Emmy Moyes said she was surprised when FAFSA.com charged her the equivalent of "school lunches for three of my kids for a month" to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) for her son's application to Penn State York.
She decided to pay the $79.99 fee anyway.
"It's been 11 years since I graduated from college, and I just assumed they started charging a fee," said Moyes, a York mother of four.
Moyes said she was confused by FAFSA.com, run by Student Financial Aid Services of Sacramento, Calif., that charges clients $79.99 to complete the FAFSA form, which allows students to apply for higher-education financial aid.
"It's a scam. They charge you money for something you could do for free," Moyes said.
The federal government's FAFSA Web site is fafsa.ed.gov.
Mike Reiber, a Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA) spokesman, said he agreed that using Web sites like FAFSA.com dupes college applicants and parents.
"They should see a red flag whenever there's a cost associated with the FAFSA," Reiber said. "There's free help available, so they don't have to pay that $80 or a couple hundred dollars to have help completing that form."
FAFSA.com advertises itself as "operat[ing] much as a tax-preparation service does in helping individuals prepare and submit forms to the IRS."
FAFSA.com could not be reached by press time yesterday.
After her FAFSA.com experience, Moyes contacted her U.S. congressman, Rep. Todd Platts, R-Pa. She said representatives from his office told her Platts had joined a congressional inquiry into FAFSA.com, initiated in 2004 by U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif.
Rep. Platts was not available for comment by press time yesterday.
Moyes said she wishes the inquiry would move forward faster.
"I don't understand ... What is the government doing?" Moyes said. "It's the federal government that's getting screwed."
U.S. Department of Education spokeswoman Jane Glickman said students should be able to tell the difference between fafsa.ed.gov and commercial Web sites like FAFSA.com.
"All of our materials clearly state FAFSA is a free service," Glickman said. "[FAFSA.com is] not the only site out there that charges. Our materials always tell people to be wise consumers."
FAFSA.com advertises a 450-point check of a client's form, but the eventual Student Aid Report, a federal document generated by the Department of Education that summarizes FAFSA
information, had "so many discrepancies that it was ridiculous," Moyes said.
Moyes said she received a refund from FAFSA.com after waiting about a week.
"Everything from my e-mail address to the adjusted gross income -- everything I put in [at FAFSA.com] -- was either blank or needed a correction," Moyes said.
Reiber said many Web sites like FAFSA.com produce incomplete forms.
Moyes's son, York Suburban High School senior Sascha Frost, plans to attend Penn State York this fall and said he hopes his mother's attempts to expose FAFSA.com will help other applicants and families avoid a similar situation.
"There's plenty of other expenses that you have to worry about when applying, and it's just weird that [FAFSA.com] would want to add to those," Frost said
Moyes said the company victimized her.
"They took advantage of me," she said, "and they could do it to anybody."
