Consumer complaint received 2016-04-27 00:00:00
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with my lender or servicer — Trouble with how payments are handled
Company: AES/PHEAA
State: OR

Complaint narrative:
XXXX/XXXX/16 To Whom It Concerns : I am writing about the servicer responsible for handling my student loans. 
Once again FedLoan is creating difficulty and roadblocks to allowing me to remain in an Income-Driven Plan. Their practices are unscrupulous, predatory, and inexcusable. 
I can not believe that this is allowed to continue unabated. This is not an industry that is geared towards making things work for the borrower, they instead are bent on profits at any cost and the borrowers are the ones that are suffering. 
I face this annually as I jump through the recertification hoops. There is no effort on the part of FedLoan to keep me fully enrolled in the program, in fact they do everything in their power to cause me to fail. Their tactics become more aggressive as each year progresses. I am now going on my 6th year of PSLF, due to their prior tactics, I have lost several months that should have been counted, but that is another story, one that I have significant documentation for. 
Additionally there have been an untold number of problems over the life of the loan, dating back XXXX prior servicers. None of these has ever been satisfactorily addressed or resolved. 
Here I will detail the current quagmire of 2016. 
On XXXX/XXXX/16, I completed my taxes early and linked my return with the electronic recertification option. Knowing their track record, I always attempt to get my documents to them early with the hope that they will actually process paperwork in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, this has never been the case. In fact it is to their advantage to drag their feet. 
I marked the box for the one-month suspension from debit and checked the {$5.00} reduced payment suspension option. This box does not show up clearly on the printed document, however I did in fact mark it. 
I did n't hear back, but received a bill with my regular payment amount. I became concerned and called FedLoan on XXXX XXXX, 2016. I spoke with a XXXX, to verify how the procedure works. 
My question was would the {$5.00} suspension option be auto-deducted? XXXX told me no, that to qualify for recertification and to avoid a double payment, my auto-pay had been suspended, I would need to go into forbearance ( Essentially being forced into taking a forbearance while they take their time to recalculate my payment ). 
Also I would need to pay manually. I proactively asked about paying now, he said I was required to wait until I received a paper bill. 
I asked when I 'd receive that, he said it was slated to go out XXXX XXXX. ( Which coincidentally is my normal due date ). I suppose that should have been my first clue that I was being set up to fail, by forcing me to wait until a paper bill arrived after my due date ... 
Another red flag is the fact that I would need to drop my auto pay in order to qualify for the recalculation. 
Note of interest : Several years ago XXXX, my prior servicer told me they were having " problems '' with their KWIK Pay system and they took away my ability to pay online via that system, they insisted I pay by mail, this made me very nervous so I set up an auto pay through my credit union. While setting this up I asked them what the amount was, they said {$40.00}. Later FedLoan denied me 9 months of PSLF credit because I was supposed to be paying {$41.00}. 
Another aside : XXXX also claimed they never received payments once I had the auto pay set up via my credit union. It took over 6 months of letters and receipts to finally get them to acknowledge my payments. 
On XXXX XXXX, I received a bill for my normal payment amount of {$120.00}, not the {$5.00} fee that was stated in the recertification paperwork. The postmark on the envelope was XXXX XXXX, 2016. 
I immediately went online and paid it as I could see where this was going, I was being set up to make a late payment. 
I also emailed via letter and documentation to FedLoan that same day requesting that that

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation