Consumer complaint received 2020-07-01
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Received bad information about your loan
Company: AES/PHEAA (CA)

I have been making monthly payments on my federal loans for years and am working towards the PSLF program incentive of 120 payments. I have sent in employee certification forms and they have all been approved ( still waiting for my last form to be approved but I just sent that in, so that's not the issue ) and I have been on an income driven repayment plan since XX/XX/XXXX. 

PSLF/fedloanservicing had done a manual payment count through XX/XX/XXXX that was stated at 65 payments ( I can provide a copy of this record from them, sent to me XX/XX/XXXX ), though by my count, this does not include payments prior to XX/XX/XXXX ( I have a record of this as well that I can provide - I pulled the fedloan servicing transaction history as of XX/XX/XXXX and this includes a first documented payment on XX/XX/XXXX and continued through XX/XX/XXXX -the document shows 64 payments during this time frame, however at the time of the count they performed the count, it was only through XX/XX/XXXX, so 6 of those wouldn't have been accounted for bringing it to 58 ). The reason this is incorrect, is because starting XX/XX/XXXX, I was in an income-based repayment plan and my monthly payments were {$0.00} at least through XX/XX/XXXX ( another 12 payments ) Furthermore, I messaged PSLF/fedloanservicing on XX/XX/XXXX to provide me with the amount I owed as monthly payment from XXXX, since this may likely have also been {$0.00}, which would add another 12 payments ( they have not sent me the requested information as of yet ). 

Furthermore, at some point my total number of qualifying payments dropped to 0. I noticed this around XX/XX/XXXX and called PSLF/fedloanservicing on XX/XX/XXXX to inquire about this issue. They told me that it was likely a " glitch '' in the system and they weren't sure what happened. I was assured that they would put in a request for the payments to be adjusted back to the correct number. Since that time, I continue to check online, and my number of qualifying payments are still listed at zero. I have called in at least 3 other times to inquire. Each time I am given a similar answer about how long manual counts take, that COVID-19 has slowed the process down, and most frustrating to me is that they provide zero timeline of when to expect the count to be remedied. When I call in, they also can not confirm whether or not the $ XXXX  monthly payments were included in the count ( which by my count, they were not ), which is also frustrating. 

Also, periodically, PSLF/fedloanservicing placed my account automatically in forbearance due to a government hardship. I never authorize the automatic forbearances that PSLF/fedloanservicing placed on my account after XX/XX/XXXX. ( This is the only issue that I have not addressed with PSLF/fedloanservicing ). 

I have not written down each employee 's name, but a few of the people I talked to that were not able to help remedy the count or answer the question about the {$0.00} payments counting are the following : XX/XX/XXXX : XXXX ID XXXX XX/XX/XXXX : missed name but ID XXXX and supervisor XXXX ID XXXX. I was told by XXXX that she could submit a manual count request for my account, however, this is unfortunate, because I was told back in XXXX that my account was already undergoing a manual count, which means it 1 ) was not already undergoing a manual count or 2 ) the systems are not connected, so she didn't have a full picture of my account vs 3 ) other XX/XX/XXXX I called in to voice a formal complaint about the above issues and was assured that I would receive a call back. It's been approximately 48 hours - I'm not sure what their turn around time is, but I have not received a call back. I do not remember who I spoke to. 

My personal count of the number of qualifying payments through XX/XX/XXXX is 76 if not 88-90 ( need to have confirmation from PSLF/fedloan servicing that my payment count was {$0.00} also from XXXX ).