Consumer complaint received 2025-09-18 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: OR

Complaint narrative:
In order to get PSLF, I consolidated my student loans. Upon consolidation they were automatically assigned to Mohela.

Since then, Mohela has been an absolute nightmare to work with and I have already lost a lot of money to their incompetence. I submitted my PSLF form, got it signed by my employer, and heard absolutely nothing back from Mohela. Upon calling multiple times, being offered a call back and never ever recieving a call back, I started calling them only on days off work so I could afford to wait in their call line for however many hours were required. If I reached a person, they would take down my name and account information, and then find a way to send me back to the end of the wait line. One person told me to call an incorrect number which had another super long wait time, only for me to answer and be told I needed to call the original number again.

Eventually, I got a hold of a human who told me I needed to call back each month and request a forbearance on my loans as they process my PSLF form. Mohela would not put me on forbearance automatically through approval or denial of my application- I needed to be on the phone line again, every month. The wait times got longer and longer every month, until I eventually figured it was easier/safer/more reliable to pay the full consolidated fee each month than to wait on hold for 7 hours only to be sent back to the end of the line once I reached a human. This is the absolute worst customer service I have ever engaged with in my life.

So after I gave up on trying to get my PSLF form processed, all I wanted to do was sign up for autopayments so that I can pay these loans off as easily and quickly as possible.

To date, I have submitted 7+ requests to enroll in autopayments from Mohela . Each time they send me an email saying they will process it and get back to me. It has been over a year, and still, I have never been enrolled in auto-payments. They do not notify me of approval or denial, they just don't process it or get back to me at all. 

So I continue living my life, thinking that this time they have to have enrolled me in auto pay! Unfortunately, every time I go back to their website to check in, I discover that I am late on loan payments and that they are charging me interest, and that I need to manually pay on my own. Every time I pay these late fees, I once again request enrollment into autopay. 

This is extremely inconvenient, and I feel imprisoned with this loan servicer because I am forced to stay with them with no choice. They are not improving their practices ; they are simply not practicing at all. I am convinced that every repayment plan application or request to enroll in autopay, or request for a call-back goes straight into the trash. They do not get back to you, they do not apologize, and they do not pay you back the money you lose from their own incompetence. 

Could someone please hold this loan servicer accountable IMMEDIATELY, and transfer all of the loans assigned to them to different servicers? I am on the verge of suing them unless something else changes. At the very, very least, process my auto-payment form.

Company response to consumer: Untimely response