Consumer complaint received 2023-10-30
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Received bad information about your loan
Company: MOHELA (VA)

Following the pandemic pause, MOHELA set my repayment at approximately {$470.00}. However, when I last made payments before the pandemic my payments were at {$260.00} at XXXX XXXX. The restart was supposed to use the same financial information as the start of the pause- so why are they different? 

On XX/XX/XXXX I called MOHELA to correct the error. I resubmitted my financial information and recertified via self report on the phone. The results of this discussion had my monthly payment at $ XXXX and would take up to 30 days to process. Due to the high processing time, MOHELA offered and I accepted a processing forbearance with intent to cancel it before the end of XXXX to preserve my PSLF forgiveness eligibility timeline. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, when I went to check on the status of the correction, the billing was incorrect again with a new monthly payment of $ XXXX which was NOT what was discussed on the phone. This indicates that the calculator/processor used my family/household income but did NOT include my spouse 's federal student loan debt in calculating my student loan payment. See calculations attached. 

I called immediately upon discovery of the error and remained on hold for XXXX hours. I ended up speaking with a representative that made false statements such as * I was not enrolled in XXXX until XX/XX/XXXX. ( I have been in REPAYE for the last 7 years ) * That my payments would automatically be lower ( I think this was implying the 10 % -> 5 % change that doesn't occur until Summer of XXXX, but she was not clear ). 
* That the error in payment could be due to the forbearance on my account ( as according to her repayment does not pause while in forbearance which is incorrect ). 

After challenging her responses, the representative agreed to resubmit an application on my behalf but during the application questionnaire - the representative left off significant questions such as my spouse 's student loan debt amount ( the original error ), my husband 's personal information such as name/date of birth/social security number. These errors would have ended up with me right back in the same position. After I prompted her with that information, the amount changed to $ XXXX. I accepted that amount on the phone due to not wanting to challenge her over the interest accumulation. At this point, I had been on the phone for XXXX hours. As these are MOHELA 's billing errors I should not be penalized for their errors. The representative also stated that she placed me in a " processing forbearance '' as opposed to " administrative forbearance '' that I was already in, while being unable to clearly identify the difference ( the letter I had received stated I was in a processing forbearance from XX/XX/XXXX until XX/XX/XXXX ). The representative stated the application would take 5-7 business days to process. The representative also stated that the forbearance will not affect my eligibility towards PSLF ( which is accurate to the Dept. of Education 's statements ) but I do not trust that MOHELA will correctly process that.