Consumer complaint received 2024-07-03
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Don't agree with the fees charged
Company: MOHELA (NY)

I have been having issues with MOHELA as they are the servicer for my loan. It is difficult dealing with them as they have customer service with no training. They will put you on hold to message their superior for a response then keep checking in on you ever minute to ask if they can put you on a brief hold. 

Over the last year, I have been given misinformation, and had my application for XXXX cancelled 2 times ( with no notification ) before finally getting it approved. There was no reason for the cancellation and rejection. I began recording conversations with the student loan company because I knew it wasn't believable what was going on. I initially applied for XXXX in XX/XX/XXXX ( I believe it was still titled XXXX at the time ) ... That application was " Denied '' with no explanation. I called again on XX/XX/XXXX and asked why it was denied and they said because the payment would go up ( it has the same payment standard as the XXXX plan I was on ). I told the rep that I do not care if the payment increases as I was not covering interest and the XXXX loan would effectively ensure my loan balance does not increase as long as I am making payments ... He did the application again with me on the phone ... XXXXThe application was denied on or around XX/XX/XXXX ( XXXX  months from my initial application and XXXX  months from the second application ). I called the company on XX/XX/XXXX and spoke with a lady named XXXX. XXXX initially stated that my loans were not qualified for the XXXX plan and that is why the application was cancelled. She said " the only payment I see you qualify for was the income based repayment plan. '' I knew this to be incorrect and tried to explain it to her, but she was dismissive and confident in her incorrectness. So I asked her why and she said " because the type of loan you have. '' She said " Yours do not qualify. '' I tried to tell her direct loans would qualify ... so I went on studentaid.gov with her on the phone to tell her I have direct loans which would qualify. After XXXX minutes on the call she changed her language to " they may not qualify for the XXXX program. '' At this point she said She would be happy to go over repayment options with me. I agreed... knowing that I would qualify. After going through a lengthy back and forth with questions she says at the XXXX minute mark that " If you want to do the save plan you could do the save plan. '' If I didn't know I qualified they I would have never got to this part of the conversation. They are not trained and do not know what they are saying. I have had other calls where I asked for amortization schedules because I felt the interest was not being calculated correctly. In that call the servicers employee did not know what an amortization schedule was and never sent me one. 

The kicker is that during admin forbearance my loans were not supposed to accrue interest... They did accrue interest and there has been no refund. Further, when the servicer transitions from their prior website to their new website they made sure all communications that were saved on their site are no longer accessible. During the intial application process for XXXX I was placed on admin forbearance and interest was accruing and it took away my discount. I continued to make payments via autopay during this time. I was told that this is how it is so I asked them to take me off the forbearance so I could get my discount back. It turns out they were not supposed to charge interest during that admin forbearance at all so I accumulated months of interest based off their misleading information. Further I never got a credit for the interest that accrued during the forbearance. This last month I was placed on another administrative forbearance. I received a letter from Mohela letting me know that interest would be set at XXXX during this time. The interest was not set at XXXX, but rather increased. I currently have my account set to autopay so I receive a .25 % discount on my loans setting me to 6.75 %. During this forbearance they took away that discount. So instead of XXXX interest as their letter states I have been accumulating at 7 %. That amounts to {$32.00} of interest accrual per day. I continue to have autopayments made. 

This place is a disaster and I honestly don't know how much they have overcharged me interest in the multiple forbearances they put me on. I never requested a forbearance ; every one was administrative forbearance.