A new way to file financial aid complaints
Maybe you鈥檝e dealt with a misleading student debt relief company, been charged a fee by your student loan servicer that you thought聽was unfair, or felt pangs of annoyance while filling out the FAFSA.
Whether you have聽a minor gripe, a major grievance or something in between, you can now tell the Department of Education about your financial aid beefs online.
As of聽July 1, you can submit complaints and report fraud through the department鈥檚聽. And feedback can be about more than聽federal student loans: You can raise concerns about your college or university, your lender or loan servicer, federal grant or work-study programs, or debt collectors. The department will direct your feedback聽to the relevant organization or company and make sure聽that it gets resolved.
President Barack Obama pitched the idea for this complaint system back in March 2015 in his聽. At the time, the Department of Education collected feedback about federal student loans through a form on the Federal Student Aid Ombudsman Group page, but there wasn鈥檛 a single place to submit complaints about a range of financial aid issues.
Note: The new system isn鈥檛 a place to聽. You can continue to do that聽through the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
How to file a federal financial aid聽complaint
1. Choose how you want to submit your complaint: anonymously; with your name, phone number and email address; or with your聽. Use your FSA ID if you want to be able to check聽the status of your complaint.
2. Describe your situation聽and how you鈥檇 like the Department of Education to respond. You can opt to receive updates about the status of your complaint.
You鈥檙e free to raise issues about any part of your financial aid experience, from filling out the FAFSA or receiving your financial aid money to repaying your student loans or dealing with a defaulted loan.
You can also report suspicious activity through a separate process on the platform. This聽can include a school that misrepresents its graduation rate or other outcomes, any type of fraud, a stolen FSA ID or a misleading debt relief company.
3. After you submit your complaint, you鈥檒l receive a case number. Save it in case you want to follow up. If you opt to get updates from the Department of Education, you should hear back within 15 days and have the issue resolved within 60 days.
Teddy Nykiel is a staff writer at聽, a personal finance website.聽Email:teddy@nerdwallet.com. Twitter:聽.
This article first appeared at .
