Complaints

The complaint text that is displayed might not represent all complaints filed with BBB. Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business.

• Initial Complaint

  Date:01/04/2025

  Type:Order Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I applied for a loan in Jan/24, including in the simulation such as my university, program, estimated graduation date, and projected costs (housing, food, and tuition), totaling approximately $70,000. MPOWER approved only $50,300, and I adjusted my plans accordingly. However, serious problems arose after that.1. Delays and Discrepancies:A. Certification Delays:MPOWER promised certification would begin in Jun/24 and take 36 weeks, but this timeline was not met. My inquiries were met with vague responses, and no clear timeline was provided. The issue was only resolved in late Sept/24 after I escalated the matter.B. Missing Information:After arriving in the ***** I discovered other students expedited certification using an MPOWER ID provided to universitiesa detail not disclosed to me despite my inquiries. After explicitly raising this issue, I was given the *** but the process still faced delays.C. Amount Discrepancy:Although $50,300 was approved, only $37,428 was disbursed. This discrepancy disrupted my financial planning. Despite explaining the importance of cost-of-living and reimbursement funds, I was not informed these calculations also depended on the university. I signed a lease before certification, relying on reimbursement, but delays and lack of clarity left me without sufficient funds.D. Emotional Impacts:MPOWERs delays and lack of transparency caused severe stress, disrupting my academic focus and forcing me to seek psychological counseling.2. Error in Course Completion Date The contract lists an incorrect graduation date (Jul/25 instead of Jul/26). Despite flagging this issue before signing and afterward, it was not corrected. This error forces me to start repaying the principal before graduation and has resulted in the denial of second-year funding.MPOWERs failures have caused financial, emotional, and academic harm. I seek correction of the contract to reflect the accurate date (Jul/26) and approval for second-year financing

  Business Response

  Date: 05/22/2025

  Dear ******* Dispinzeri, 
  We apologize for not responding to your BBB complaint and review at the same time. We had received your concern through the Better Business Bureau on January 22nd, 2025 related to the communication and status of your loan applications and disbursements. We have updated our response to reflect the status of your loan applications as of May 21st, 2025.
  Upon review, MPOWER agrees there were opportunities to better address your concerns through our recent communication with you and are using this response to formally articulate the status of your application and pending disbursements. Your first referenced application was approved for $50,300; however, U.S. schools are required to certify loan amounts prior to disbursement. In this case, your school certified an amount of $37,428 for the requested time period. This amount was disclosed on your Final Truth in Lending disclosure, and was subsequently divided into two disbursements (one for September 27th, 2024 and the other for January 22nd, 2025). During the certification process, your school also acknowledged a target graduation date of July 31st, 2025. While MPOWER encourages students to reach out to their financial aid offices in such cases, it is not appropriate for a lender to unilaterally supersede the certification amount received from a school without receiving an update from the school directly. In this case, we did not receive updated instructions from your school allowing us to increase the amount of the disbursements for the school terms described in your first application. We apologize for any effect that this change had on your expected available budget, and we note that you have since re-applied to allocate the remaining approved funds to different semesters. 
  You have two loans totaling $40,961.00 that are fully disbursed and both have an anticipated graduation date (AGD) of July 2026.  You have a third loan of $$26,197.00 pending disbursement (once school certifies the loan) on or about 6/10/2025 which also has an AGD of July 2026.
  Upon reviewing your additional applications, the following criteria was considered in making the decision not to approve your loan.
  Debt-to-Income (DTI) Considerations
  Your additional loan requests were declined due to your estimated debt-to-income (DTI) ratio, factoring in the newly requested MPOWER loan and a predicted salary after graduation from your school program. Our credit evaluation assesses the overall financial responsibility and capacity to repay, and in this case, the estimated debt burden exceeded acceptable thresholds.
  I have also shared the results of this complaint and feedback with our Customer Relations team; we have since resolved the concern related to your AGD with your support. MPOWER apologizes for the challenges you experienced in trying to get your concern resolved, and we are using this feedback as an opportunity to enhance the quality of the service provided to all of our applicants and borrowers. We understand that this may be disappointing, and we appreciate the time and effort youve invested in your applications.
  

• Initial Complaint

  Date:05/15/2024

  Type:Billing Issues
  Status:

  ResolvedMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  Before 2021, someone living in ******** with the same name as mine borrowed two counts of loans from MPower Financing. That person has nothing the same as me (birthday, SSN, address, etc.) other than the name. In 2021, MPower Financing got a return mail from **** providing my address. MPower then provided this info to ********* Services, a collector, to file this information to Credit Unions against me. That ruined my credit score for about two months, preventing me from using my credit for the entire duration.In Jan 2022, I filed a police report for this and provided all necessary documents to both companies, proving that they were looking for the wrong person. I also filed disputes with all three credit unions to remove those addresses (in ********) and collections from my credit report. I also requested my address be removed from the file of this loan.In November 2023, a new collector called *************** Services mailed me a letter, trying to collect this again. I sent them the police report and also my ID. In April 2024, I got a letter from *************** Services again regarding this loan, mailed to my address again Upon talking to *************** Services, I was told that my address is provided to them by MPower Financing again.I need MPower Financing to remove my address (The Texas one) forever from their file that has my name on it in order to prevent damage to my credit. I want MPower Financing to ignore **** return mails because that will always have my name.

  Customer Answer

  Date: 05/20/2024

  Hi,

  I just called them and confirmed that their address to receive a letter or mail from within ** is this:

  *********************************************************

  I also comfirmed this from their website. It seems like from your website their address's zip code is listed as 20009-6046, which could be outdated. Can you try sending the mail to the new address above please?

   

  Thanks!

  Fangming

   

  Business Response

  Date: 07/23/2024

  July 23rd, 2024
  Dear Fangming Ning,

  We have received the complaint dated May 15th, 2024 that you initiated with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) related to your interactions with MPOWER Financing and its agent, Cedars Business Services (Cedar). Because we had not set up a formal means of contact with the BBB, we were not aware of this complaint until July 22nd, 2024. We apologize for this delay, and have responded to your concerns below. 

  In January 2022, we recognized that Launch Servicing (MPOWERs servicer) and TransUnion incorrectly merged our borrowers loan information with your credit profile. Upon receiving your complaint on January 6th, 2022, MPOWER worked with Launch and TransUnion to remove this account from your credit profile and suppressed reporting moving forward to prevent recurrence.

  Based upon your recent BBB complaint, we reviewed our records and it appears that Cedars recent attempts to locate our borrower resulted in additional contacts to you about this loan in November 2023 and April 2024. Our investigation determined that your contact information is not in MPOWERs system of record, and was not passed by MPOWER to Cedar for the purpose of collecting on an account. ***** obtained this information independently through third party location tools designed to identify potential borrower contact information. Please be advised that today, we directed ***** to immediately stop all activity and efforts to contact you at your Texas address, phone number, and/or email address.

  MPOWER further apologizes for the challenges you experienced in trying to resolve this concern. We will use this as a training opportunity to enhance our interactions with Cedar and internal process controls. We genuinely appreciate you bringing this concern to our attention.

  Sincerely,
  *************************, CRCM, CERP
  Sr. Director Risk and Compliance
  MPOWER Financing, PBC
  

  
  

  Customer Answer

  Date: 07/27/2024

  [To assist us in bringing this matter to a close, you must give us a reason why you are rejecting the response. If no reason is received your complaint will be closed as Answered]
  
   Complaint: 21718366
  
  I am rejecting this response because:

  There are still more things that MPower needs to do before I can accept and mark this complaint as resolved. From late 2023 until recently when I'm applying for a credit card, I found that ************************ and Launch ************* put together the same two accounts under my name from Experian again(4 in total). Please see the attached Experian credit report from page *****, and then ***** for the 4 accounts in total that I'm currently disputing. A more shocking thing I found while talking to Experian is that someone modified my birthday in Experian from my real birth date of Jan 5th to match the other person that borrowed student loan from MPower(An ***** date). ******** told me that the debt collector made the edit and Experian are working to revert my birthday back to my geniune birthday of Jan 5th. Another "weird" thing is that although the 4 accounts are added to my credit report from Experian, the Colorado address from the actual borrowed were not added to my credit report(page 2 of the attachment).

  According to the respond from MPower, they did internal investigation and made sure the problem won't happen for TransUnion. However, they need to do the same thing for the other two credit bureau and provide assurance that this won't happen for the other two credit bureau. MPower needs to be aware of that althought I have the same name as the person they are looking for, no other information matches (birthday, address, gender, SSN, etc.) When they work with credit bureaus, they need to be extremely careful about what they are doing and not modify any of my information again.

  
  Regards,
  
  Fangming Ning
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  

  Business Response

  Date: 08/15/2024

  Dear *************,
  
  We have noted your follow up message regarding complaint #******** with the Better Business Bureau (BBB).
  
  In response we have again confirmed the return of our borrowers loan account from *********************** (Cedar) and the fact that MPOWER has directed Cedar not to take any additional action. We have further reiterated to Cedar that they are not to engage in any activity of any kind to our borrowers loan account.
  
  Similarly, we can also confirm that following our response to your original May 2024 complaint, Launch Servicing, LLC (Launch) has not changed our borrowers address of record back to your Texas address.
  
  Furthermore, we have again instructed Launch and TransUnion to remove this account from your credit profile and suppress any reporting using your Texas address.
  
  With respect to the other credit bureaus (Experian and Equifax), please be advised that neither MPOWER nor Launch have a direct reporting relationship with either. Accordingly, we do not have the ability to instruct either credit bureau to correct their credit profiles of either you or our borrower. At this time, the quickest action that could be taken would be for you, as a consumer, to file a credit dispute or identity theft report with them instructing them to update your credit profile. They may be contacted as follows:
  
                Equifax
                P.O. Box 740256
                *******,** 30374-0256
                **************
                www.equifax.com
  
                Experian
                P.O. Box 4500
                *****, TX 75013
                **************
                www.experian.com
  
  We apologize again for the challenges you experienced in trying to resolve this concern. Thank you for bringing your issues to our attention.
  
  Sincerely,
  
  *************************, CRCM, CERP
  Sr. Director Risk and Compliance
  MPOWER Financing, PBC

  Customer Answer

  Date: 08/30/2024

  [A default letter is provided here which indicates your acceptance of the business's response.  If you wish, you may update it before sending it.]
  
  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me. 
  
  Regards,
  
  Fangming Ning
  
  

• Initial Complaint

  Date:12/02/2023

  Type:Billing Issues
  Status:

  ResolvedMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  This business has conducted an unauthorized hard inquiry on my credit on November 22, 2023. I had two student loans with them that were paid off in 2021 or earlier. I have not applied for a loan with them , neither have I had contact with them since. There is no just cause for them to have conducted this exercise which has negatively impacted my credit. I have no business with them and such an exercise is completely unauthorized.