Date Received: 2023-03-10
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Subissue: Received bad information about your loan
Consumer Complaint: I submitted a proper ECF for public service loan forgiveness on XX/XX/2022. The ECF was denied and I was never given a reason why. Had the ECF been approved I would have had over 120 qualifying payments for PSLF. My lender, Mohela will provide no explanation for the denial.
Company Response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
State: WA
Zip: 98109
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2023-03-10
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A
Date Received: 2023-03-10
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Subissue: Received bad information about your loan
Consumer Complaint: I am filing this complaint towards Mohela because they seem to have a work ethic that does not speak highly of them. I have reached out to Mohela many times in hopes that they correctly update qualifying payment counts since they have accepted and processed the PSLF Forms I have submitted for all of my employers. On XX/XX/XXXX, once again I spoke to 2 different supervisors at Mohela by the name of XXXX and XXXX regarding the PSLF forms I submitted for various former & current employers XXXX, XXXX XXXX XXXX, XXXX & XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX. All the forms were processed however none of the payment counts were updated. The supervisors activated the forms to get processed once again and stated that once the forms were accepted and processed the qualified payments should have also been updated. The supervisors stated that it should take 14 days to get processed, but I have been waiting for over 2 months and Mohela has not resolved the issue they created. I should have qualifying payments since the year XXXX but Mohela has failed to provide that update to my loans. Dealing with Mohela is really a much cause for stress and my mental health is being affected to see that Mohela has not taken responsibility to update my payment count in a timely manner. I also see that only one month in XXXX was updated but many months have been skipped. My hope is that cfpb can reach out to Mohela on my behalf and request that they update my loans with the qualified payments going back to the year XXXX.
Company Response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
State: AZ
Zip: 85249
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2023-03-10
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with explanation
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A
Date Received: 2023-03-11
Issue: Struggling to repay your loan
Subissue: Can't get other flexible options for repaying your loan
Consumer Complaint: My servicer MOHELA is incorrectly denying me access to the PAY AS YOU EARN repayment plan. On XX/XX/XXXX, MOHELA approved me for the Income Contingent Repayment plan, but today, XX/XX/XXXX, a supervisor and customer service representative have incorrectly informed me that was the only IDR plan I was eligible for. Thus, I am seeking help from the CFPB to allow me to properly access the PAYE plan for my single Direct Consolidated Unsubsidized student loan. I had no federal student loan balance prior to XX/XX/XXXX, and have also borrowed at least 1 Direct loan after XX/XX/XXXX, therefore classifying me as an " eligible new borrower '' for PAY AS YOU EARN under 685.209 ( a ) ( 1 ) ( iii ). First, in XX/XX/XXXX, I consolidated my Parent PLUS loans into a Direct Consolidated Unsubsidized loan. In XX/XX/XXXX, this loan was consolidated with 3 Direct Stafford Unsubsidized student loans into a new Direct Consolidated Unsubsidized student loan, which is the loan I currently have with MOHELA, and the same one for which they are denying my PAYE repayment plan request. Per 685.209 ( a ) ( 1 ) ( ii ), an " Eligible loan, for purposes of determining whether a borrower has a partial financial hardship [ ... ] means any outstanding loan [ ... ] except for a defaulted loan, a Direct PLUS Loan or Federal PLUS Loan made to a parent borrower, or a Direct Consolidation Loan or Federal Consolidation Loan that repaid a Direct PLUS Loan or Federal PLUS Loan made to a parent borrower. My current Direct Consolidated Unsubsidized student loan with MOHELA is not a loan that repaid a federal PLUS loan made to a parent borrower as it repaid Stafford Unsubsidized and a Direct Consolidated Unsubsidized loan, and is therefore eligible for PAYE. Under the proposed Prosper Act, HR 4508, the XXXX House Majority proposed in Sec. 466. ( 5 ) B to make " excepted consolidation loans '' ineligible for repayment options such as the PAYE plan. They specifically defined an ineligible loan for options besides ICR as a loan that repaid a Parent PLUS, a consolidation that repaid a Parent PLUS, or a consolidation that repaid a consolidation of a Parent PLUS. The proposed Prosper Act failed and therefore, this condition does not exist under current law. If this restriction currently existed, Congress would have had no need to attempt to change 685.209 ( a ) ( 1 ) ( ii ) to add the additional restriction.
Company Response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
State: TX
Zip: 77573
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2023-03-11
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with explanation
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A
Date Received: 2023-03-09
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Subissue: Received bad information about your loan
Consumer Complaint: Like so many, I recently became a Mohela customer when XXXX XXXX did not renew their contract. After I received notice I had an online account and I logged in, I reviewed my PSLF payments and saw they were all messed up. I attributed this to the new intake, but I was worried particularly about payments I made while in school ( working under 6 credit hours ). I was concerned some paperwork might have been lost, so I sent a message about this on XX/XX/XXXX : " Hello, I noticed several of my payments under PSLF are considered ineligible because I was not under the " repayment period ''. However, I did not meet the amount of credits ( I was part time, under 12 hours ) my last semester in college and was told I had to start repayments before I graduated. How do I get these counted towards my repayment amount? Thank you XXXX '' On XX/XX/XXXX, I hadn't received a response yet, but no change had occurred in my loan info, so I sent this : " Hello! My PSLF payments haven't been added to my account yet- is there anything I have to do or are they pending upload? Additionally, I just got married and changed my last name- is there a form I need to fill out to change it here? Thank you, XXXX '' I received a copy and paste response to my XXXX message ( on XX/XX/XXXX, 2 full months later ) about waiting due to the insane volume of new accounts getting sorted, which was fine. I already waited two months for a response, why not longer? Then on XX/XX/XXXX, a month after my ( second ) message, they responded with a copy and paste response AGAIN : " Thank you for contacting MOHELA, We apologize for the length of time that has passed since we initially acknowledged your email inquiry. If your inquiry has already been resolved, we hope that it was resolved to your satisfaction. '' They also copied a FAQ underneath, which was easily found on the site and completely unhelpful to anything I had asked at all. I basically gave up. So today ( since payments will be restarting this year ) I began to look into it again. I realized about three years of my payments were now not counted as eligible because my employment was not verified. This was a shock since I'm relatively timely about doing the verification. I logged into studentaid.gov and saw that I did complete one form in XX/XX/XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX, and XX/XX/XXXX. I can virtually guarantee I would not have completed the form and not continued to get it signed and sent. But somehow, my payments from XX/XX/XXXX to currently are not considered verified. I distinctly remember uploading the newest one in XXXX because I started a new job and had to use the new Mohela site. However, there is no way to track if it is received or processed. On the site, when you look up it just says : " At this time your PSLF form could not be found. Keep in mind we may have received it, but have not yet loaded your form into our search tool due to unprecedented interest in the PSLF and PSLF limited waiver. If you recently submitted a form, please allow up to 30 days for your form to be loaded to our system and then allow up to 90 business days for your form to be processed. We thank you for your patience. '' There's no way to know if they are just overloaded and working on it, or if it's completely lost. It is well past the 30/90 days, and someone SHOULD be able to give some sort of update for it. I SHOULD be only three years away from PSLF, and now I'm going to have to track down previous HR contacts for my jobs to get them to reverify what was already entered and accepted by XXXX ... then hope they actually get it. I can't imagine how long they will take to get one form done, let alone three. I'm worried by the time I've made all the payments, they still won't have it done. Ridiculous. I understand stuff gets lost by the wayside during big transitions. HOWEVER, the customer service and support provided are abysmal. When I messaged them about it, and about this is the response I got : " We would like to apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. In order to provide exemplary service, we want to make sure that we are addressing your questions and concerns accurately. We need additional information as it pertains to responding to your question. If you have any additional questions, please contact us toll free at XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX Thank you, MOHELA '' ( Side note, I also asked about what the process for a name change is since I was just married, and they didn't even address it ). What's the point of a messaging system if you won't ever use it for anything? I don't understand why you would prefer to overload the phones instead of a message- likely so they don't keep a paper trail! It's hard not to be cynical since so many companies have been in trouble for misleading student loan sufferers. If these weren't public loans, I would have refinanced due to the ineptitude of the customer service and lack of information, but I'm held hostage by the PSLF. Thank you for making the student loan process even more confusing and frustrating.
Company Response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
State: MD
Zip: XXXXX
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2023-03-09
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with explanation
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A
Date Received: 2023-03-10
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Subissue: Received bad information about your loan
Consumer Complaint: I have been waiting over 6 months for my refund from Mohela. I called them on XX/XX/XXXX to request a refund for payments made during the payment pause, they told me it would take 45-60 days. I called back after 60 days and they told me that they resubmitted my request on XX/XX/XXXX and that it would be another 45-60 days. Ive called back several times and no one can give me an answer why I still havent received my refund. Now, within the past month, my account has increased because its showing that interest has accrued.
Company Response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
State: MN
Zip: 55024
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2023-03-10
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with monetary relief
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A
Date Received: 2023-03-09
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Subissue: Received bad information about your loan
Consumer Complaint: Good Morning, I am submitting a complaint in regards to PSLF counts not being updated properly in a timely manner. There have been numerous borrowers that have similar timeframe as myself that had there counts updated. Instead, Ive been told another 90 business days from Mohela. Below is my timeframe. XX/XX/XXXX : Used PSLF tool helper to generate PSLF certifcation/waiver application. Submitted via mail PSLF certification/waiver along with consolidation. Received/Processed XX/XX/XXXX. XX/XX/XXXX : XXXX reports missing handwritten signature, which was resent back the same day. Per XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX received missing documents/processed. XX/XX/XXXX : Transferred to Mohela and loans dispersed XX/XX/XXXX. XXXX Mohela website, PSLF application states it was processed on XX/XX/XXXX. Employment approved/verified. XX/XX/XXXX : Called Mohela to inquire on status with PSLF Waiver counts. Per PSLF specialist, able to verify approved PSLF employment. States it will be an additional 90 days starting XX/XX/XXXX. Informed specialist that there have been numerous people that have had waiver counts completed with similar timeline and asked why another 90 business days. However, specialist was unable to give proper answer on why the clock was resetting back to 90 business days. I would like an update on the situation as there hasn't been a good answer on whether my application is under review so that I verify accuracy of PSLF counts.
Company Response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
State: IL
Zip: 60103
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2023-03-09
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A
Date Received: 2023-03-09
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Subissue: Received bad information about your loan
Consumer Complaint: I applied for student loan forgiveness under the TEPSLF program in mid-XXXX XXXX after reaching my ten-year anniversary of service at my regional public university XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX I have been repaying student loans since at least XX/XX/XXXX, so I should have more than enough qualifying payments for the program as well. However, MOHELA, my current loan servicer has initially disqualified all those past payments by claiming that I was paid ahead on my payments due every month and therefore I did not received monthly billing. My stance is that I made the necessary payments under my graduated repayment plan regardless of whether I paid a bit ahead or not. My prior loan servicer - XXXX XXXX XXXX- did not do anything with my TEPSLF application between XXXX and XXXX XXXX. In XX/XX/XXXX, my {$26000.00} in remaining loan principal ( {$24000.00} DL consolidation subsidized + {$1900.00} DL consolidation unsubsidized ) was transferred to MOHELA for PSLF/TEPSLF processing. MOHELA has entered my loans ( inaccurately, I believe ) into their system, but they have only counted 31 qualifying payments toward each respective loan covering the period during the pandemic. When I reached out to MOHELA twice in early XX/XX/XXXX, I was told that my payments between XXXX did not count because I was always in " paid ahead status. '' This " paid ahead status '' is penalized under income driven plans, but I was on an entirely different repayment plan for graduated repayment. Regardless of whether I technically paid ahead I surely made the minimum payments each month, so these payments should be reclassified as qualified payments. In addition to the 31 payments per loan that MOHELA is counting for the pandemic, there are 114 combined payments MOHELA does not count between XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX, deeming that " no bill was due for the period. '' Additionally, MOHELA has no record of my repayments between XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX, which appears to be a flat out error and omission ( I'm listed as having one payment in XX/XX/XXXX which oddly does not qualify somehow as a qualifed repayment ). In my XXXX calls to MOHELA, I requested a hand recount of my qualifying payments under TEPSLF rules, and I was told to wait six weeks. MOHELA 's answer always seems to be wait, wait, wait. Could you at CFPB encourage MOHELA to expedite my recount and permit me to get to the point where I can appeal any faulty decision by MOHELA henceforth? I've seen from other posts of borrowers that they might wait many months or even years for such redesignations. Thank you very much, and I look forward to your reply and any follow up questions you may have. XXXX XXXX XXXX
Company Response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
State: NJ
Zip: 07304
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2023-03-09
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with explanation
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A
Date Received: 2023-03-08
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Subissue: Problem with customer service
Consumer Complaint: After waiting a full year for my student loans to transfer from XXXX XXXX to Mohela then an additional 3 months to have my employment certified to reach 120 qualifying payments, I am now having to wait an additional 3 months for Federal Student Aid to review and approve my PSLF. Waiting an additional 3 months for loan forgiveness after reaching 120 qualifying payments is very unfair. The PSLF program is suppose to forgive loans after 10 years, not 10 years and 3 months.
Company Response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
State: FL
Zip: 33172
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2023-03-08
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A
Date Received: 2023-03-08
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Subissue: Need information about your loan balance or loan terms
Consumer Complaint: I was notified online on XX/XX/XXXX that my XXXX loan payment count was XXXX and my loan balance was now zero. On XX/XX/XXXX that same information was on the Federal student aid website. On XX/XX/XXXX, I received a written confirmation that my loan had been forgiven. On XX/XX/XXXX, I added an online question/complaint to Federal Student Aid concerning the timing of my refund since I was 36 payments past paid in full. The Federal Student Aid website shows my loans were paid in full on XX/XX/XXXX. I continued making payments until XX/XX/XXXX, so I believe that I should have a refund of 30 payments of about {$480.00} each. Six of the payments were zero payments on forbearance. I asked that I receive some confirmation that I would receive a refund and when I could expect that refund to come. I have received no reply from Federal Student Aid and MOHELA says its all in the hands of the Dept of Ed/Treasury/Student Aid . ( who knows ). Its now over 60 days, and Ive still not heard anything. I just want someone to respond and confirm.
Company Response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
State: KY
Zip: 40004
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2023-03-31
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with monetary relief
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A
Date Received: 2023-03-08
Issue: Incorrect information on your report
Subissue: Account information incorrect
Consumer Complaint: I received a letter indicating that my student loans have been forgiven. Also, the Federal Student Aid website indicates that I now have a XXXX balance but my loan service provider, MOHELA, fail to update the credit bureaus with this information. My account/records should reflect a XXXX balance and status as paid in full.
Company Response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
State: VA
Zip: XXXXX
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2023-03-08
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A