AES - American Education Services is a fraudulent compnay and has ruined my life (or atlease my credit for life) Harrisburg Pennsylvania

In the fall of 2004, I took out two student loans one with AES and the other one I thought was with Suntrust (on my credit report its Wells Fargo). My husband at the time co-signed on both student loans with me. He signed the loan papers and faxed in all supporting documents. (We were living apart because I wanted to attend college in a different city). While I was attending college, I was in a car accident in March of 2005 and fractured my neck. I had to leave school and I had to start paying on my AES student loan (btw..these are both private loans, as of today my Wells Fargo loan is still in deferrment). So instead of paying I put my AES loan in a hardship/forberance state for 6 months. When it came out of forberance I made my payments ontime.

In the meantime, I separated from my husband and we got a divorce in Oct of 2005. In the divorce papers the judge ordered him to remove my name from our home mortgage and I was ordered to remove his name from the educations loans. This was clearly stated in the court documents which I still have copies of to this day. Of course you cant just do that based on a divorce document and AES refused to remove his name unless I consolidated my loans. Well since I had to have a co-signer on my loans because I didnt make enough money, obviously no one was going to consolidate $40,000 of student loans with just my name on them so I was stuck and couldn't get his name off.

So I continued to make payments for a few more months. I then had to put them in forbearance once again because I had a baby I did this in Feb 2007. I faxed in the forms and they approved it. So all this time I am assuming my loan is in forbearance when in July of 2007 I pulled my annual credit report and I find something quite shocking. My student loan with AES is 120+ days past due. I called up AES to find out what in the hell happened. A customer service rep tells me it is a fraud account. I told them they must be crazy. They said in Feb of 2007 my ex husband had a lawyer notarize his signature and they faxed it in saying I forged his signature. I immediately knew who the laywer was (his best friend is a laywer, the same laywer who did our divorce) and asked if it was that laywer ( i wont mention his name) and she said yes.So the account became under investigation begining in Feb. I then asked the rude girl why was my account 120+ days past due when I had it in forberance. She states account cannot be in forbearance if its under investigation. I tell her I have the approved letter for forberance from AES but she doesnt care. She says my loan has been sent to Zwicker and Associates for them to collect and possibly sue me. AES never once contacted me to let me know what was going on or if i had any supporting documents to dispute or anything of that nature..if they had I could have easily shown them the divorce documents asking me to remove his name from the student loan. I immediately called up my ex and asked him why he did this (I should have taped the phone conversation do not know if that is legal or not) he states, "the only way to get my name off the house was to refinance and he couldnt get that done with the student loans on his credit report. Claiming fraud/forgery was the only way he could get his name off and at the same time put the house soley in his name. Now..I am assuming he did the same thing with the Wells Fargo student loan (he told me he did) but they didnt dump my loan in collections, they have kept it in good standing, just changed the responsiblity portion to Individual borrower on my credit report.

So after 2 months of trying to get to speak to someone at the Fraud department at AES, all I got was a run-around. I would call daily and ask to speak to a manger and I would tell him my story and he would say he would check on it and call me back..and I never, not once, got a call back from anyone, I must have told my story over 100 times. A month later, the default department calls me to get a payment, and I the guy my story and he connects me with the fraud department so I can dispute the allegation.I finally got to plead my case with a lady in the department only to have her tell me its too late, nothing they could do once the loan was in collections. She wouldnt hear me out or let me fax her the divorce documents. She said I should have disputed it during the fraud investigation, which i never even knew occured.

So...my point is now Im stuck with a 20,000 payment to Zwicker and Associates (the collection company). For over a year now, I have made them payments of 237.00 a month ontime but cannot afford to pay off the loan and my credit is ruined until it is paid in full. I asked them in Oct of 07 if they were going to sue me and they said no unless I miss a payment but they dont like to see loans in collections for 3 or 4 years. I told my account rep at Zwicker and Associates he could sue away..I didnt own a thing for them to take so I highly doubt they will sue it will cost them too much money only to get nothing. Now, I dont know what to do to rectify this. I dont have to money to hire a laywer to sue my ex (id rather not..i dont want a thing to do with him, but Id love to stick it to him). Im furious with AES for not doing a proper investigation when someone claims fraud. Anyone being accused should have a right to stand up for themselves. AES really dropped the ball here. If I could afford to sue them, I would.

Trish M
Atlanta, Georgia
U.S.A.