Consumer complaint received 2024-04-19
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Received bad information about your loan
Company: MOHELA (NJ)

I have XXXX XXXX payments. In XX/XX/XXXX, I called Mohela ( my servicer ) and moved my payment due date to the first of the month. They said it will take a few months to update. In XX/XX/XXXX, I missed a payment because I also changed the auto debit account to a new account in XXXX. While it processed, I was supposed to make a manual payment. I realized this on XXXX and made a payment within my XXXX grace period. I went in and made a manual payment. XX/XX/XXXX 's payment counted towards XXXX. I realized there was no payment for XX/XX/XXXX and it jumped right to XX/XX/XXXX as my next payment with my new IDR payment amount. XX/XX/XXXX was supposed to be my last payment at {$250.00} a month. In XXXX, it was going up to {$270.00} due to annual IDR recalculation. I called Mohela. They said they " didnt have enough time to generate my XXXX billing statement between my XX/XX/XXXX payment and my new date of XX/XX/XXXX payment '' ( despite that I made the request to change the due date over 3 months prior ). I was then advised to go ahead and pay XXXX and " it will count towards XXXX ''. I was told this by XXXX different Mohela reps on XXXX, on XX/XX/XXXX and then again on XX/XX/XXXX. All of these conversations were recorded and I kept the names and IDs of the employees. They all said to manually make an XXXX payment and it will count towards XXXX. I did this while on the phone with the XXXX XXXX After following their instructions, I was advised in a separate phone call on XX/XX/XXXX by a rep, and then a supervisor, that XXXX will not count because " we didnt have time to generate a bill for XXXX ''. Now, I am out my XXXX monthly payment ( out of XXXX ) because Mohela " failed to generate a bill ''. This is not a reason to deny one 's XXXX payment, but the supervisor assured me " I am sure it is a reason ''. When I advised the supervisor of the current issue with Mohela and US Dept. of Education regarding Mohela 's failure to generate bills, she said " we don't believe in that gossip ''. I responded, " I am pretty sure the federal government is withholding funding because of this very issue as Mohela 's punishment ''. She didn't seem to care and was rude that I brought it up. Again, this is all recorded. So now, I am out a qualifying payment that I made, while at a qualifying employer, because Mohela " couldn't generate a bill in time ''. The supervisor then blamed me and said " well you changed your payment date which caused all of this ''. Yes, but I changed it XXXX  months prior, you have had XXXX whole months to generate a bulk. XXXX also advised that I shouldn't have listened to the reps I called on XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX, and earlier in the day on XX/XX/XXXX because they are " not trained yet ''. I advised her that the calls were recorded ( as Mohela records them ) and she just admitted that I shouldn't follow her very own employees because they aren't trained. Then why are they answering the phone? I also can see that they took my XX/XX/XXXX payment that the rep said to make to make XXXX count towards XXXX, and applied it towards XXXX 's new XXXX XXXX. So now I only owe a difference of {$19.00} for XXXX. She advised she would " run it up the chain '' but because of their failure to generate a bill in time, my month most likely won't count. As a lawyer, who knows this very well, this is not a legal reason the US Dept. of Education warrants denying a XXXX month for...