Consumer complaint received 2024-04-15
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Trouble with how payments are being handled
Company: MOHELA (AZ)

My original complaint was closed before I could respond to show that they did not respond with accurate information. This issue is as follows : Hello, My name is XXXX XXXX, I live in XXXX, Arizona. I'm an XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX  at XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX and I work at XXXX XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. I've XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX and amassed a sizable education benefit that I've been trying to use toward my student loan payments since XXXX. I was never invoiced for XXXX so found out in XXXX that I was past due. I followed the process to send payment from my XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX  immediately, but MOHELA rejected the payment. On XX/XX/XXXX I called them and navigated a phone tree for 45 minutes before it dead ended and ended the call. I called again and tried different options and waited 50 minutes to speak with someone. She couldn't figure out why the payments were rejected, so she escalated me to a supervisor. That supervisor walked me through resubmitting the payments through XXXX with a slight change in how I did it last time. She assured me it would go through and she said that it was an issue that comes up sometimes with XXXX payments. I sent 3 payments that day to catch up my account. Today, I received a past due notice of {$1200.00} with threats that I will be sent to collections. They again rejected my 3 XXXX payments even though they walked me through it, and said I did it correctly. I'm desperately trying to fix this. I can't get sent to collections because we plan to buy a house soon. I have the money in my XXXX education fund that I worked hard for. I'm trying to pay them, they are very, very difficult to get a hold of, and I need help please. I've called and spent multiple hours navigating their phone tree just trying to reach a live person, but I keep hitting dead ends on the phone tree that end the call. I've only been able to actually speak to someone that one time when they walked me through doing the payments ( which still got rejected ). Is there anything you can do? Any way you can help me to be able to speak with someone there who can help me? All I need is a way to talk to someone and see why they keep rejecting my payments. Their phone system uses social engineering to make it extremely difficult to reach someone. They force you to listen to recorded messages that are over 4 and over 5 minutes long before offering an option on the phone tree which then takes you to another lengthy recording. They bounce you back to the XXXX XXXX and some of the options are just dead ends that don't offer any way forward but to hang up. You can try the number yourself to see what I mean- it's XXXX. I'm trying to do the right thing, please please help me to reach them. I feel completely helpless and so stressed out. Thank you, XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, AZ XXXX XXXX MOHELA responded to my complaint with a letter stating that they received 3 of my payments and that I should expect processing to take 30-60 days for all payments. They doubled-down that I was past due and included some template information on what to do if I'm having trouble making my payments.

Since receiving that response, I expected that at least the three payments they acknowledged receiving would soon be applied into my account so that I would not appear to have such a large balance. However, they took the money for those 3 payments as well as 3 more, and did NOT update my remaining balance. A further explanation is as follows : Although MOHELA stated in their response that they have received 3 of the payments and that the rest are pending since it takes 30-60 days to process, they have still not updated my remaining balance on my account. 

Per their letter, they have received at least 3 of the 6 payments I've sent. However, they have not updated my account balance to show the receipt of those payments. 

Additionally, they have not updated my balance as reported to the credit monitoring bureaus : XXXX, XXXX, and XXXX. All three of those agencies have reported that MOHELA has not applied those payments to the balance reported to them. 

Additionally, MOHELA has actually reported an INCREASE in my balance due to interest incurred on the account as if payments have not been made. 

I called Customer Service and received a call back from a supervisor who said they could not identify what my new balance is after receiving my payments. I have a recording of this conversation. Again, I've sent 6 payments, but even the 3 they acknowledged receiving in their response have not been applied to my balance.

The supervisor tried to say they never received the money, but I was able to verify via my account that the money has been taken by MOHELA. It is no longer in my account and no longer in a pending status either. I also have this response they wrote to this complaint also acknowledging at least those 3 payments. 

I also pointed out that while my billing statements had been showing an increasing past due balance while my payments were processing, they past due amount on my XXXX invoice suddenly dropped to {$420.00} ( one past due payment which was submitted to them early but is still processing ). I pointed out that this indicates payments are being received.

They stated that this was not indicative of payments being received but rather that the past due amount was removed from being called " past due '' due to the " on ramp program '' for repayments recently created by the XXXX XXXX. I disagreed with this response because again, the money has been taken out of the account. 

I had asked the customer service representative that I spoke to before speaking with the supervisor to provide details on my current balance, and they said they could not do so and were confused as to why. They said it was weird and that was why they sent me to a supervisor. 

The supervisor could not determine why my payments weren't applying to my balance and said they would escalate it to a higher up team. They stated that the team was currently working on tickets from XX/XX/XXXX, so they would get to me soon. I work at a school and I was concerned that if I missed their call, I would have to start the process over and wait weeks all over again. I asked them to please try calling me more than once if I do miss the first call because I might be with students at the time that they initially call. She said she would make a note for them to do so. 

The account being debited is an education fund from XXXX. I spoke directly with XXXX to see if anything might be wrong on their end ; and they confirmed that MOHELA has taken the money from the account. They followed up our phone call by provided a full written transaction history including when MOHELA withdrew the money and the total amount paid to them. 

This account statement was provided XX/XX/XXXX and shows that MOHELA has withdrawn {$2900.00} as of that date which accounts for my payments for XX/XX/XXXX through XX/XX/XXXX. 

MOHELA withdrew 3 payments of {$420.00} each on XXXX. I had submitted those 3 payments to them XX/XX/XXXX and that covers XXXX, XXXX and XXXX of XXXX. 

MOHELA withdrew 2 payments of {$420.00} on XX/XX/XXXX. I had submitted those payments to them on XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX to cover XXXX and XXXX of XXXX. 

MOHELA withdrew 1 payment of {$420.00} on XX/XX/XXXX. I had submitted that payment to them on XX/XX/XXXX to cover XX/XX/XXXX. 

MOHELA withdrew 1 payment of {$420.00} on XX/XX/XXXX. I had submitted that payment to them on XX/XX/XXXX to cover XX/XX/XXXX. 

I confirmed on the statements that the account provided to MOHELA for these payments is my account. I also confirmed that I have the correct account number directly on the phone with MOHELA. 

This account number and the month that the payments is pertaining to is included on all of the payments I send to them in the comments section as directed by the MOHELA supervisor who walked me through the proper way to send XXXX payments to them. 

An example of the written format they directed me to use for that is : " XXXX payment acct # : # # # # # # # '' All of these payments are withdrawn from the XXXX account at this time, and the status of these payments is " Accepted by Institution ''. XXXX XXXX, MOHELA has the money and that status is what appears when the transaction is completed. 

Therefore, MOHELA has been taking my payments but not updating my remaining balance. Additionally, my payment history on my MOHELA account shows NO payments have been made -- despite this letter acknowledging that at least 3 payments have been made.

Of the 6 payments I've made, all 6 are no longer in Pending status on my account. The money is fully out of my account for all 6 payments. The response to this complaint issued by MOHELA acknowledges 3 of those 6 payments, and I assume the last 3 may have not been included at the time because their processing time for the last 3 was still ongoing.

Even so, they have not updated my account balance to reflect those 3 payments, they have not entered those 3 payments into my payment history, and they have not updated my balance with the credit agencies to show those payments. 

They are currently reporting to the credit bureaus that I owe them the full amount of the loan with NO payments received- not even the 3 they acknowledge receiving. So they are telling the credit bureaus I owe them more than what I did back in XX/XX/XXXX. By not updating my balance to show the payments they are taking from me, it is making it appear that I owe them more than I do. This is affecting my apparent debt. 

They are also incorrectly reporting that my balance is GROWING by the cost of accrued interest because they are not registering the payments being made. 

They are clearly having some issues with their billing department taking payments but not updating my account payment history or my remaining balance. However, I keep getting brushed off when I try to figure it out with them. I have still not received that phone call from the escalation team, and I don't have faith that they will make a good faith effort to investigate the issue. 

Their response all along has been to tell me that I'm still past due and that the payments are either still processing ( or how they changed their story in the last phone call saying no money has been received at all ). 

Never in my communications with them have they actually solved the issue. This is demonstrated in the fact that my payments send in XXXX of XXXX are still not updated into my account as of today : XX/XX/XXXX. This is well beyond the XXXX weeks they initially quoted me that the payment would take and also well beyond the 30-60 days their response letter said payments would take to process ( yes, they provided two different processing time estimates ).

I need them to update my account showing the decreased balance for all the money they've been taking from me. They need to be sure to adjust for any capitalized interest gathered on the loan while they have failed to update the balance. They need to update my balance with the credit bureaus and I want full documentation of the issue and what they'll do to fix it.