Consumer complaint received 2025-08-24 00:00:00
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Problem with a company's investigation into an existing problem — Problem with personal statement of dispute
Company: Maximus Federal Services, Inc.
State: CA

Complaint narrative:
Overview : Student Loan Provider Aidvantage failed to properly secure my consent for exclusive electronic communication, and thereby violated my FCRA rights to receive proper notice of credit reporting by sending all of their communications to an invalid email address ( despite having a valid permanent mailing address ). 

I took out a loan in XXXX from a different loan service provider, and agreed to monthly auto-payment of my loan, which successfully continued through the Covid moratorium in XX/XX/XXXX. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, my loan was transferred to a new service provider, Aidvantage. At this time, Aidvantage had my valid permanent mailing address, and an invalid email address. Aidvantage failed to send me physical mail notifying me of their servicing of my loan, and failing to secure consent to exclusively contact me via electronic mail. 

In XXXX of XXXX, I received an alert from a 3rd party credit service that my score had decreased dramatically due to a missed payment. This was my first indication that 1 ) my loan servicing agency had transferred and 2 ) that my auto payment was no longer operational. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I called Aidvantage, updated them with a valid email address, paid the loan in full, and for the first time, agreed to receive electronic correspondence. 

In early XX/XX/XXXX, I disputed the credit reporting with the credit bureaus, to no avail. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, in order to access evidence of any communication from Aidvantage, I created an online account ( for the first time with Aidvantage ). I was only able to view messages from Aidvantage going back one year ( to XX/XX/XXXX ), so was unable to view introductory messages from Aidvantage from XXXX. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I called Aidvantage to understand why I never received any physical mail indicating 1 ) that they were the new servicer of my student loan, and 2 ) that they were cancelling my auto-payment method, and 3 ) that they intended to file a negative credit report. 

On this XX/XX/XXXX call, the representative confirmed that they had only ever sent correspondence to the invalid email. I requested the evidence that I had consented to exclusive electronic correspondence with Aidvantage ( not my previous service provider ), and they failed to produce documentation of my consent prior to XX/XX/XXXX, when the loan was paid in full. 

Aidvantage responded with a letter claiming they first received my consent to email-only contact on XX/XX/XXXX, nearly 8 years before my loans were transferred to Aidvantage for servicing. That consent with the prior loan servicer does not extend when the loan is transferred to a new servicer. 

Summary : If Aidvantage had ever sent physical mail to the permanent mailing address that they had on file ( which was still valid ), I could have taken steps to remediate the situation. By only sending electronic mail, which I never consented to with Aidvantage, they never validly contacted me. This failure resulted in me never properly recieving notice of the change in provider, notice of auto-payment cancellation, notice of a payment due, notice of payment past due, or notification that they were going to provide a negative report to the credit bureaus. 

Failure to send proper notice is a clear violation of my FCRA rights.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation