Consumer complaint received 2025-05-11 00:00:00
Product: Student loan — Federal student loan servicing
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Received bad information about your loan
Company: MOHELA
State: OR

Complaint narrative:
On XX/XX/year> I submitted an Income-Driven Payment ( IDR ) plan request ( Attachment A ) to MOHELA to switch from the Saving on a Valuable Education ( SAVE ) plan to the only other IDR plan that currently qualifies for Public Service Loan Forgiveness ( PSLF ) credit ; the Income-Based Repayment - or IBR - plan ( XXXX B ). On XX/XX/year>, MOHELA placed my loans on a 60-day forbearance that qualifies for PSLF credit ( Attachment C ) while they processed my IDR application. According to MOHELA, I am to receive an updated disclosure and billing statement reflecting my new monthly payment amount if they ( MOHELA ) process my IDR application before the 60-day forbearance period ends ( Attachment C ).

While waiting for MOHELA to process my IDR plan request, I submitted a PSLF form via studentaid.gov that included approved certified employment to have XX/XX/year> counted as a qualifying PSLF month on the Federal Student Aid ( FSA ) online dashboard. Because I was on a PSLF-qualifying processing forbearance ( which began on XX/XX/year> ), FSA correctly counted XX/XX/year> as a qualifying month and updated my PSLF count to 119 qualifying payments ( Attachment F ). At the end of XX/XX/year>, FSA showed that XX/XX/year> qualified for PSLF ( Attachment G ). I understand that MOHELA is not responsible for updating PSLF counts. However, MOHELA is responsible for ensuring that borrowers records are accurate in terms of the type of forbearance they are placed on. This information is transmitted from MOHELA to FSA, XXXX, and the XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX  ( XXXX ) so that PSLF counts can be updated. The fact that XX/XX/year> was once correctly counted as a qualifying PSLF month on my FSA dashboard is an indication that MOHELA placed me on a PSLF-qualifying forbearance during this month and transmitted this information to FSA for the PSLF counXXXX XXXX However, at some point in XXXX of 2025, the FSA online tracker took away my XX/XX/year> qualifying month - marking it as ineligible - and reduced my PSLF qualifying count to XXXX. This is an indication that at some point, MOHELA changed my record to reflect that I was not on a PSLF-qualifying forbearance during XX/XX/year>, and transmitted this information to FSA. MOHELA did not inform me of the change or their reasoning behind it. 

I received an updated disclosure from MOHELA dated XX/XX/year> informing me of my new monthly payment, due date, and repayment plan ( Attachment D ). The updated disclosure does not explicitly state that I am on the IBR repayment plan. Rather, it states that my repayment plan is IDR. IDR is a term/category used by XXXX to refer to a number of income-driven plans including IBR and SAVE. Since I only applied to the IBR plan ( Attachment A ), and because I have received no other correspondence from MOHELA regarding this application, I am left to assume that this updated disclosure is in reference to IBR and that my application was completed on XX/XX/year>. However, my online MOHELA dashboard does not reflect this new information. It still shows that I am on SAVE and no payment is due ( Attachment E ).

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation