Consumer complaint received 2024-10-18 00:00:00
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Trouble with how payments are being handled
Company: MOHELA
State: FL

Complaint narrative:
My student loans are under the SAVE repayment plan that has been held up in courts for months. Because of this, people who are under the SAVE repayment plan are supposed to have all of their loans placed in forbearance and interest should not be accruing while the court cases play out. 

Much to my surprise, I received notification from Mohela that Although no payments are due now, interest continues to accrue on your loans during the deferment period. How is that even possible with my loans being placed into forbearance because of court cases for the SAVE plan? I also received notification that my interest rates had changed ( meaning gone up ). 

After trying to customer service number and waiting through 10 minutes of automated recordings, I am told the wait time is 32 minutes. Fine. The second the phone call is connected to a live agent after 32 minutes, it immediately hangs up and no one calls you back. I reached out via the message option on my account instead and asked why interest is accruing on my loans. 

This is the response : A review of your account reflects an In School Deferment was placed on your account XX/XX/XXXXXXXX XXXX XX/XX/XXXX. Borrowers are automatically placed on an In-School Deferment when their enrollment status is reported. I NEVER reached out to Mohela to place an in-school forbearance on my account or even hinted to them that I needed anything to change with my accounts. 

The only thing I can guess is that I had signed up for a college class to try it out and paid out of pocket, no FAFSA done, nothing to do with the government ( or Mohela ) and decided after the first week the class wasnt for me, dropped out, and never thought anything of it again.

Im guessing because of that one class ( because that is the only thing I can guess ) that Mohela decided to, without permission from me, place my student loans in a in-school forbearance and continue to charge me interest on my loans instead of the loans being placed in forbearance with no interest being charged due to the SAVE court cases. 

This entire time, I was under the understanding that my loans were still in forbearance from the SAVE court cases up until the time I received notification that my loans were accruing interest. I had never authorized Mohela to change ANYTHING with my school loans and because it shows the " amount '' as {$0.00} and the " status '' as no payment due on all my loans, you're not able to see the interest accruing. 

Mohela needs to figure this out immediately because this is completely unacceptable and they have erroneously charged me interest on loans that shouldnt have interest charged. Because of their phone system that doesnt work, Im not able to actually speak to anyone on the phone to figure this out and ask why they havent bothered reporting to the credit bureaus in FIVE MONTHS. I paid off multiple school loans yet nothing has updated since XX/XX/XXXX and it is now XX/XX/XXXX.

Company public response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation