1 Year Ago I Paid Off Half Of My Federal Student Loans In Advance. Today Noticed Aidvantage Reported 2 Delinquencies And Tanked My Credit Score.

Location: MA

I graduated my Master’s program in Summer 2024, student loan payments started up Winter 2025.

I’d already began working and my parents agreed to assist me with paying an advance lump sum (10k) off of my ~22k (20k + interest) federal direct student loan (standard plan) as a safety net during industry layoffs (which I ended up being a part of that Spring). I was also still enrolled in auto-pay (or so I thought). I am above the age to be claimed as a dependent, BTW.

Shortly after the layoff I was (luckily) hired in my dream-job role and spent Summer-Fall 2025 ramping up (so not paying close attention to accounts I had “set up”) until I checked my credit score today and saw it tanked by a few hundred points over the course of the past few months. There are 2 student loan delinquencies: 1 reported in Aug 2025 and 1 for Sep 2025 …. And additional credit score dings that have piled on as a result. I’ve manually made a few payments (around $3k total) since the 10k pay-off manually through the portal every once in a while since then to off to stave off interest while autopay was presumably defaulting to $0. I have not been paying close enough attention to anything (apparently).

Today I called the loan servicer customer service and they verbally acknowledged that it is “odd,” that they only reported 1 delinquency to collections, and are “looking into it.” Any proof I can find — documentation on my account, statements, Promissory note, federal statute(?) etc —seem to suggest this shouldn’t have happened. Each confirm default plan selections and that any overpayment would by default be applied to advance subsequent due dates with no penalties for overpayment.

Unfortunately I have no documentation of autopay enrollment unfortunately and my address was somehow input as presumably my parents’ temporary address while they were moving in late 2024 (?) as well as phone number listed as an old landline phone that my family has not used in over a decade. This could be “user error” on my end, though in my defense I assumed any autopay charged would be $0 anyway for at least about a year or so until the industry (research/education/nonprofit) resettled after rounds of DOGE cuts. But explains the gap in notices on my end, aside from a few emails that I found in Spam.

I disputed through Experian so far but pausing on further reporting for the moment. I don’t want this lost or neglected even more especially given the current state of things. The irony of it all is that I advance paid on the loan because of industry funding cuts, in particular to the DoE.

TLDR: Paid off over half of student loan at once (interest + principal) due to concerns over federal cuts, few months later got laid off, got new job, now feeling stable(ish) again.

Checked finances this week. Today, saw 2 delinquent credit reports for “student loan non-payment,” multiple major credit score hits. I am pushing 30 & this will hurt me during the phase in life when I need it the most.

Are there any options for recourse?