Consumer complaint received 2026-02-19 00:00:00
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Problem with customer service
Company: MOHELA
State: NJ

Complaint narrative:
I am a XXXX XXXX XXXX teacher currently repaying my student loans through the loan servicer MOHELA. My loans were consolidated and then were transferred from XXXX to MOHELA by XXXX XXXX XXXX who manages all student loans. I am part of the XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX program ( PSLF ). With this program, I have to make XXXX payments towards my loan ( XXXX years of paying ) and then my student loans will be forgiven. I have already made XXXX out of the XXXX payments. However, in the summer of XXXX my loans were placed into administrative forbearance ( which I did not ask for ) and they ceased taking my auto-payments and I was not eligible to make qualifying payments towards my XXXX payment mark. This " administrative forbearance '' was put into place because I was on the XXXX XXXX and there were various back and forth court filings and motions going on with the Department of Ed. Mohela was EXTREMELY difficult to get someone on the phone as I attempted to many times. I also could not find any place on the website for me to continue making payments during this time. I was also told that " everything was in limbo '' during this time and that Mohela could not promise me that even if payments were made during this " administrative forbearance '', there is no guarantee that these payments would count as payments towards my XXXX payment end goal. This " administrative forbearance '' lasted for almost XXXX years. The end result was that President Donald Trump decided to end the XXXX program ( even though I was already well into my payments under this plan ). There was no " grandfathering in '' of any sort and now I am being told that I have to switch to a different repayment plan that still qualifies for the payments towards the XXXX payments. The problem is, under the plan I would have to transfer into, my monthly payment would jump from roughly {$250.00} to over {$500.00} per month. That is double the amount! So for almost XXXX years, I ( and I'm sure MANY others ) were stopped from making our qualifying XXXX payments under the XXXX plan which was an affordable amount. Instead, finally now I was told I could make eligible payments under the new repayment plan I would have to transfer into which is more than double the amount. If I had been able to continue making payments for the last XXXX years ( and was certain that they would even count towards my forgiveness ) I would already have met my XXXX qualifying payments and my loans forgiven. Instead now I am forced to resume payments at a payment that is more than double. This whole " administrative forbearance '' derailed my entire repayment time and will now cost me thousands more to meet my XXXX payments. I believe this forced forbearance was Mohela/Dept of Ed 's plan in order to delay all of us under the XXXX program from paying it off and instead make us start repaying at a much higher rate. It is so unethical to not allow me to pay my loans during that time, at an affordable amount, just so they can fight back and forth in court. All of this was at the expense of the borrowers.

Company response to consumer: Untimely response