What is the best way to dispute inaccurate reporting from my student loan servicer (AES)? Inaccuracy - they list each semester's loan separately to the CRAs and that means that 2 late payments are calculated as 8 late payments. My obligation to them as the servicer is one monthly payment. This is inaccurately affecting my fico scores and they won't correct it. I tried disputing with CRA and with AES. I got a canned answers from both, they didn't even address the inaccurate issue I had. I even tried a goodwill letter with AES about 7 months after dispute, no luck. Any advice would be much appreciated.
It's not inaccurate. They are separate loans. Making a single payment doesn't mean they are a single loan. I had 4 loans (2 Stafford & 2 Alter) but only made 2 payments (1 applied to both Staffords in equal amts nad the other was split between the two Alters).
As tmitchell said, UNLESS you have consolidated all of the individual loans into one loan; they are individual loans. They may send one invoice listing all of the loan payment amounts, and ask for one payment, but they are still multiple accounts. Try seeing if you can work with them to update the listings. Were there extenuating circumstances when you were late that you would have been eligible for a deferment or forbearance on the account? I had a similar problem where my student loans were reporting 60 or 90 days late (depending on the reporting cycle for the account); which was caused by them not processing a letter requesting a deferment as a deferrment, and only sent a form to fill out... Only because the time that I called the operator forgot to tell me that I needed to add a second redundent line to the letter to get it to qualify as the deferrment. Finally, after getting a supervisor to pull the letter from microfilm, and looking at it in retrospect; they realized that they could have reasonably inferred that from what was said, and should have processed it... They can work with you...
Thanks for your dvice, but I still disagree that the are reporting it to the CRAs inaccurately. Yes, they are 4 individual loans, but my credit obligation is for 1 payment to the loan servicer. This is really only an issue if you have a late payment that gets multiplied by 4, which I believe is unfair. Also, I have 4 other student loans that I pay one monthly payment through Direct Loans and they only report it as one trade line to the CRAs. By the way, A CS rep at AES tried to defend their reporting processes by stating the Dept of Education requires them to report them separately. Lets turn the tables and see if you still believe that they are accurate - Would they have allowed me to send a partial payment for one of the loans so that only 3 of them would be reported late? I highly doubt it and they certainly never offered that option. I did apply for a deferment, but it was too late to cover my missed paymnets. I don't remember the exact details because it happened too long ago at a really bad time in my life. So I don't think I could try and argue this point with them. One more point - they don't report it as separate trade lines to all 3 CRAs which helps me conclude that it's just bad programming logic used in their TU and Equifax data feed programs. Thanks again for the advice...would love to hear from someone who agrees with my innacuracy claim!
They are completely separate loans, applied for at completely differently times... and they will continue to be separate loans until you do a consolidation (if you so choose to do that). If you want one loan, then make it one loan. Until then, they are not associated.
