Consumer complaint received 2019-06-07
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Received bad information about your loan
Company: AES/PHEAA (LA)

Complaint:
I am a government employee with federal student loans, and I have been making qualifying payments for 9+ years, with the intent of applying for loan forgiveness. 

In XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX, I received conflicting letters from FedLoan Servicing with two different numbers of remaining payments until eligibility for forgiveness. In XX/XX/XXXX, when I called FedLoan Servicing, the representative could not explain the difference to me, and told me I could request a manual accounting of all of my payments to tell me which ones qualified and why. I requested this accounting. 
The representative told me such an accounting would be sent to me by mail and would take six months. 

I did not hear anything further until I received another erroneous letter on XX/XX/XXXX, which included an even HIGHER number of remaining payments, even though I had been making monthly qualifying payments for a year since the last letter. 

I first logged into my account to find the letters from XX/XX/XXXX/XX/XX/XXXX. I had signed up for e-communication. The letters were not in my inbox, and there was no communication older than a year. I called FedLoan Servicing, and they told me that the mailbox only went back a year, and they could not find and send me communication older than a year. I explained that it defeated the purpose of paperwork reduction if I also had to print those letters for my records, and I explained that I needed the letters from XX/XX/XXXX/XX/XX/XXXX. They said they could not get them for me. 

I reread the " GO PAPERLESS '' disclosure ( attached ) and see that in the fine print, " Most Communications provided to you pursuant to this E-Correspondence Agreement will remain available for retrievable for at least [ 180 days ]. " However, it also includes a provision that permits a request for a paper copy of an electronic communication, and it does not state a timeframe for the request or when the paper copy would become unavailable. They are clearly taking advantage of borrowers desire to have an organized electronic mailbox of their communications in order to dispose of misleading/incorrect communications that would put them on the hook. 

I also explained to the representative that the XX/XX/XXXX letter was clearly erroneous as it the amount of payments had increased. The rep acknowledged these erroneous letters were sent to borrowers and said there was some new computer system that didn't count certain payments and should be updated soon. I expressed my frustration that blatantly incorrect financial information be sent to borrowers over and over again without explanation or correction. 

I inquired about the status of my accounting requested in XX/XX/XXXX. The rep said the request was noted in my file, but it had not yet been started. I told him the previous rep had told me it would take 6 months ( fromXX/XX/XXXX) and it had now been a year. He said my file was large, it would take a rep an entire 4 hour half day to do my accounting, and it would probably be done by the end of the year (XX/XX/XXXX ). I expressed frustration that this was 20 months after my initial request, and I continued to get erroneous communication regarding how many payments I had remaining. 

I requested that he assure me, as I have on every phone call I have ever had with a loan servicer, that my current payment plan and automatic monthly payments are qualifying payments for loan forgiveness. He assured me I was on track making qualifying payments.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation