Those store cards are usually pretty easy to get, so Mr. Shafer’s denial was disconcerting. After a bit of investigation, he found that his credit scores had fallen 125 to 150 points, depending on which bureau he asked.

I scoured his credit reports and found that FedLoan had marked him months past due on his loan, even though he had made on-time monthly payments through his bank’s autopay service until the day his loan statement stated that he had zero dollars due. The FedLoan delinquency notices were the only thing in the credit reports that could explain the decline in his scores and the rejection at Lowe’s.

Mr. Shafer called FedLoan’s customer service line to try to get an explanation. The inspector general report listed FedLoan’s parent organization as the worst performer among nine servicers in a survey of customer-service calls in April and May of 2017, so perhaps he should not have expected much in the way of assistance.

Sure enough, after minutes of what sounded like head-scratching, the representative Mr. Shafer spoke with said that the situation made no sense to him, either. His solution was to tell Mr. Shafer to send his credit reports to a FedLoan post office box in Harrisburg, Pa., for follow-up. And no, he said, there was no one Mr. Shafer could talk to about it on the phone.

In its response to the inspector general’s report, P.H.E.A.A. said in a statement last week that since 2017, it had spent millions of dollars to improve its service. “This includes the ability to quickly match uniquely complex calls with the right customer service agent who has the specialized experience needed to provide white-glove level of assistance regardless of the complicating circumstance.”

But asking someone whose credit you’ve trashed to send the matter away to a post office box for consideration is not white-glove service. It’s not even boxing-glove service. It’s an open hand across the face.

Mr. Shafer didn’t want to wait around for FedLoan’s envelope-rippers, so I took the matter to Keith New, P.H.E.A.A.’s spokesman. At first, he said that the organization could not find any “negative reporting action” on Mr. Shafer’s account.