Consumer complaint received 2023-03-09
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Received bad information about your loan
Company: MOHELA (MD)

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.