back to another Institution, or when they can not process a request. The representatives are not trained appropriately because not only did I get conflicting information, some of it was plain wrong. Additionally, the process to fix immediate problems takes way too long. 

One of the terrible things about XXXX XXXX is that I can't choose a different servicer. Additionally, I can not petition anyone in the government to address problems with employees or processes. Because XXXX XXXX contracts with the federal government and essentially blocks borrowers into a frustrating combination of the worst of both the private and public sector, the government really should have more oversight regarding these companies. I don't really think there's anything that the government can do to punish or change the processes of XXXX XXXX right now, but I want people to be aware this issue exists and if there's a pattern, maybe the government can step in or revoke their contract.