Consumer complaint received 2023-01-29
Company: MOHELA
State: GA
Product: Student loan
Sub-product: Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer
Sub-issue: Problem with customer service

Complaint:
I would like to file a complaint about the handling of my student loans by MOHELA. 
As of the date of this letter, I have XXXX eligible payments for both my Consolidated Subsidized and Consolidated Unsubsidized student loans. As per Federal Student Aid recommendations, I submitted updated XXXX applications as I approached my XXXX required payments. Yet, MOHELA failed to process these applications correctly and has instead labeled them as duplicate applications. This has resulted in my PSLF payment tracker showing only XXXX qualifying payments while I am significantly over the XXXX payments required for forgiveness. 
1. My loans were transferred from XXXX to XXXX and then to MOHELA during the first half of XXXX after I submitted my first XXXX  application. When MOHELA received my loans and set up my account they incorrectly spelled my last name. They have stated that they can not fix it despite MOHELA being responsible for the error. 
2. When MOHELA received my loans in XX/XX/XXXX, they failed to process the XXXX application completely. The XXXX application they received with my account contained employment over XXXX time periods on multiple pages and was signed by the school principal. However, they only processed the first page with the most recent employment period resulting in a finding of XXXX qualifying payments. They neglected the additional pages of the application which documented an earlier employment period as they did not notice those pages of the application. 
3. On XX/XX/XXXX, after I received the results of my first application with only XXXX qualifying payments, I uploaded a new application containing the pages documenting the earlier employment period which they neglected to process. MOHELA did not process this application and instead considered it to be a duplicate application despite it covering the earlier employment period which was missed in the original application. 
4. On XX/XX/XXXX, I uploaded another PSLF application, this time signed by the Department of Defense XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. This application covered the entirety of my employment with DoDEA including the earlier employment period which was never processed, the 18 months already found to be qualifying, plus an additional XXXX moths of employment that had occurred since my original application. Again, MOHELA failed to process this application and considered it to be a duplicate application. 
5. I called MOHELA in XXXX and XXXX to discuss the status of my applications, the error of not reviewing all pages of my applications, and the reason for uploading the missed pages again on XX/XX/XXXX. I was assured that the application was fine, they would update it, and process the rest of the application. That did not happen. 
6. After waiting XXXX months and seeing no progress on my applications, I contacted MOHELA on XX/XX/XXXX. The customer service representative explained to me that pages of the original application were not noticed and that the applications sent since that time were considered duplicate applications and were not processed. He offered to put my most recent application in for processing but that it would take up to XXXX business days for it to be completed. He also stated that he was unable to correct the spelling of my last name.

Company public response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
Company response to consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief