Consumer complaint received 2025-01-03 00:00:00
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Trouble with how payments are being handled
Company: Maximus Federal Services, Inc.
State: MD

Complaint narrative:
On XX/XX/year>, I went to aidvantage.com to pay off XXXX student loans. These were XXXX XXXX, XXXX, XXXX, XXXX, XXXX, XXXX. I paid them with {$9600.00}. At that time, I took extra care to ensure that I entered in the total full balance noted for the full amount of each loan, down to the cent. This was completed within their loan specification feature. 4 days later, I saw that the loans had still not cleared from my account and it was showing that my account still had very small interest amounts due on each of them. On XX/XX/year>, I called to inquire why the company had not discharged the loans from my account and why it was still showing that I owed money. The representative could not provide me with a clear answer. Please pull this call recording, because you will hear the representative talk about what she sees in the account and she could not clearly state why it was still showing interest on my account. Additionally, the amount of money owed on these loans have since increased since this call. When I called, one of the loans had a {$2.00} balance and it has not magically increased, because I no longer see that balance on any of the loans. She stated that they had a certain amount of time before the loans would show discharged and that I would get a letter stating the loans had been released or discharged. In the past when I have cleared loans, they did NOT send a letter to state that my loans had been discharged. I have never received this information from Aidvantage. Since my loans moved to aidvantage, I completely paid off loan XXXX, and instead of receiving discharge, they magically added on a few dollars to the account. 

The biggest issue is that they have added a collective of {$180.00} to all XXXX of my loans, which collectively, originally had a balance of {$9600.00}. I know that I took extreme care to enter what they noted as the total account balance. I also called an additional time sometime in XXXX to inquire, once again, about why the status of my loans had not changed, and the representative could not provide me with any specific information about why this was the case.If you listen to that call, the lady stated that I would receive an email from their team from the escalation of the issue, but I have still yet to receive this email. 

Today, I spoke with an escalation specialist at Aidvantage ( name has been redacted for privacy, but can be provided upon request ) and she maintained that the account balance currently listed on the account is correct. She claims that on XX/XX/year>, the balance currently listed was the same, however, I am 100 % sure that I entered the total due amount that was listed for each and every loan that I paid toward on XX/XX/XXXX, because I wanted to avoid this predatory practice of hidden fees being added on after the fact. I believe they did this to savor the opportunity to add on additional interest to my account or their record keeping practices are not up to par. Aidvantage needs to make this right by crediting the balance between what I paid, which was XXXX, and the new balance amount they are stating I have to pay. I am going to pay the difference now, because I do not know how much power Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has in rectifying this matter, and I do not want the balance to continue to increase via interest, but Aidvantage is criminal and in due time, a thorough investigation into their IT and record keeping practices will show that.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation