Raise your hand if you’ve been personally victimized by FedLoan Servicing. If you had student loans with them (before FedLoan loans transferred to MOHELA), you’re not going to be too surprised to hear how FedLoan Servicing totally screwed us over.
Stuffing hundred-dollar bills in the toaster basically summarizes our experience with them. I’ll start with our story of misfortune and then I’ll give you some details on the problems my clients and friends had with FedLoan payment and customer service (before their loans transferred to MOHELA).
FedLoan servicing should not have been handling Public Service Loan Forgiveness
Maybe you have an experience of your own to share. Please share it in the comments at the end of the article. I’d love to compare what I’ve been seeing in this business with your experiences.
To be honest, the best part of this FedLoan blog post is the comments. You’ll see you’ve not been alone in these experiences and will see other common FedLoan complaints.
Frankly, it’s outrageous that the government gave FedLoan a monopoly on servicing borrowers looking for higher education assistance with the PSLF program. Thankfully, FedLoan fired themselves and handed over their student loan borrowers to MOHELA. Fingers crossed that MOHELA will outperform the lackluster services that FedLoan had to offer.
FedLoan enters the picture after my discovery of a promising loan forgiveness program in 2015
When I met my beautiful girlfriend (now wife), Christine, and we started getting more serious, we had the money talk. She let me know that she had six figures of medical school debt. Maybe you were the one who delivered the, “I have a lot of debt,” line instead of being on the listening end like I was. My reaction was basically just, “Ok let’s figure out how to save money paying this back.” I viewed it as my debt too, because I was looking to spend the rest of my life with her.
Maybe when you graduated school or found out your partner had student loans, your first thought was the same as mine. We’d just pay it down super fast and get out of debt, but then I found out about the PSLF program. In that moment, all my Dave Ramsey/Suze Orman conventional wisdom just went straight out the window.
We thought we’d found the solution to our six figure debt
Christine could finish her training, work for a few more years at a not-for-profit hospital, and get whatever student debt she had left over wiped away tax-free. SO COOL! I learned that we had to submit this PSLF form to the government, so I helped her fill it out. We mailed it into this place called FedLoan Servicing, eagerly awaiting the good news that we would save tens of thousands on our debt.
FedLoan Servicing got involved and torpedoed us
So now the fun stuff, seeing how much money we lost because of them.
If you’re like me, you had no idea that submitting the certification form for the loan forgiveness program would forcibly transfer us to FedLoan. We felt ok with Nelnet, our previous servicer. We thought that we would receive an answer directly from the federal government about our education assistance. However, when we opened the letter, it was FedLoan Servicing that answered us instead.
Quick backstory. Christine had consolidated her loans in 2012. She had made payments for three years at that point on income-based repayment, so we were expecting to see 36 credits towards the 120 needed for loan forgiveness and go out on the town to celebrate.
Somehow FedLoan lost years of payments, oopsy daisy!
Then we opened the letter and looked at the first page. We flipped through the document that they sent us, and half the loans said about three years of credit, as we expected.
We kept flipping through the other pages and our mouths dropped. The other half of her loans only had one month of credit towards PSLF.
Of course, we tried to get in touch with them and figure out what happened. By and large, they were completely useless.
We’re pretty sure that FedLoan lost the payment history on 50% of her $124,000 in debt when the loans transferred over from Nelnet. That means the awesome loan forgiveness benefit literally evaporated before our eyes. It’s not just us though. There’s a bunch of lawyers suing FedLoan right now because of their shoddy accounting practices.
How do I calculate that $20,000 cost thanks to FedLoan?
To analyze our debt situation, I built a spreadsheet that’s the flagship tool for Student Loan Planner®, the handy free student loan calculator. You can get it for free by clicking on the button below or entering your email at the bottom of the post. Without getting too deep in the weeds, our cost under PSLF for the $124,000 we owed would have been about $108,000.
We found a pretty good student loan refinancing deal for a 2.2% five-year variable rate that we figured would cost us about $128,000 because we were going to pay it off in a couple years. Hence, the difference between those two strategies was about $20,000.
Thanks to FedLoan Servicing, we abandoned PSLF. If we had to start over working toward PSLF at one-month credit’s on half her loans, we would pay a 6.8% interest rate for 10 years and get no forgiveness. She was almost out of training by the time we figured out that we needed to submit the loan forgiveness forms. Our window of making small monthly payments that would count toward PSLF had closed.
FedLoan Servicing problems my clients have dealt with
One of the reasons I felt like it was fair to share our loan servicing story is because I know that it’s not an isolated issue. After all, I’ve spoken with hundreds of clients about their student loan strategies.
Here’s a sampling of problems inflicted by FedLoan customer service:
A FedLoan agent told me to put down that I can’t reasonably access my spouse’s income. That’s not true, so I feel like I’m committing fraud.
Honestly, I am still fighting FedLoan to be consistent in honoring and publishing months paid across all of my loans. I have concern for them trying to scrap my existing credit if I make any waves
I transferred all my loans over from Nelnet and there are supposed to be 36 months of credit towards PSLF. Instead they aren’t showing any at all!
FedLoan is telling me I have to make a huge payment on the Standard 10 year plan before they’ll let me recertify for IBR. Can’t I pay $5 on a one month forbearance?
That time I heard a FedLoan compliment
Remember, I’ve spoken with a large number of borrowers who had loans with FedLoan Servicing. I’ve heard positive feedback one time.
The compliment? “The rep was unusually helpful and nice.” Hardly a ringing endorsement for the company.
What FedLoan Servicing problems have you dealt with?
I’ve heard and seen all kinds of horror stories with FedLoan Servicing. Can you one-up me with your story? Post it in the comments.
Maybe you’ve:
- Had a rep tell you that you were on a payment plan that you actually weren’t even on (I’ve seen this one a lot)
- Called them a dozen times to accomplish a basic loan consolidation
- Been put on forbearance or deferment when you could’ve been on an income-driven repayment plan
- Asked the same question multiple times to different reps and gotten a different answer each time
What I’m really looking for is if you can top our story of losing out on $20,000 thanks to the folks at FedLoan. Let’s compare our misery. Remember you can also (and should) submit complaints about your FedLoan customer service experiences with the Federal Student Loan Aid Ombudsman’s Group office.
Call this FedLoan phone number if you’re still having major problems
Fortunately, there is a phone number you can call regarding chronic FedLoan issues. The company has a FedLoan Ombudsman hotline. If you have issues with payment count, forbearance, or anything that the phone reps are clueless about, call the FedLoan phone number 717-720-7605.
Some of my clients and readers report having their complaint fixed in two weeks when they call the FedLoan Ombudsman line instead of the usual six months when they had called the generic phone number. To the extent that there’s a FedLoan VIP contact, this is it.
If your PSLF payment count is wrong, involve your congressperson or senator’s office
There’s actually an amazing hack that many of our readers have had success with when their PSLF payment count is incorrect.
Instead of waiting one year for the manual review process, they instead contact the constituent services group of their US Representative or Senator (preferably both).
The constituent services office supports citizens when they have problems with governmental services or programs. Certainly mismanaged student loans for the PSLF program qualify.
You simply need to email or call this office specifically. They will ask you to detail what you want them to do, which is to reach out to FedLoan and request that they expedite your payment count review. For some readers, their PSLF payment count was updated after a couple weeks when they had previously been waiting for almost a year!
However, now that MOHELA has taken over all loans previously handled by FedLoan, it’s uncertain if these steps and contact phone numbers are still going to be operable moving forward.
How to get rid of your current loan servicer
While it’s true that you’re assigned a student loan servicer based on the school and program you attended, it’s not true that you can’t get rid of your current loan servicer.
Like anything, there are pros and cons that you need to carefully consider.
The two best ways to get rid of your current loan servicer are either:
- Consolidate your federal student loans through studentaid.gov. You’ll need to specifically check the box next to a different loan servicer’s name. Unless you’re going for the PSLF program, we recommend Great Lakes Student Loan Servicing. We surveyed hundreds of our readers, and they scored a 3.8 out of 5 stars (FedLoan was 2.7 out of 5).
- Refinance your student loans. You only want to do this if loan forgiveness is out of the question. If you refinance, you can’t take it back. Dumping your current loan servicer is definitely not worth losing out on all kinds of federal benefits and protections unless you’re positive you will be paying down the debt rapidly. If you refinance, your loans are sent to a new servicer, one that more likely has better customer service.
Consolidating student loans to dump MOHELA
The best time to consolidate student loans is immediately following graduation. The usual grace period is six months until you begin repayment.
By consolidating, you can start payments in only two months, which gets you credit toward loan forgiveness more quickly. Also, you’ll benefit from interest subsidies more rapidly if you’re on the REPAYE plan.
The downside to consolidating is that you lose any credit you’ve built up toward loan forgiveness because you’re creating a brand new loan. So, if you’ve paid for several years already on an income-driven plan, think twice before consolidating.
If you plan to receive PSLF, you’re going to want to stay at MOHELA. The tracking MOHELA performs toward your required 120 months of credit is worth the pain of dealing with a backlogged loan servicer (Imagine trying to prove it years later – you don’t want to try!)
However, if you’re positive you will use the 20- to 25-year forgiveness options or refinance eventually, then you might as well take advantage of the student loan consolidation loophole. Consolidation is the one time you get to choose who handles your student loans.
It’s the number one opportunity to get rid of a lousy loan servicer like (previously) FedLoan, now MOHELA.
Refinancing student loans away from MOHELA
Many people abandoning PSLF are making huge mistakes. Whenever I present a student loan plan to someone and the projected savings are in the six figures, it’s usually because they were thinking about ditching PSLF.
If you work for a private-sector employer, you don’t qualify for PSLF.
If the ratio of your student debt divided by your income (debt-to-income ratio, or DTI) is above 1.5 and will be for a while, you need to think long and hard before refinancing.
However, if you
- Work in the private sector AND
- Your debt to income ratio is below 1.5 (meaning you owe $150,000 and earn more than $100,000 annually, for example), then
- You should refinance. You can take our quiz to make sure you assess your situation correctly.
The main benefit is getting a lower interest rate and picking up a cash-back bonus.
However, a huge fringe benefit is that the new owner of your student loan wants payments collected by an organization that’s not utterly incompetent.
That means you will have your loans transferred once and for all to a servicer that actually cares.
Like I said, just make totally sure that refinancing is definitely what you should be doing as your overall strategy first.
Thank you to FedLoan for inspiring me to found Student Loan Planner®
Our experience with FedLoan was so bad, I thought there had to be a better way to get expert help on student debt.
Moreover, I felt like graduate professionals with the highest debt loads receive extremely bad service that costs them a ton of money in unnecessary student loan payments.
So, after helping my wife analyze her loans, I helped some of our friends, and the student loan calculator I built went viral. That’s why I’m writing to you today. I do flat-fee consultations to solve student loan confusion over how to save the most money paying back student debt.
If you’re not sure you’re managing your loans in the best way, we can help
If you’re on IBR, ICR, filing taxes separately, have private loans with rates over 8%, not maxing out your retirement accounts, or not saving for the tax penalty of private-sector loan forgiveness, check out our consult service.
Average client savings have been around $46,000 over the 10- to 25-year period the loans will be around. We’ve consulted on more student debt than anyone else in the country. The more complex your situation, the more we can help.
Hopefully one day all the consolidation factories promising “Biden Student Loan Forgiveness” will shut down.
Sadly, that day will only come when the Department of Education simplifies income-driven repayment. We look forward to reading your questions and stories below.
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Is the problem that FedLoan Servicing did not certify her employment for those first three years? Did she file the Employment Certification Form showing employment during that time or just from the point that the servicing of the loans was transferred to FedLoan Servicing?
She filed it for the first time three years in and they lost the paper trail from the previous three years when it transferred. I suppose we could’ve challenged it and proven payment history, but they frustrated us so much we decided to just refinance rather than deal with it
I know it feels like a headache but I would have fought back a little harder before refinancing. I doubt those payments actually went away and you “lost $20,000” She should have been filing the ECF from day one and had her loans transferred to FedLoan Servicing when she Consolidated. That is the advice I would have given her. You are writing things that scare people who might legitimately be eligible for PSLF. The last thing that you should want is to encourage someone to do a private refinance when they might be able to get loan forgiveness from the Dept. of Ed.
I’ve definitely helped at least 100 people avoid private refinancing to make maximum use of PSLF because of our experience. People do need to be super aware of what’s going on with their loans. There were some details that I left out for length purposes, but my fiancee consolidated after 4 years worth of training (she trained for 7 years) based on some bad advice someone gave her. She also used forbearance a couple times when money was tight while she was living in NYC. She did these things because she didn’t know about PSLF. The loans moved to FedLoan 3 years after her consolidation.
Another point is that the difference for us was “only” $20,000. We weren’t 100% convinced that she wanted to stay at a not for profit hospital for at least 7 years, and for us, the cost of $20,000 to get rid of the debt and focus on other things in our lives was worth it to just move on. Of course, anyone who is in line to receive more forgiveness than that needs to either become an expert in PSLF rules themselves or make sure they get a rep who actually knows what they’re doing (rare) or hire someone to help them (just not one of the consolidation factory scam type places).
If it was a problem of them not having the paperwork in the transfer, why not just resubmit the paperwork? It sounds to me like you are complaining about having to a bit of extra work when, like you say, she didn’t want to stay at a non-profit hospital that would have made her eligible.
As for becoming an expert in the rules of PSLF, everyone should understand the rules of their loan program. If you don’t, it’s your fault, not the servicer’s.
We submitted the paperwork right, they just didn’t accept it. Sure we could’ve disputed it and asked to escalate it, but at the end of the day we decided at the end of the day it wasn’t worth the trouble for us. Totally agree ppl should know the rules but they are pretty difficult to decipher when dealing with FedLoan servicing
They didn’t lose it, any time you reconsolidate they wipe out all of your previous payments toward the public loan forgiveness program. The same thing happened to me- I thought I didn’t need any more loans consolidated and had been paying for a year. I ended up needing another loan consolidated it and then get a letter after I’d done this saying that the new conolidation wiped out all prior public loan forgiveness payments… learned the hard way and lost a year. Unfort. I don’t have a better option than public loan forgiveness. Now I need to switch income based plans and will lose another two months of payments toward my forgiveness while they switch me to the new plan, but again I cannot afford the old plan so I have no choice.
I recall that they showed 1 month of payment for a lot of individual line item loans, not 1 big consolidated loan. Our consolidated loans were the ones that had 3 years of payment history and were fine. That would suggest that they were miscounting, as I would remember if they just showed 1 payment on a single large one.
What I’ve found with FedLoan Servicing is that they handle PSLF tracking on consolidation loans much better than simple Direct ones for some reason.
This is absolutely true. My direct loans should have 29 payments on them but only have 19. Part of this is because of consolidation – while I only consolidated my non-direct loans like you are supposed to, the consolidation was paid off almost right away but my direct loans STILL hadn’t been pulled over from Nelnet. They should have been pulled over, from my understanding, in May of 2015 when I started PSLF, but it took until JAN of 2017 for FedLoans to pull over my direct loans. Because of the consolidation in June 2016, Nelnet pulled me off of IBR for my remaining direct loans without telling me, saying I “never paid the $5 fee” that no one told me I needed to pay, and then putting me on a standard repayment plan. I asked if I should reapply for IBR and was told not to since my loans would be pulled over “any time”. Nelnet put me on an administrative forebearance until I finally re-applied to IBR in September of 2016. As for the qualifying payments made between September 2016 and April 2017? Who knows what happened to those. My consolidated loans, though, have been completely fine.
The thing about having qualifying payments that are $0 is that they are not possible to keep track of, but I think I’m going to start taking screenshots.
Yeah knowing about the $5 fee is a huge deal but so few people know about it when you want to change plans that you have that option.
What do you mean by you had to re-consolidate again? I’m curious how they came up with this, as in said you had to randomly, or you decided to? I’m getting worried about this popping up as I’m basing my life plan and career choices around qualifying employers.
Thank you!
I dont think youll have to worry about this. You have to request consolidation now a days. So if you’re just sending in the certification forms for PSLF and you have debt from after 2010 only, you should be ok.
Read what he said again he clearly addressed that.
The bottom line is……you borrowed the money, pay it back. No forgiveness, no bs, just pay back what you borrowed. Be a man about it. Young people today are amazing, wanting something for free. Man up….Own it…its your debt…pay it and quit whining .
Old men today sure know how to whine about things they know nothing about. Try graduating with the cost of education into an economy in a recession, then come back and talk. I guarantee your college cost and job prospects are not what they are today. Man up by shutting your ignorant mouth.
I hate to say this but if you would have read your consolidation agreement that’s 15 pages long it tells you in there any payments that have been made before the loans were consolidated would not count towards PSLF…. So they didn’t lose any payments whatsoever The payments were forfeited when you consolidated the loans. I can’t understand how people have a leg to stand on when they go complaining about this public service loan forgiveness when they do not even bother to read a lick of paperwork before they get gung ho on their forgiveness after 120 payments…. It’s a very strict program but it’s also a very simple program if the borrower does their due diligence and reads their paperwork that they’re signing…. But I totally understand your frustration I too had heard about the nightmares with loan forgiveness and took me two years before I decided to transfer my loans over to them and enter into the program and I lost two years because I stayed with a servicer who was not qualified to be handling repayment of loans for the program at that time but I was very skeptical and made sure that I fully understood what I was getting myself into and what my responsibilities were as the borrower… I do appreciate your opinion now in your willingness to share your situation hopefully it can help others for making the same mistake. And did you know that there’s a program called temporary public service loan forgiveness and they were doing it until the funds ran out and you could submit a request to have them go back and re-review your situation and explain to them the negligence on your servicers part before you were transferred over to FedLoan servicing they should have told you about the consolidation if they knew you were transferring to FedLoan servicing for the reason being loan forgiveness……
So far I have not been impressed with FedLoan Servicing. Why is FedLoan Servicing causing me such headaches?
When my fiancé and I filed the ECF our loans were transferred to FedLoan Servicing (standard procedure, just like you). After a couple of weeks, FedLoan Servicing sent us a letter with this doozy:
“Since you may have had a payment that was due during the transfer process or one that is coming up in the very near future, we will not automatically debit your first payment. We will postpone your payment with forbearance so that your bill doesn’t go past due.”
The first sentence obviously doesn’t logically make sense, but whatever – I guess FedLoan Servicing is trying to tell me that their systems aren’t fast enough to handle a payment that is coming up in the “very near future”. But the second sentence is offensive. FedLoan Servicing is doing me a “favor” by putting the loan in forbearance “so that [my] bill doesn’t go past due”. What? I have the money to pay you. I have automatic payments set up. For whatever reason you can’t take my money, so you’re doing me by putting the loan in forbearance while you catch your breathe?
The end result is that if FedLoan Servicing doesn’t credit the payment during our transition month, either (1) we made an extra payment that won’t count towards the 120 qualifying payments or (2) that extra payment will be applied to the next month, meaning we effectively have to work 121 months for a qualifying employer.
In the grand scheme of things, this obviously pales to losing $20K to FedLoan Servicing and probably the pain most of your readers feel towards FedLoan Servicing.
But still, I’m not impressed with FedLoan Servicing and what they have in store for us going forward.
I think a big part of the problem is that they have no service funnel at all. When I worked at vangaurd all the reps had very different training based on asset levels. That’s partly bc a $1 million account has way different needs than a $10,000 account.
FedLoan and loan servicers generally don’t do that. So they take a $5000 loan in default call then are supposed to give good advice to a lawyer w $200,000 they can afford to pay. And right now why would they offer that better service bc they get no incentive to do so since they’re paid a flat fee for each borrower
Same here. Very old credit trap I saw it a mile off. Still got hit.
The month my loan transferred Fedloan sent a notice – a welcome letter. My prior service had me in forbearance for a month (Nov) then the following month (Dec) had no balance and locked my account from payment because it was transferred. Then Fedloan bills me (Feb) for December and January but they accepted the unpaid December debt as a “courtesy” also showing as a month late and I had no way to pay it until Fedloan billed me.
The thing to bear in mind is being put on forbearance while your loan transfers isn’t just FedLoan. I’ve been paying my loans off since 2010, and I’ve been switched 4 times now. Every time they put me on forbearance for at least a month.
Also, FedLoan isn’t the worst I’ve had. It sounds like none of you were around for the joy that was Aspire. They were my service provider for about 10 months and I was on forbearance almost the entire time, because they could never get their payment system working. I kid you not. They were eventually dismissed by Dept of Ed and I was given a new provider. I was told Aspire folded and that most of their customers had the same issue I had.
So my problem now is that due to Aspire, and due to being shifted four times, my forgiveness has now been pushed back 12 or more months. That’s 12 months I’m still paying, and in fact will likely be paying more than I otherwise would due to promotions and such. That’s an endemic problem, but one that’s possibly worth legal action. I haven’t decided yet. Once your loans pile up, you’re essentially an indentured servant until you’ve reached 120. The fact that my 10 years are turning into 11 and maybe 12 due to incompetence is problematic.
The bigger, but related, problem I’m having now is that early last year FedLoan showed that I had made 52 payments toward PSLF. That seemed off, so I called and asked them to list which months they had me paying and which months they were missing. I took that information, went to my bank, and printed out the months that they show no payment. Turns out that there are 11 months that I paid where they have no record (NOTE: Dept of Ed was my service provider at that time, hilariously). So I sent in copies of my bank statements and they are currently re-evaluating. As they started the re-evaluation process, my “months paid” went from 52 to 41 (!!!). So I called back and they told me that evaluations can take up to 6 months – don’t expect anything to be updated in a couple months. OK Fair. She told me they would look into why 11 months were erased and to check back. So I’m waiting until 6 months have passed, then I’ll check back in. (NOTE: I have worked for the same government agency the entire time, and able to pay monthly the entire time)
In the end, I am willing to document every payment I’ve made and force them through threat of lawsuit/class action to accept my statements, but I don’t know that it’ll come to that.
My question to some of you is, why don’t you go to your banks, document the payments you’ve made and send them in? If you’ve actually made them and your banks have record, USE IT!
That certainly sounds smart and is something that I’d suggest trying, but who would the lawsuit / class action be against? I’m not a lawyer or legal expert, but it seems to me that these groups create subsidiaries that are designed to be disposable (ie PHEAA is the parent company of FedLoan Servicing). Aspire as you mention is gone, and the government has sovereign immunity to these sorts of lawsuits. So how would you get money from their incompetence? The damages could be in the billions and the recoverable assets could be in the millions. Just some thoughts
I have experienced most of what I’ve read here and experienced nothing than than incompetence from Fed loans Since our loans transferred.
I’ve been paying on a consolidated direct loan since 2005 and working public service my entire career. My ex wife and I have always counted on PSLF and the amount of personal time I’ve spent dealing with mistake
Is unreal. We submitted several
ECFs for public service going back to
2007. We’ve made 85 payments towards PSLF and Fedloans has been gracious enough to “grant” 24 of those as valid. I’ve written my Senator twice, contacted the oumnudsman office, the CFPB or what is left of it and Fedloans internal ombudsman. Our loan data is missing from the NSLDS between 2005-2012. So we did what others have and sent them bank statements which didn’t budge the number of qualified payments at all. Fedloans has been stalling at getting me documentation indicating which months they’ve counted and which they haven’t and why. Our flawed review by Fedloans took 18 months. We have the right loans, were in the right repayment plans and made the 85 payments on time. I’m
convinced Fedloans doesn’t even have our info which is why they won’t produce the justification for denied payments.
Why I just field a privacy act request for all my records with the four servicers we’ve had since 2005. Now I’m getting these nonsensical administrative forbaearances for back in 2009 and 2012 with no explanation whatsoever. I also believe ours loans have been improperly capitalized over the years but that’s an entirely different matter. When this scandal finally hits prime time on how badly DOE has managed these loan programs and servicers many more cases will come out showing unscrupulous behavior by these contracted private firms only in it for their own financial gain. If it doesn’t get uncovered Canada sure looks good and the DOE can keep their loan balance.
Clint I’ve got a lot of readers who live abroad for this very reason. Using the Foreign Earned Income Tax exclusion, you can exempt 100k of foreign income from US taxes and legally pay 0 on most income driven repayment options. It is an option if you’re really frustrated and can’t take it anymore.
No good. No one should have to leave THEIR country because of greedy government practice
Hello,
I have a student loan of 33,000 which I have had for several years and have not made any payments yet due to financial hardship so it’s been in forebearance. My son is in his second year of college so I have taken out parent plus loans for him. Hopefully he will get his degree in three years and then go onto the masters program.
I am a registered nurse and have applied for the income drive repayment plan , plus I have applied for the PS L F. I called fed loan today regarding starting to pay my loan for the 120 months and to ask them what the best option would be once my son has graduated and should we consolidate both loans and then start paying towards the 120 months. Please advise
If you have parent plus loans you will have to consolidate then get them on the ICR plan. Thats your only option for PSLF on that kind of loan. https://www.studentloanplanner.com/pay-off-parent-plus-loans/
In addition to losing out on the payments, your interest is also capitalized during the forbearance period. This usually leads to a significant increase in the total debt amount and therefore what is gaining interest in the future, making these delays rather profitable for FedLoan
To be fair, Fedloan actually doesn’t make money from the interest, only through the revenue of the govt servicing contract. It’s the taxpayers making the money
Can you still do PSLF with a different servicer after choosing to consolidate? Some websites are Suggesting this. I enjoyed using UAS, and Navient wasn’t too bad.
I strongly suggest you don’t do that. Most of the time when I hear that advice it’s coming from servicers themselves that want to keep your business for years longer instead of do whats in your best interest.
A little late this this blog but thanks for sharing your experience. I currently work at a not for profit university and have been registered for PSLF since August 2014. I noticed the other day on my statements that I only had 15 months worth of PSLF credited to my account. I did forbearance for 4 months last Fall while recalculating my loans and buying a house but other than that I have been employed at the same place for since Dec. 2013 and have sent in my ECF every year! Looking at my account, there are only statements listed since Sept 2016. I am wanting to call up FedLoan to try and contest this but wanted to hear a little more about what you did and what documentation you provided? I have copies of all my signed ECFs since 2014 but no documentation of them being received by FedLoan (since I either faxed them or submitted them through their portal but my statement don’t go back that far). And unfortunately all my old emails from that time only say to log in to my account to read those statements (which are no longer there!).
There’s good and bad news. Technically Fedloan isn’t the final arbiter of if you get credit, the govt is. I imagine if you applied in 2024 for PSLF you’d be able to verify that you worked there with copies of your ECFs.
In terms of trying to get fedloan to recognize it, I’d call and ask for a supervisor and get it escalated. The folks on the phones have no clue what they’re doing so you have to create a big enough stink until they pay attention. That’s been my experience. I’d have the ECFs and reference those for documentation purposes that’s more than most people have.
FedLoan costed me 15,000 and prematurely sent me into default instead of granting me a differment and or income driven repayment plan. Nelnet hasn’t been much better they gave me 5 forebarances w no income driven repayment plan and then capitalized the interest. Honestly when Fedloan sent me into default was the only thing good they ever did for me because that was when ED stepped in and my income driven application was accepted and put into play. However I still have Nelnet as a servicer and $20,000 of debt that has no loan id’s on them on my NSLDS.
Wow Melissa that’s terrible sorry to hear. I’m glad you at least are on income driven repayment. You can get that default off your record if you rehabilitate the loans. Hopefully your loan servicer has explained this because having that default on your record for 7 years stinks and would be great to get it removed even though it was their fault.
Except you literally have to try to go a year past due. That’s your fault and yours alone.
FedLoan definitely likes to skim on the number of qualifying payments, among many other problems. I did my residency and then submitted my employment certification form. I then did fellowship, which was 12 months, submitted the form for that, and they replied that only 8 payments counted toward PSLF. I submitted something for them to review it over a month ago and have heard nothing.
Hey Steph, it stinks to say this, but the folks who’ve really gotten results with FedLoan from my experience are the ones who aren’t afraid to escalate and demand to speak to a supervisor every time. If you make them inconvenienced to deal with you, you’ll most likely receive correct information. If you act like a normal non-confrontational person, then expect a 6 month review period for this.
This happened to me too. I was told I’d receive it in 2 weeks, it’s been almost a month. The last person I spoke to gave me a pretty good overview of SOME of the stuff that had happened but then stopped just as he was getting to the part that makes no damn sense, and said a letter was being drafted and to expect that the review process takes 90 days. -_-
My loan was transferred to FedLoan and put on a 1 month forbearance in November even though they said the payments would continue and I’d have to do nothing. It is now December and the first payment will be made in a few days is it too late to cancel the forbearance and do a double payment for November and December so I don’t lose the November payment counting towards the 120?
Thanks
You can’t get the November payment counted at this point
Superbummer! One more month to stay employed at a not-for -profit. Thanks Travis!
They’re horrible. The interest rates are through the roof and are further oppressing a segment of our nation that is already struggling tremendously. If allen greenspan and all the banking experts didn’t see the market about to crash, why are students expected to know it? It’s not their fault they entered a market in a downed economy, and they shouldn’t be expected repay what was needed to get their education or licensure for their chosen profession. I’m so tired of constantly getting screwed over by my own government!!!!!!!
People who signed an agreement to repay should most definitely be expected to uphold their end of the contract.
I made 2 payment through my bank to Fedloan servicing and they have not posted to my account. Called numerous times and was told my account number is different that what is posted online. So my payments are “lost’ in LaLa land and they are supposedly “researching” where the payments are. My bank has even faxed over documentation confirming the transfer to Fedloan went through. And of course I’m delinquent now because of their error. So to save my credit, I’m going to have to make another payment to bring my account current. Did I mention I’m just an endorser?!
That sounds really bad, yes I’d probably make a payment but because of this I would only speak to a manager and would refuse to speak with anyone else. That’s just terrible sorry to hear.
It’s not their fault you put the wrong information in with your bank. So that’s actually your error.
The account number I had with the bank is the account number provided to me initially and the one currently showing online.
Hey Travis – I’m also with FedLoan Servicing. They had me on Forbearance for YEARS when I was so poor that I could’ve been on IBR with $0/month payments. And when I say years, I mean… 5 years. I have worked at a number of non-profits while paying back my loans, but have probably only made 10 qualifying payments. I sincerely doubt I’ll end up in the NP stream again. I’ve already consolidated and am on IBR, payments are fairly low, but my interest is 7.25% and I am currently ONLY paying on my $20K of rapidly accruing interest and not on the principal. It’s pretty bad.
Hey Hannah, you might find the list of tips in the for profit loan forgiveness article I wrote more useful: https://www.studentloanplanner.com/student-loan-forgiveness
Sorry to hear. If you plan on staying in the NP world then I’d definitely still pursue PSLF and send in the ECF. Otherwise I’d make some contingency plans. It’s worth noting that IBR is usually not the right program to be on. PAYE and REPAYE are better.
That just sounds iffy. you cannot be on a forbearance for 5yrs. You only have 3 yrs of forbearance to use. And i’m pretty sure the first thing they do is offer idr’s. you most likely chose not to apply for it because it sounded like a tedious process. And during your so called 5 yrs. you should have known that int was accruing because you agreed to the terms. you signed off on it. you chose to ignore these facts. take responsibility for your own errors.
I was never offered an IDR. I don’t know what that is. If I had known about it and it was helpful, I would’ve applied, no matter how tedious.
I do know that every single time I applied for deferment, I got it. (Sorry – deferment, not forbearance.) And it lasted five years. Yes, I knew interest was accruing and I am taking responsibility and paying my bill each month, but I don’t yet make enough to make payments that cut into the principal.
You don’t have to talk down to me, Kissi. I’m working hard and understand that I will likely pay on these for decades. I have chosen not to have kids or buy a house until my debt is paid. I am taking responsibility. And while I didn’t ignore any facts when I signed, I do admit that I didn’t fully understand what I was getting myself into. I’d never had debt before and didn’t realize the crippling force it can be in your life. I do know that, once this debt is cleared, will be damned if I ever do this to myself again.
One thing I’m proud of? I have remained compassionate towards people who find themselves in financial difficulties. Being kind never incurs a debt.
Hannah I think the loan servicer did a huge disservice to you. Hats off for the positive attitude
I had contacted Fedloan Servicing because they promised student loan forgiveness. I completed all of their required paperwork. I was told that I would make a payment of $142 monthly and if I do not miss a payment or am not late after 10 years ALLmy loans would be forgiven. $142 was $100 less than the original amount, so I thought I had made a pretty wise decision. 1.5 years go by I watch my credit my loans remain the same, but there is no delinquencies reported. I decided to begin a Masters program, which I completed this past August 2017.
When a student returns to school all student loans go into forbarance. Fedloan continued to contact me through the first year demanding payments. Beginning in August when I graduated with my Masters they began harassing me. I made attempts to contact them via email and phone with no success. I am currently working with a different program to get away from Fedloan. Also, Fedloan never placed me on the program that eliminated my loans after 10 years. This program was supposed to be for people that works in community service, military for 20 and now teaching at a TITLE I school more than qualifies me.
Sherry as bad as they are I believe you’re describing PSLF. If you’re eligible you’re going to want to stay on that path even though it runs through FedLoans. What program are you using?
Now that’s not true, they will never offer that. Only several repayments plan qualify and the only ones that sets an amount is the standard. they won’t just come up with an amount. sounds like you called a 3rd party and they gave you that story.
OMG this sounds just like my story, switching to fedloan added 50 k of extra debt to my account. When I graduated with 228K debt I was ready to begin heavy payments. Then I received documents about IBR and PSLF…this deceived me from paying my loans to the fullest amounts. I have worked for 5 years for a Non-profit clinic and expected to have the equivalent of five years of payments. When I received the letter with the count of loans equal to 11 I almost fell off the chair. The explanation was that the count was lost. I resubmitted for count again and again and again . The count was 11 qualified payments for 5 years of working for non-profit. Please don’t believe FedLoan and PSLF. You are alone , there is no government overlooking your loans. If I knew it is all a scam to make your debt bigger and make you dependent – I would be paying heavily from day one. The government never truly meant to forgive their loans to anyone, this was a scam. In a way I am happy that president Trump is putting an end to a fake dream of loan forgiveness which was never meant to happen anyway.
I don’t think it’s a fake dream. Even the House GOP is giving up loan forgiveness for current borrowers in their latest bill called the PROSPER Act. I think we’ll see it ended for new borrowers though.
So, what’s funny to me is that I keep having to change my payment plan. I changed in 07/2017 and today I received an e-mail that I need to do it again to obtain PSLF. It’s not that I can’t pay it, but after going to the website, the only option is IBR. Odd that thy state on their website that the graduated payback is the way to go, but that’s what I’m in. I have two loans, subsidized and unsubsidized. Obviously, I don’t want to consolidate at this date based on that I took them out in 2001. I have my personal thought, that they see the write off coming, and getting their money.
If you have FFEL loans issued before 2010 Derek then the only way to get PSLF is consolidating them into Direct loans. It’s a bummer for sure!
All my loans were Perkins. My family wasn’t in the position to help. I actually consolidated all my other debt, and my credit score jumped like crazy. I think I’ll get from under FedLoan soon to refinance.
This is happening to thousands of people. The Massachusetts Attorney General is suing them. There needs to be some sort of class action lawsuit.
Can’t argue with you there. Hopefully their contract won’t get renewed.
Similar story here. I tried to reapply for REPAYE, and I would get an automated email saying something was wrong with my app. I called several times and submitted forms exactly as I was instructed. Kept getting the emails though. I called or emailed them after each one and was routinely told everything was submitted properly…7 days before deadline, I’m told everything has to be resubmitted and that my loan would go into forbearance. I argued and argued, but it still happened and added over $11k to my balance. I couldn’t FORCE a “supervisor” to say to me that the company had failed me. What they did to me is nothing short of criminal. That $11k is going to balloon into no telling how much over the coming years and rob me of the life I’m working hard to try and live. And I can’t find a single damn lawyer who’s suing outside of the Mass attorney general. I feel helpless. I’ve complained to everyone I’m supposed to complain to and gotten garbage fluff responses.
I’ve been skimming through the comments and I have a question for Travis. I am a lawyer who consolidated all of my loans under the PAYE plan when I graduated in May 2013. I then immediately certified my employer (a state gov’t entity) when I started working in November 2013.
Because PAYE’s payments are based off of your income for the last year you filed taxes, my payments were $0 for that year. I was told that these would count towards PSLF despite being $0. And, for a bit, FedLoan Servicing’s client portal represented as such.
But then later those credited $0 payments disappeared. So I lost about a year of payments that otherwise would have counted towards PSLF.
What gives? The only proof I have is that my employer was certified for that year and I have my tax return, but is there a way to get that year back?
Also, thank you Travis. I just discovered this site and it’s truly invaluable.
Thanks Whitney! Glad you like the site please feel free to share with colleagues. The answer for your question is that it depends on what you can prove. FedLoan is going to say that you were in a period of forbearance or something like that. You’ll need to dig through email correspondence or letters if you still have them showing that you sent in your income to verify. You should also not be shy about escalating this loudly to a supervisor to make sure your loans are put into a review. I would get it fixed now as each month you wait is farther away from being able to verify these things.
They just sent me a notice saying I am almost a thousand dollars in debt with them and I’ve never heard of them or heard from them. I’ve been trying to find it from my original loan company who is servicing my loan more and all they could tell me was that they don’t have my file anymore. Not FedLoan has been making against my credit for months and billing me supposedly, although I have never before received anything from them or spoken to anyone from their company.
That’s terrible sorry to hear Brandon. I’d at least expect them to tell you where they got the loans from and when.
Wooooow I can’t believe my eyes! Starting to take the big steps in my life, I went to credit union to open a savings account and talk about my first car loan. The women helping me informed me today that my credit was poor do to a student loan “I have never know was there”; and that the only thing balancing it out was a $900 credit card! Which is the only thing I thought was bringing it down due to missing a payment! I have never seen or have heard of owing this $1,700. After I left the back thinking I can pay half of this off and get approved for my loan with paper proof. I called fafsa to ask wtf and they told me that the loan is currently in default and held by FedLoan Servicing. I tried to call but they’er Closed….. this page is kinda freaking my out. Could someone maybe suggest my next big move?! Today was suppose to be day I stop feeling robbed by company’s and take hold of my own and now I find out all of this stuff! Obviously I’m still a little naive to the real world.
This is an all too familiar setting. I just wrote my US congressman and strongly suggest everyone to do the same. I’ll just copy and paste most of my email instead of recanting.
I hesitated in contacting you regarding Fedloan Servicing and feel I have tried every possible alternative but I have some serious concerns regarding that company.
I don’t know if you are familiar with the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program or not. It’s a program where active duty military and other people with certain jobs can enter in order to have one’s student loans eliminated after 120 payments. This is a program I have been in since 2013 or 2014. Each year an applicant must reapply to be put back on that program. Concurrently, I have been on an income based repayment plan to go along with the 120 payments needed for that program and this is where my issue arises.
The most I have paid on that program is $26 and have paid as little as $0 toward the 120 payments. Last April or May when I reapplied to the program through an income based plan, I originally was told my payments would be over $400 per month and this is after I was told I would be paying over $800 a month. I called and also emailed asking for an explanation. Eventually I was told the reason for the drastic jump was because my wife’s combined income put me into a much higher paying bracket. Since I felt our combined income still did not justify the huge increase in payment I disputed that. In September, my wife gave birth and has not been to work since.
I have submitted countless applications to Fedloan Servicing through mail, fax, and by uploading to that company’s site since April or May of last year. I have called and emailed in vain efforts to be put on an income driven plan that more correctly is indicative of the amount of money an enlisted service member makes. I was paying $0 through the income based plan and have been trying to get back to that sort of payment or close to it. My income is nearly the same as it has been for the last 5 years. My applications since last April or May have come back denied every time. The excuses Fedloan Servicing gives have ranged from multiple denials stating my employer, the US Navy, does not qualify for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program to a box was unchecked, a box was incorrectly checked, to other excuses I can’t recall at the moment. I have been told although the correct information was on another application, I did not put a check in one of the boxes. I resubmitted the application that time through fax, went underway, and came back to discover it was denied because my employer couldn’t be verified even though my Leave and Earning statement clearly shows I am enlisted. Furthermore, their own records reflect this as I have been in this program for a number of years.
I have since uploaded a document from the DOD that states I am currently active duty and the date I enlisted. I resubmitted another application that was denied and was told the reason being my tax returns showed I didn’t qualify because of the combined income. I resent an LES along with it. I uploaded a letter from my wife’s employer, on a company letterhead, stating her unemployment and her maternity leave which started in September to prove she is not currently working. I was told that letter was not acceptable.
The Leave and Earning statement I sent in December or January was calculated incorrectly this last time. I spoke to two people for over an hour yesterday and the first rude woman told me it was my fault the statement was misread since I did not write on the document my pay frequency. It clearly states the frequency of pay. I resubmitted another LES yesterday and wrote on it the frequency, explained the taxable income, the address of the DFAS who pays me, and signed it. Today I received an email from Fedloan Servicing this Leave and Earning Statement was denied as proof. I was told by the second woman I spoke with my wife and kids were taken off my file and this resulted in my family size changing from 4 to 1. This greatly increases the amount of money I am required to pay for the income based repayment plan. When I asked why this happened, the woman told me it was because I lied to them in one denied application I submitted in which I stated I did not have my wife’s financial income. I reiterated I did not have my wife’s financial information at the time and was told since I submitted a letter from my wife’s company stating she no longer worked I lied about having her financial information. I pointed out to the woman those two things are completely unrelated and reminded her that letter was not recognized by her company.
Over the course of the last year I have had to submit unauthorized charge forms to Navy Fed to reclaim payments they have taken out in the amounts over $800 and $400 at different times. I was put on forbearance for some reason while $0 payments were being applied. I was put on forbearance while I had these applications in as well. That has only given them reasons to not process my applications while interest steadily accrued.
I’m at my wit’s end with these people. I have done everything required to be put on an income based plan to go into the 120 payments of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. As the applications come back denied, interest on my account is soaring. I feel they are purposely denying my applications for this reason and to have me pay an exuberant amount per month.
I apologize for the long email and the multiple attachments. Among other things, the letters show where they acknowledge I am a service member and then a month or two later where they deny my application stating my employer is not eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. I wish I could also show my submitted documents from their website but it doesn’t have that option. I feel this is in part so they can state they did not receive a document-which is something I’ve been told after I know I submitted documents to them. I feel I have tried everything I can with this company and have done everything required. I googled if it was possible to have my loans transferred out of Fedloan Servicing and read a lot of reviews from other people who have had similar problems with this company. I don’t know how they are allowed to practice and am asking your office to look into their practices.
It’s refreshing to find out I’m not crazy after all in regard to FedLoan Servicing. In June 2017 I mentioned to a Nelnet representative that I may possibly (not officially) apply for PSLF with loans I had been making qualifying payments on since early 2013. in July 2017, Nelnet, with no warning, transferred my account to FedLoan Servicing and it has been a headache since.
I made the mistake of not getting annual verification for PSLF until I switched jobs in August 2017 so now I have 1 official payment and am currently waiting for the other payments to be added up. According to FedLoan it would take 30-60 days. Then 90 days. Then 90 business days. As of March 2018, I’m still waiting for the number to display the correct amount.
At this point, with a high interest rate of 6.8% and a relatively low loan amount (although in my ignorance, I was making payments toward interest for a couple of years), I have been aggressively paying $1000+ monthly. I have been weighing the refinance option, since going for PSLF is now a slim opportunity but I can’t make an educated decision without knowing exactly how many payments I have left.
My issue is small compared to many others, but this really does point out the need for our department of education -as well as the government- to stop thinking of students and young people (some of our most vulnerable citizens and non-citizens) as a money-making opportunity.
Yeah it’s sad how little money they invest in good loan servicers. Sorry to hear what you’re going through Brandon. If it’s under 100k and your debt to income ratio is below 2 you might just refinance it. Otherwise it probably makes sense to go for PSLF and just chalk it up to a bad life experience.
One complaint is the amount of time it takes to get a straight answer from them. After the 10th phone call that I documented (I had at least a few before that) and 155 days of qualifying payment review, I came to the realization that my remaining balance is almost certainly not going to be forgiven. Someone on this board stated that it is your fault if you did not understand the rules of the program. True enough, but the representatives should be able to give you better information sooner. It shouldn’t take 10 calls and multiple employment verifications. You sit and wait in anticipation of the loans being forgiven and set other plans on hold until it is resolved. Resolution could be quicker with better answers from their representatives.
Totally agree. Yet the terms of their contract with the government really provides almost no incentives to give good customer service, so they simply choose not to in my view.
I made about half (60 months) of all qualified payments for the PSLF and submitted forms from all of my qualifying employers (a 501(c)(3) and the federal government). FedLoan correctly updated the number of qualifying payments. Less than a month later when I checked my account again, the number of qualifying payments decreased to 28. I was very frustrated and called them right away! They said something along the lines of that I continued to make payments while my loan was in forbearance — which has only happened while they were processing the annual certification form for the IBR. They said they would perform a review and to check three months later. It has now been five months — and every time I call them, they tell me it’s still under review. I have gotten inconsistent answers as to how long the review would take place. One person said three months, another 90 business days (excluding weekends and holidays), another said that they cannot tell me. I don’t see what I can do to speed this up, but it is very frustrating. Any suggestions would be welcome!
Hi Peter the standard period I’ve seen this take is 6 mos, so you should get an answer fairly shortly. I would bug them once a month every month til it’s done.
I have had huge issues with FedLoan servicing and am considering legal action. After they “lost” years of payments I made, and spent over 9 months “reviewing” my case, I had no progress at all. I contacted my Congress Woman’s office and she had a full detailed response regarding my loans within a month. Once the pressure was on them, they finally “found” the missing dates and counted them. There are still several other issues I need to resolve with them, but I know now the only way to get that done is through a representative’s office. FedLoan Servicing is TERRIBLE and should NOT be allowed to service any loans.
In the past, I was also given misinformation about what loan I was on by various reps. They are not informed about the plans and give incorrect information. Luckily, I did not listen to them and did not change my plan. I have kept a full record of all phone calls and contacts with them (including employee IDs) in case this eventually needs to go to court. I suggest others keep records as well.
Sounds like good advice Kristy. At least they amended your count. I’d suggest using their online portal to upload your certifications for PSLF every 6 mos for the future.
Thank you Travis. What do you mean by this? I am submitting my 501c3 certification once for residency beginning correct? Would I resubmit it every 6 months? Not sure why? Thanks! Tom
I would submit every 6 mos initially just to get used to it, then you could do it every year. The online version is pretty easy to submit now compared with paper mailing. Only cost is your time.
Nothing more than a bunch of crooks preying on a critical population trying to “make it” in the world. Don’t get me wrong, FedLoan is just one cog in a great big filthy wheel of a corrupt system. Another example of the private sector infiltrating our societal infrastructure, a money-grubbing middle man, forced into college students’/graduates’ lives because someone at this rotten company was in tight with a profiteering politician at the right time. Private companies such as FedLoan that are forced upon us by the U.S. Gov’t are one of the main reasons why our country is having such a difficult time competing with other industrialized nations. This type of institutionalized capitalism is stifling one of our smartest and most promising populations, and it has to stop. Student loans should have one of the lowest interest rates, but instead they carry one of the highest. Want to do foster creativity and abundant success in business, medical, technology, etc? DEMAND YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS TO REMOVE THE TYRANNICAL THUMB THAT OPPRESSES ONE OF OUR MOST BRILLIANT POPULATIONS!! My wife had a $17K loan that we just paid off in full. She paid the full amount on the 14th of this month and because she did not click a certain button on FedLoan’s website, they decided to automatically withdraw another monthly payment, overdraft her bank account, and charge her the full interest for the month. They have yet to reimburse her for the extra money they withdrew from her account when they said it would only take up to 5 business days to do so. In every other business we deal with, this would amount to nothing less than stealing. But because FedLoan is part of our vicious “capitalist” institution, their theft is legitimized as they have the ability to operate above the law. Our next steps are to contact our State and Federal Congressmen and the Better Business Bureau because we feel compelled to hold FedLoan accountable for their disposable actions. This type of financial violence can not be tolerated if we are to compete with other countries in the vast fields of endeavor. Shame on FedLoan as a “business”, shame on our Government, and lastly, shame on us to have allowed this oppression to reach the point it has. #resist
amen
My wife and I are paying for our children’s college education and in doing so we have 4 student loans we are paying on. We have always paid on time and never missed a payment. In 2009 we filed a chapter 13 bankruptcy and we were told student loans are not covered and we must continue to pay those loans, which we did. The chapter 13 was from 2009-2014, we fulfilled all requirements and got thru a very difficult time. Now here is the problem, when we were told we needed to continue paying our student loans we did just that but on one of the loans (FedLoan) the payment was returned so I called to ask why… FedLoan told us the account was in forebearance and that we do not pay when going thru a bankruptcy. I told them no, we were told by our attorney that we needed to continue paying. They told us they don’t accept payments during that time but we would start our payments again when the bankruptcy was finished. So we followed there instruction. My wife showed me a bill for April 2018 as she was confused. The bill showed our Original balance at $14k, current balance at $13,900. Bill also states as of today you’ve paid on your loans $11,509.87 (interest $6409.15 and principal $5,100.72. So we closed bankruptcy in 2014, it is now 2018… there is only $900. Difference in original balance and current balance… with us paying $5k+ in principal. So I called FedLoan to find out what was going on. The rep pulled up our account and after several hmmm’s… she responds oh I see what happened… you had a bankruptcy and during the time you weren’t making payments you were charged interest… from my calculations to the time of $4k+… I explained the situation that happened and that we had sent a payment in and it was returned and she responded well yes that makes sense, that’s what we do because we don’t take payments during bankruptcy. I explained that we were never told we would be charged interest when they told us not to send payments. We were sending payments, it was our intention to continue sending payments as we did with the other 3 loans that were accepted every month. And now they say there is nothing they can do at this point! How in the hell do you charge interest on a loan without informing us you would be doing so and on top of that they told us not to pay during that time due to the bankruptcy! So there solution is to not have us pay and then charge interest to make the loan increase over 4K dollars for someone who is going through bankruptcy. Someone please help. This isn’t right and the only advice I have gotten so far is from the attorney I had at the time advising to send a letter. It is awful that we have done everything we were suppose to do to get our finances in order, it was an extremely difficult time and now not sure what to do.
Sorry to hear you went through that Mike. Ch 13 is very painful and I’m glad that it’s behind you. I’d suggest looking at your payment options under the extended, graduated, or REPAYE plans and to put the loan into the lowest payment while you build up your financial security and recover.
Then you’d want to look at how you pay the loan off most likely. Student debt will never go away unless you’ve got a ton of it and are pursuing forgiveness. That means I’d try to start paying at least $200 a month on it and increase those payments by $10-$20 each month until it’s gone.
Just applied to have the balance of my student loans forgiven for over 20 years of state service as a police officer and the end result was the loan service provider almost doubling my monthly payment, and profiting from their fraudulent practices….nice to know our Federal Law Enforcement is so focused on our President it doesn’t have time to actually prosecute criminals like fedloan servicing…
Sorry to hear Michael. Your options at this point if they’re FFEL loans would be to consolidate and get it on REPAYE most likely. You still might be eligible for loan forgiveness but it wouldn’t be for another 10 year (sucks I know).
I have submitted all relevant ECF forms and followed all of their directions. When I called and asked why they weren’t showing any relevant payments on one group of my loans the woman on the phone said she was confused by that. She said I could submit another form and hear back within 3 months. It’s been 6 months and I haven’t heard a peep. Meanwhile they stopped recording relevant payments on my other groups of loans. If anyone feels like filing a class action lawsuit, let me know! 🙂
Ah! Ok, I talked to them and their tracking system was replaced in the fall. They’re super behind. One thing I learned that I didn’t fully understand before was that the ECF only certifies past employment (i.e. your monthly payment summary will not reflect additional payments counted unless you have recently submitted an ECF. You can do that every 6 months or year… so, I’m not seeing additional payments because they will not show until I submit my ECF in May- still feels like a gamble and not handled ideally but if it works… who knows. I was told they have forgiven debt via PSLF as of December so…. for all of you out there, there’s hope! I think…. 🙂 Just continue to call them whenever there’s a discrepancy. In some cases they can accelerate your processing requests. Ask for a manager if you need to! The call center staff don’t necessarily know everything. Keep a call log and write down the ID numbers of the people you talk with. Good luck!
Great recommendations Sarah!
Compared with the dolts at most schools, they are fucking miserable. I didn’t get hit as hard, but one day I stopped getting bills. No big deal I thought as I was set up for auto debit. Long story short my school sent in an abatement request and invalidated months of payments. I’m still sorting out what should never have happened and should not be a big deal to resolve. But yet it is…
I thought I was applying for the PSLF program and that I would get information before I was placed on it through FedLoan. I was horrified to find out that no, I had been given no choice. It turns out that my payments were actually extended by 4 more years from when I would have paid them off on my other program. I called the DOE etc. and I was just plain out of luck. I feel like I was ripped off. And I’m in my 60s and got my graduate degrees late in life, so this isn’t good.
Sorry to hear Jo you can always request a manual review but that takes about 6 months.
Fedloan is TERRIBLE!!
I started working at a “non-profit organization” on Oct, 2016. I signed up for PSLF and had my loans transferred in May 2017 from Nelnet to Fedloans. I did my “Employment Certification form” last month April 2018 (for the first time) and Fedloans told me that I only have 4 qualifying payments!!?
How is that possible when I had Direct Debit payment from my account since 2014 and only had 3 months of deferment due to yearly re-certification of my IBR?? From my count using Fedloan “payment history,” I have about 15 qualifying payments since I started working at the non-profit organization in Oct 2016.
I called a month ago after receiving notice in the mail that I only have 4 qualifying payments and the rep. said that “it looks like you’ve been making payments since Oct, 2016, I’m not sure why they didn’t count the payments”. So he suggested that he will send my PSLF account back in again for a re-count. I said okay and asked how long until I find out, he said about 2 months for a re-count. Can you believe that, 2 months just for a re-count??
I didn’t like that answer so I called again today and ask about the status of my re-count, the rep. I spoke with had no clue how to look up the amount of payment I made each month, she had to pull out a calculator in order to come up with the payment that I should be making. She said that she will send it in for review so they can re-count it again. I ask again how long and she said, “6 months to 1 yr.”
Don’t even get more started with the IBR annual re-certification. My wife and I both have student loans approx. the same amount and we file out tax together, yet our monthly payment after each re-certification is always different from one another.
Here’s the problem with Fedloans, and I hope it gets addressed soon:
-Each Representative will give you different answers; they should be consistent, if not, then they need to be retrained.
-You can’t talk to the same rep when you call back so you have to explain your story again and again.
-PSLF qualifying payments should be a little more transparent. The tally of qualifying payments should be on your account page online so you can monitor it each month; it shouldn’t be a guessing game!
I applied and was transferred to FedLoans a few months ago. They did the same forbearance garbage to me, but I fought them and insisted my payments continue. They still have not credited me for the last three years of payments toward my forgiveness and go on income-based payments. They keep telling me to reapply online. I do, then they say they lost it and it never electronically arrived EVERY FREAKING TIME. Then, I have to do it again. Still nothing. I’m frustrated!
I’ll update the article with this DeeDee, but you need to call (717) 720-7605. It’s the FedLoan Ombudsman line and they actually seem to be unusually helpful. I’d call them up and see what they say.
I’m currently with Great Lakes and in the process of switching over to the PSLF program. I have about $30,000 in loans and I CANNOT afford to pay the full amount. I have been paying the income based amount through Great Lakes now since approximately June 2017. Reading this right did they cost you the money because you joined PSLF years after and hoped those previous payments would count? I hope I am making the right decision…………
Right we were hoping that the payments my wife made during her 3 fellowship years would qualify, but instead only some of them did and we had to abandon the program unfortunately. You should be ok to receive some benefit. I really want to encourage you to look at your big expenses and see if there’s anything you could reduce. Very important to keep making payments to keep the 10 year clock running Nicole!
I had a very similar experience with pslf. After graduating I started the program but 1 year in I only had 8 qualifying payments for half of the loans and 3 qualifying payments for the rest. I continued the program while also calling FedLoan on a regular basis to get everything straightened out, with no progress in sight. Every time I would call it would end up being a 1-2 hour ordeal with being transferred 3+ times because no one knew what I was talking about, let alone fix the problem. All throughout this time I was on the income based payments. 1 year later I submitted my new tax information, only to find out that I no longer qualified for income based because I had gotten married and we made too much money for the program. Trust me, we didn’t. After being rejected from the program we changed how we filed our taxes to filing separately only to find out that I couldn’t even apply again for another year, forcing my payments to go through the roof. Needless to say, I abondoned the program. At this point I’m ready to just suck it up and pay the full payments for the rest of time, but it irritates me to know that I could be saving money somehow, I just don’t have enough knowledge to know how.
Anna we have a student loan consulting business: https://studentloanplanner.com/hire-student-loan-help/
If there’s any money that could be saved with you being on PSLF I promise we’d be able to find it or confirm that there wouldn’t be any benefit.
Thank you for providing a space to openly discuss the PSLF program. We are living out the reality of a great idea. Unfortunately, no one in the federal government has nurtured this idea to make it efficient now that it’s time to reward the students who
have made 120 payments. I recently submitted my paperwork for 10 years of public school teaching. After reading the comments, I’m ready for battle! Thank you for contributing your stories and keep knocking at the door. If you follow the guidelines, you should be able to get your loans forgiven! And think of all the public service we’ve done for the country!
Thanks Rebecca wish you luck. Share news with us if it’s a good outcome!
Thank you for your website
Where to begin my saga with these morons … All started when my loans came out of forbearance I just landed a contract job Contract being the key word Meaning disposable employment I called the help line to explain the situation and we came up with a plan to Consolidate all my loans in to 1 and then place them back in forbearance because im not financially stable enough to make 2000 $ payments . Who the hell is ??? here is where the nightmares start I requested the forms to be mailed to me because they recently suffered a data breach , and i refuse to put my personal information on a system that has not been adequately fixed . It took them 4 months 8 phone calls 4 People telling me to just ignore us we wont come after you (Bullshit ) 3 people that did not know there ass from a hole in the ground and finally 1 supervisor that actually did what she said she would do . I got the forms 12 days later filled them out and Promptly mailed them back . 4 days later i got the forms that i filled out back in my mail box saying bad address . Oooook Lets try faxing them . Call in get there fax number and try to fax the war and peace book of paperwork . my fax line received an answer of a play back ring tone ” Thankyou for calling the mental health hotline if your obsessive compulsive press 2 repetitively ” not amusing i have now missed my first payment. Calling them back another 8 times finally i got an email to send these forms off to and was promised i would get a replies saying my request was received and was being processed. ( I was stupid for believing them and thinking i have done what needed to be done ) I have now missed 2 payments . I get this Infuriating letter in the mail that they are sending my file to debt collectors I storm there call center and getting a hold of the onbuzmen group . No documents where ever received … GREAT i just sent my personal information to god knows who . Resent the forms . the request was still not processed because One of my 3 references did not want me to use his address cause frankly he dose not want to be harassed . Finally complete the forms and get them to the right people I have missed 4 payments at this time . A week before a Major surgery i get an email saying that the request is taking longer than expected and to please make the FULL amount past due . LOOK YOU ASSHOLES IF I COULD i would not be 4 months pass due and because of your games i now have a credit score in the toilet and im looking in to Truth and lending laws for legal recourse How hard is it to consolidate 4 loans in to 1 and place them back in forbearance ? This started in aug of 2017 and is still ongoing 7/2/18 YOU are incompetent
Sorry to hear Peter. I find it best to just escalate to a supervisor and try to not get too upset because it only makes things take longer with them.
Im now in default because i got tired of them i have my mother to take care of and a very unstable job market where i live me burning half my day doing personal matters is not conducive of me being hired full time by a company . In Arizona if you sneeze wrong your contract is terminated .
This (dis)servicer has reuined the last 10 years of my life (which should have been the best years) and now have officially ruined the rest of my life and I did everything I was supposed to do on my end. EVERYTHING. DILIGENTLY. WHILE I SUFFERED. AWAITING MY UPCOMING FORGIVENESS DATE SO I CAN HAVE A LIFE FINALLY.
All payments made (never missed;/ never late; always the right amount) for 9 of the required 10 years – suddenly are not qualifying payments – I am not kidding. Starting over in way worse shape than I started the first time. I am not doing it. I am losing everything. I have not a cent and nowhere to go. I will be homeless any day now, just waiting for that day to come. I have suffered in a job that admittedly has been underpaying me, and remain overworked and underpaid, and worst of all bullied severely – as they have discovered I will take anyting they dish out to me until my upcoming forgiveness date. Well, all government agencies in this case win.
I have nothing to lose any longer. I will work to nationally expose all of this crap at both agencies – again, those who have nothing to lose should be the ones you should worry about, right? ESPECIALLY if you solely are the reason that they have nothing to lose any longer after diligently and loyally doing what they should and more.
I have lived a life of suffering and now will continue to for the rest of it because of PSLF.
by the way, I have asked if anyone has ever received forgiveness – they say they started the program in 2017. So, you do the math and read between the lines. The answer must be NO. I give up.
Hopefully your story will help others, sorry to hear
Travis,
I am happy that I came across this article. I have had a terrible experience with FedLoans and I am about to get a lawyer involved. I have worked at a nonprofit for almost 10 years and can not get a straight answer on how many more payments I owe. I have inquired for a list of qualifying payments 12 times this year (once a month). I was told numerous times I would receive something in the mail or through email and it never came. I then called and asked and was told an exact number which I wrote down. Months later, I just logged in and my account says something very different than what was communicated to me. This is NOT ok. The service, the sharing of information and the follow up is terrible. What would you do in this circumstance? I am thinking that a lawyer is the only way to go because I am done messing around.
I’d consider connecting with my friend Adam at asminsky@minsky-law.com. If he can’t help he would know someone who might be able to. That said I haven’t heard good experiences with lawyers getting servicers pushed to corrective action. They’re just extremely bureaucratic. I would try calling the FedLoan ombudsman line too: (717) 720-7605
Call that number and demand an Ombudsman case worker!!!
That is where I am and I got a case worker finally!
I’m at my wits end with FedLoams myself and beyond!!!
I would just try that # before you spend any more $.
But I’m taking this lawyers info down as well!
Please let me know if you get anywhere. Good Luck my friend! Make them keep up their end of this deal! It’s only fair and nothing more, nothing less. Good luck to you!
It’s so true! I graduated in 1999; consolidated my Federal Student loans in 2007 with William D. Ford Federal Loan Program. Working as a public school teacher, I made 8 years of on-time payments. Then in 2015, I received a notice that my student loans were being transferred to MOHELA student loan services for servicing. I continued to make on-time payments. In 2017, I applied for PSLF, I was given 10+ years of public service credit and my loans were transferred to Fedloan for servicing. In correspondence, Fedloan notifies me that I have only made two years worth of qualifying payments. Although I have wrote them twice in the past year to ask them to investigate, they continue to give me the run-around. I believe Fedloan lost all history of my payments to William D. Ford Loan Program. Thank you for posting this information!!!
For sure Michael you just have to keep at it. Use that Ombudsman number I listed above in the article that will help you a lot I think.
ALERT- Make sure you are calling the right phone number that connects you with the legitimate fedloan company. I googled fedloan and called one of the numbers that came up. They told me I was not enrolled in the loan forgiveness program and tried to charge me $700 to consolidate loans they said were not consolidated. I then told them I was not authorizing that because it sounded like a scam. After reading other articles on google about fedloan I came across a number provided that put me in contact with a place that actually sounded professional and was what you would expect from a company. It turns out the first number was to a third party which the woman I talked to told me. That third party operating apparently under the fedloan name is a complete scam. I am enrolled in the loan forgiveness program and the woman said any consolidating done through fedloan is done for free. So be aware of who you are talking to!! The legitimate fedloan rep was very helpful.
Great points Jesse. You never have to pay for basic help like that. Of course the Fedloan reps won’t have ideas on how to minimize income, choose tax filing status, etc. There’s a bunch of places that want to charge $1,000 to do a consolidation that takes 15 min on your own online.
FedLoan scooped up my teach grants when I consolidated WITHOUT my consent. They were not on the list when I got the consolidation approved, but they appeared online when the consolidation went through and my payments were due. When I called and questioned them they said I did not provide them with the correct information to forgive them so they became loans. When I pressed them saying I hadn’t put in my four years yet and had sent certification only once when they asked for it (I have documentation) after two years of service in a rural school, they said well sorry about that but we can’t reverse it once they become consolidated with a loan. So I got screwed out of $8,000 dollars in loan forgiveness for my teach grants used for Grad School. I have just applied for teacher loan forgiveness ($17,500) after five years of teaching in a rural school. I’m praying they don’t screw that up for me. In the meantime, if they are calculating correctly, when I apply for PSLF after the $17,500 is forgiven, the payments are so high that I will pay off my loans in ten years anyway and there won’t be anything else left for them to forgive in the end. Does our government know this? How does that work and what is the incentive for even doing it except interest not accruing?
I generally view PSLF as a better option for teachers who owe more than $50,000. Sorry to hear that happened to you Jen. There’s a lot of noise right now about how FedLoan has mismanaged TEACH grants. You should contact your congressperson.
Had to sue FedLoan after three years of the run around and capitalized interest off of lost or mis-processed applications, from consolidation to annual IDR certification. Enough is enough with these folks. I have a demanding job and two kids. We should expect more from the federal government and its contractors.
How did the suit end up going M? Assuming you can comment of course. I agree we should expect more. Unfortunately, I think the only way to get rid of FedLoan would be for a lot of constituents to contact their congressperson and ask them to intervene.
These comments are scaring me! My wife started medical residency in June 2018; we are going for PSLF. We consolidated everything at graduation, and we paid $0 PAYE payments to Great Lakes August 2018 – November 2018. We had an ECF approved by FedLoan in October, but her last name was spelled incorrectly. GreatLakes is reporting that the loans were transferred over to FedLoan a couple of weeks ago, but on the FedLoan side the loans aren’t appearing. Im concerned now that we’re going to get screwed out of our December payment, and possibly more! I find this exceptionally frustrating because as a resident my wife has no time or energy to call and raise a drink with FedLoan. I do, but thy won’t talk to me because I’m not the borrower.
What you might try Michael is to acquire power of attorney for your wife’s loans by calling FedLoan and requesting this document: https://myfedloan.org/borrowers/your-account/account-authorizations
You need to be power of attorney so you have authorization to make changes for your wife’s account. A lot of people don’t know that these servicers have POA forms.
I don’t think I can one-up anyone here, but I’ll relay my current stare-down with FedLoan as another data point that underscores their incompetence:
Basically, I’m asking them to re-do simple math. My loan servicing transferred from Great Lakes (awesome company, in my limited experience) to FedLoan when I first submitted the ECF and started down the path for loan forgiveness back in 2015. At that time, I made one year of qualifying payments (~10 payments), I had DIRECT loans, worked for the government (still do), made on-time payments, and was on an IDR payment plan (a fun fact they never tell you: you NEED this type of payment plan to qualify). In my mind, and per guidance on PSLF, I was on track in all respects.
In July 2017, FedLoan informed me I made 30 qualifying payments (across all my DIRECT loans). That sounded about right…
In July 2018, they told me I made 28 qualifying payments (across all my DIRECT loans)…
I’ve submitted 2 requests for review/recount and spoken to numerous customer service agents, all of whom are unable to answer a simple question: how do qualifying payments drop when my employment status, payment schedule/amounts, payment plan, and financial circumstances haven not changed? In other words, how is it possible that I’m continuing to make IDR-based payments on time, while working for a qualifying employer, yet my qualifying payments went down (pushing my forgiveness eligibility date out 2+ years)?
I’m in contact on a weekly basis about this now, and am happy to share my experience, frustrations, strategies, etc. with anyone who is facing similar challenges. I’ll also relay the results of this “audit” whenever it’s actually completed.
Please do Alan that’s unreal. You think they would hard code that as an impossible error in their review process. I’ve never actually even heard of that before for them to lower the payment count like that except with obvious non-qualifying scenarios like the ABA lawsuit. Keep us posted.
When I submitted my first employment certification, my loans were also transferred to Fedloan. After waiting 6 months, there site still wasn’t showing me the proper credits towards PSLF. I contacted the BBB and within two weeks it was magically all taken care of. Just last month, I contacted them about TEPSLF. Much to my surprise, they were on the ball and just earlier this week, I had almost $19,000 worth of loans forgiven and they are even going to send me a refund of my last 8 months payments. We’ll see how long that takes.
Wow that’s awesome Jamie! Congrats.
About 5 years ago when I began working in the public sector I decided to consolidate my federal loans and apply for PSLF. At the time my loans were transferred to Sallie Mae. Whenever I applied for PSLF I wanted the Income based plan, but somehow they placed me on the Standard repayment plan. Because I applied for it I’d assumed that I’d get it whenever they said I qualified for it. Fast forward to a year later, I find out that I was on the Standard plan and lost a years worth of payments towards the PSLF. I called them and even showed proof that I applied for the income based plan and they basically robbed me of a years worth of payments. I felt like salmon swimming upstream so I just quit fighting.
Sorry to hear Amanda. Just keep following the process and you’ll get a lot forgiven even if you do pay more than you should have to
Actually, payments on the Standard plan (not the extended plan) should qualify for PSLF. Check with FedLoan again and try to get someone more knowledgeable.
It’s worth mentioning that the Standard 10 year plan doesn’t exist for Direct Consolidation loans. The Standard plan on non consolidated loans does qualify while the Standard plan for consolidated loans does not qualify. In that case you need to be on the IBR or PAYE plan.
I am a social worker and I have only worked for state, federal or non profit organizations, but fed loan servicing has found a way to disqualify TENS of payments that I’ve made that should go towards my PSLF 120. A class action lawsuit needs to be filed.
Agreed, but you should be able to appeal the decision and ask for a manual review, which will take six months. Just know that you shouldn’t panic or worry, be patient, get the results of the manual review, then appeal to their ombudsman group.
FedLoan told .e they couldn’t take my payment because I moved to another country and didn’t have a US bank. They told me this for 6 years and when I came back to the US I find out that none of that was true. They lied. It racked up tons of interest and killed my credit.
Ugh that’s bad. Just pick up the pieces and make sure they don’t do more damage.
I did rebuild my credit pretty easily but the excess interest definitely pisses me off.
I graduated in 2007, I had transferred from another school in 2002. I believe my total on loans then was $60,000. That was when the recession hit. I could not make payment then and have been on an income based repayment plan. My balance is now $120,000. I cant even pay the interest down which is adding $675 mo. My loans have changed companies several times without my approval, originally Sallie Mae and now FedLoanServicing. I don’t know what to do. They say the debt is forgiven in 20 years but is that from graduation date or starts over every time your loan is transferred. I know have my own kids starting college in about 2 yrs if I let them.
It’s from when you first started making payments Monica. I’d suggest getting help from one of our planners (studentloanplanner.com/hire-student-loan-help/) or try to sign up for something like REPAYE where you can pay a portion of your income and potentially get forgiveness.
FedLoan is doing my servicing after consolidating my low interest <2% and 6+% loans. I’m now seeing a $430+ increase in my loan debt each month while on a $0 payment. What’s crazy is that the consolidation has forced me to earn interest on top of the original interest, which is why the balance jumps each month. I am going to have to go back through EVERYTHING and confirm but I believe that I am reflecting 30-40k in interest as a result.
My opinion ** Interest accrued on student loans should be capped regardless of the repayment period- even if it’s done based on the dollar amount borrowed. ** & while I’m on my soap box **loans should not be “guaranteed” for all degrees offered at universities; several bachelors programs are not taking people into title protected fields or gaining graduates lucrative careers; if universities are offering these types of degrees, they should do it at their own risk/expense.**
Also, I left the government/nonprofit role after 4 years but had the company send in PSLF paperwork when I started and 2x before I left. FedLoans has credited 0 payments for 4 years due to them getting information from the company “on the wrong form”.
You can appeal that. I agree some universities are doing a lot of shady stuff right now.
Wow! I can’t believe my good fortune in finding the link to your story. Even if you’re not able to help I am thrilled to see I’m not the only one trying to resolve and navigate all this BS. I’m at work right now so I will sift through the rest of these stories and questions over the weekend to possibly find additional insights.
I am a 58 y.o. widower with 3 girls, one of which chose to be a photographer and went to Ft. Lauderdale Art Institute (which was sued by the government for extravagant student loan fees which we never seen any rebate toward our student loans but that’s another story)
I am presently dealing with a defaulted Parent Plus Loan though my daughter has her own loan issues.
Default came about through the loss of my job 8 yrs ago. I am presently working for a nonprofit (making much less but I’m working thank God) for the past 6 yrs. 5 months. In Jan of 2018 US Aid-Funds Inc. seen fit to garnish every check at 15%. Though the law says it should be 5-15%, they went for the throat immediately at 15% without justification other than the Congress giving them unhindered authority. Then six months later we had a sit-down after I filled out a great deal of financial paperwork concerning my expenditures so that I might be reconsidered for 5%. Eventually it was declined and left at 15%. Six months after that sit down we just had another to re-apply with the hopes of getting me off the garnishment and hopefully paying much less a month which would be a huge help. Long story short they mentioned a “Loan” program with Fed-Loan and ONLY Fed-Loan so that I can get out from under the garnishment with hopes of somehow qualifying for the “Nonprofit Forgiveness Plan”. To say the least, I am very suspicious ever since 8 yrs. ago, what was once only about $17,500.00 debt @8% interest is now $28K due in part to the constant Fees added to the Reselling of my loan from one “Loan Shark” collection agency to another “Loan Shark” collection agency. So unfair…what a rip-off!!! As far as I’m concerned this is all legalized Racketeering!!! There are plenty more details one of which is I am presently waiting to hear from Fed-Loan about the details of their loan but this is the gist of my predicament. Any insights would be appreciated.
Besides my suspicions of Fed-Loan another suspicion has to do with US Aid Fund Inc. and they miraculously having a “now available” plan to get me off the garnishment. Almost as if they are aware of some sort of change coming from within the Government regarding what I deem unfair garnishment. Anyway,
Thank you for listening!!!
fM
Davie, Florida
Davie check with an attorney if they’re in garnishment, but generally what I tell folks with Parent Plus to consolidate w the govt to turn them into Direct Consolidation loans, which are ICR eligible. If you make a low enough income, the payment might be very modest and you could avoid garnishment that way.
Thank you… I have an attorney who’s been helping me with the last 2 sit downs. She has been trying to navigate through all the materials/rules but it seems their are so many rules/ins & outs which even the collection staff often lacks the knowledge needed to help guide me to a better resolution… I’m presently still waiting to hear from FedLoan regarding the details to their contract which I’m still hesitant about signing because of what I’ve been reading here.
I only have One Loan! Is it still elegible for a Direct Consolidation Loan? Forgive the lack of knowledge “Consolidation” seems to imply several loans into one loan!
According to US Aid-Funds Inc. who holds my Parent Plus Loan but doles it out to collection agency’s on their behalf, the crazy thing about garnishment is you can never get out of it, which is what they told me in the beginning. A year later now they have a “New Deal” for me (fed-loan).
Have you heard of any new Laws or new procedures coming that might work for my favor and this is why they are now presenting me with the Fed Loan option?
Thanks so much.
fM
Davie, Florida
Parent PLUS loans can be forgiven long term if you consolidate them to a Direct Consolidation loan coming from Parent PLUS. That kind of loan is only eligible for ICR but you should be able to consolidate even though you don’t have any other loans. I think you’re just getting bad help from them. Check out https://studentloanplanner.com/parent-plus-loan-forgiveness/ for info on parent plus loan forgiveness
Travis…thanks for all your help, insights and counsel… If for nothing else, the opportunity to Vent and read about others has been almost therapeutic…
I was curious to know if all these Collection Agencies are Mom & Pop shops or Corporation owned, maybe even using dba’s. I just don’t understan with ALL the Education Loans in existence that “FED-LOAN” has the monopoly. Seems customer service is so POOR they are playing the averages by not caring because so many accounts keep coming to them regardless of the quality of their work. Seeing that they are an extention of the Government I am not surprised they are not called on the carpet before Congress… One can only hope!
I dont actually know about the collection firms. I think they’re bigger than with traditional consumer debt kind of shops.
FedLoan is one of a few federally approved debt servicer/collector and operate under a contract with the fed that is publically accessible on the DoE website. FedLoan higher ups, past and present, also hold fed government seats/advisor roles. All fed loan services were supposed to adhere to a borrowers bill of rights that the new fed education secretary shot down. Take a look a who she is and what/whose interests she is really protecting. In the end, state debt collection law is the best device for holding these servicers accountable because the fed sure is not doing it.
thank you…
Please tell me how to change to a different servicer! I continue to have nothing but issues with this company!
Consolidating or refinancing are the only two options, but those can be bad for your financial health if theyre not in your best interest Stacey!
I think I can top your story. My wife started teaching in 2010 at a public school. At this time she had around $85k in public loan debt. I consolidated her loans and thought I enrolled her into the program, but apparently she was not in the program. Fast forward to to May of 2016, I applied her for the Teacher Loan Forgiveness program where she would receive $5000 taken off of her total. After this was approved, I wanted to know how me corresponding payments of the 120 to qualify for PSLF that she had made. i was told that she was never enrolled in the program and because she received the $5,000 from the Teacher Program, 5 years of qualifying payments that could have gone to the PSFL program were erased, because you can’t be enrolled in both. I literally lost my mind because I could not find documentation of this anywhere that you can’t receive both. I would have never done the Teacher Loan Forgiveness had I known. I went round and round with people on the phone and got nowhere. Her loans were also transferred from Nelnet and when they were transferred, they lost qualifying payments that were made. The lady on the phone said she saw that they were made, but a recount would have to be done and it could take a year! Not a couple days, not a week, not a month, a year! I am absolutely disgusted with FedLoan and every time I hear student loan or debt I want to throw up.
You’re right the Teacher Loan Forgiveness program really is a disaster in how they set it up.
Travis
What are the odds of getting this reversed through the help of my local Senator or congressman?
Honestly it is nice to know I’m not alone with these issues. I am a RN and joined PSLF as soon as I learned it was a thing. I was very excited for the 120 on time payments and am already 6 years into my career, working for a non-profit the entire time! I submitted all of the paper work and FedLoan came back saying that I had 5 qualifying payments. I have argued with them over this for 2 years! I constantly get thrown back and forth. They act like they’ll help me and contact me after my file has been reviewed. I finally get sick of waiting, call back, and it’s like starting the process all over again. Finally a FedLoan employee told me that the reason my payments didn’t qualify was that if my payment was $249.99 I would pay $250, a habit when paying bills I’ve always had. That one cent, meant my payment didn’t qualify the next month when it was $249.98, if I didn’t round up that month, I would miss my “installment amount” by literally one cent. One employee told me that they could review my account and override those payments not counting and give me credit, but again the next time I called, they acted like they had no idea what I was talking about. At this rate, I’ve told myself just to work hard on paying them off, since PSLF isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Hoping others have a better experience than me.
That’s one of the worst stories I’ve heard, and I’ve heard a lot. That’s one reason I ask folks to never pay more than they’re asked to pay ever. Sorry to hear that hope you’re successful
I contacted my senator when my PSLF months went from 36 to 20 for no reason. Fedloan responded to my senator’s office. I complained to the Ombudsman program also. I sent in proof of all of my payments many times. I cannot believe it, but I was given TEPSLF on my law school debt. Found out yesterday. I owed over $100,000. Fedloan called me to tell me. My debt is gone on the website. I can’t believe it. It was a long difficult process but it happened. I think getting proof of payments and complaining to anyone who would listen made the difference.
I’ve heard of others having big success when they contact senator’s offices, particularly if they are smaller offices that have more time for constituent work. Congrats! That’s very exciting Gertrude.
So all of your debt was forgiven when you had only made 36 of 120 payments? I can’t hardly believe this.
I have had the SAME problems outlined in this article. I had submitted everything from day one and even hired a company to assist (waste of money but I thought they would help me avoid any common errors people were complaining of) and there were apparently issues with my paperwork that I wasn’t aware of. My payments went on a different payment plan that didn’t qualify, they would instantly put my loans into deferment when I started my masters without my approval or request. There was ALWAYS something wrong with my account to make sure my payments didn’t count. My four years of payments amounted to only 10 months. WASTE OF TIME AND THE BIGGEST SCAM. This is horrible that they screw people over like this who are in public service.
Sorry to hear Rachel. We definitely don’t do the paperwork for folks because we prefer to arm ppl w the info themselves so they know how to be their own advocates. Far more effective.
After waiting for a recount of payments for 8 months, I filed a complain with CFPB regarding the lost payments. Magically a couple weeks later in the mail, I received an updated count. My next goal is to get the Teacher Loan Forgiveness Program reversed, so I can get the 5 years of lost payments back on the PSLF program. I’m hoping my local senator or congressman can help. I feel this is a long shot, but I’m not giving up yet.
I am with FedLoan right now. I owe 13,000. I never got to finish school, because my son was diagnosed with leukemia. During that time , I let my student loans default . I honestly didn’t even care anymore. They wanted money from me I didn’t have. I didn’t even have internet to try to look it up. My son was sick, and I was young when I went to school, and i just didn’t care. I finally got to a place where I could work and for the first time in 5 years I was expecting income taxes. Of course they took every bit of it. I finally got everything in order with student loans and was on an income based repayment plan. My payments have been 0.00 . I work for a non profit organization now, and when I looked into student loan forgiveness it said I don’t have a direct loan. I honestly don’t even know what that means. I resubmitted my IBR -and got a letter saying they received the application and they were reviewing them. It moved my monthly payment to 141.00. It told me to keep making the regular monthly payments until they do my review. So do I pay 0.00 which was my regular monthly payments or the 141.? I am a single mother with 4 children one who is in and out of the hospital, so I can’t work full time hours. Is there anything I can do to get this off of me? The worst decision I ever made was going to school. I didn’t get a degree and haven’t been able to go back. Can anyone help me figure out what to do please. Thank you.
Sorry to hear Britney. Your best bet is to try to get a low payment under REPAYE and if you can’t, then you need to just try to get rid of this toxic debt and pay it off however you can.
I started the PSLF Program after I finished my Master’s Degree. My loans were currently with Great Lakes as they were transferred to Fed Loans. I was sent a bill for a payment through Great Lakes which I made not knowing that my loans were in the middle of a transfer to Fed Loans. My first payment with Fed Loans was due in May 18′. I made the payment and have always made the payment on time since the loan is set up in direct debit.
I submitted my ECF the first of this year and also my payment verification. I am only showing I have made 2 payments out of 10 payments that were made. This is very frustrating and I have been told different stories as to why this has happened. The first story was my account is in a paid ahead status. I have never made a payment ahead. I asked them to take me out of paid ahead status and yet it has been three weeks and I am still in paid ahead status. The third call I made I was told that my loans have been in a forbearance for the last year. I have never asked for my loans to be put in a forbearance. Now they are telling it will take 2 years to re figure my payments that were made in the past and that since my account is still in a forbearance and paid ahead status that when I go to turn in my ECF again in 2020 my payments for 2019 will take another two years to show credit towards the PSLF. I am out of my mind as to what to do. I get a different story each time I call to complain. Now they won’t even tell me what my new payment will be as it is going to go up a considerable amount. They told me they cannot give me a calculation until right when my new payment will be due. I would at least like to know what my hike in payments will be so I can plan ahead. I am worried I will get to my 120 payments years later and I am still going to be paying this people forever. I am thinking about contacting the BBB about this issue. It looks like they get on the ball and fix things. Two to four years to fix my payment count is unacceptable.
I’d contact your congressperson and Senators. That’s actually the most effective thing I’ve seen done on average in terms of making a complaint and having something happen from it.
Better Business Bureau is a bust. They do not handle these types of situations. I had seen where they were helping people in the past, but last post was in October 2018. I am starting out with the Ombudsman Group first. They are extremely nice and are willing to listen to your issue. I have started a case number. So we will see how this goes.
Is there a downside to waiting until you have made 120 qualifying payments with your regular servicer and then submitting an application for PSLF? I had never heard of FedLoan until yesterday; I am about a year and a half shy of making 120 payments (when I started, there was no certification form, and I never filled it out, since I did my research, spoke to a Federal Ombudsman, and knew that my employer and loans and payment all qualified me for PSLF). I was tempted to submit the certification form but have only heard horror stories about FedLoan…
You could try that but just know you might have to make payments for a while that will get refunded if they approve you (they will take a while to evaluate the application).
Thanks very much.
I would get on the ball and get started. I have read where people are still making payments for two years after hitting their 120 payments. Fed Loans is known to only credit a couple of payments every year.
You better make sure you were on income reduced payments for the last 120 payments. I thought I qualified but I didn’t because I was not on income reduced payments. Nope! I paid the full payment and did not qualify for the loan forgiveness! Fedloans is a big scam! I also called the federal ombudsman and they are not much help.
Sorry to hear Karla. If you were on the Standard 10 year monthly payment, that is supposed to count if made on Direct loans.
Look that is not true. You are giving inaccurate information. The only way you qualify for PSLF is if you are on an IDR repayment plan. Here is an exact excerpt from my last updated PSLF approval form from Fedloan. This states the plans that qualify. A standard plan does not qualify! The connection with Direct loans and PSLF is that direct loans automatically qualify for PSLF without consolidation, while other loans do not qualify unless you consolidate them. So for me, I have about $120K in Direct/grad loans that qualify and are currently on track ( with billing statements now showing how many qualifying payments I’ve made based on my last approved ECE) and I also have 1 undergraduate loan that was with Great Lakes when all my loans got transferred and that loan has no qualify payments because it is not applicable under the system and I didn’t consolidate it because it was small and would have started all my qualifying payments over.
Information on the type of plan to be on is very clear and something you can easily find at studentaid.gov or from googling. I can’t believe you are telling people the standard plan qualifies. Absolutely not!
Excerpt from Fedloan documentation on my approval document:
What is a qualifying payment? A qualifying payment for PSLF is a payment that is made:
● Each month, satisfying your monthly payment amount
● On time (received no later than 15 days after the payment due date)
● Under one of the eligible repayment plans for PSLF
● While you are employed full-time at a qualifying employer
What is a qualifying repayment plan? In order to receive forgiveness under the PSLF Program, you must make most of
your payments under one of the following plans:
● Revised Pay As You Earn (REPAYE)
● Pay As You Earn (PAYE)
● Income-Based Repayment (IBR)
● Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR)
From the ECF form https://studentaid.gov/sites/default/files/public-service-employment-certification-form.pdf
“Qualifying repayment plans include the Revised Pay As
You Earn (REPAYE) plan, the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) plan,
the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan, the Income Contingent Repayment (ICR) plan, the Standard Repayment
plan with a maximum 10-year repayment period, and any
other Direct Loan repayment plan if payments are at least
equal to the monthly payment amount that would be
required under the Standard Repayment plan with a 10-year
repayment period.”
Obviously if you use the standard 10 year plan for 10 years there won’t be anything left. But it’s a qualifying plan if you have hit a cap on your amount and / or have not consolidated.
I would submit now. I submitted my application March 2018 (after working 8 years towards PSLF) and I just got an email yesterday with updated numbers. The numbers were of course wrong (it showed only 50 payments when it should have been more like 80) so I called them and lady said they were still working on 4 years worth of payments. Its been a year!
Agreed. Best to get the ECF process started now bc manual reviews take a year or more
I’m done… or should be. I started working as a public servant in April of 2007 and was tickled pink upon hearing about the PLSF in 2008. In turn I stayed on the force and dutifully made my payments on time for years on end. About this time last year, as I was coming up on the magical number of 120, I applied with Fedloan and they are now my servicer. Since then I’ve gotten a bit of a run around but been patient with the understanding that bureaucracies tend to move slowly. Now, here’s where some of my own ignorance comes into play as I didn’t realize that applying for loan forgiveness is different than applying for Fedloan in the first place. Bad job by me. Well, I applied for that forgiveness last month only to be rejected today. The only qualifying payments they’re showing are the ones I’ve made to Fedloan proper; no other payments from the last ten years are counted. I called them to inquire about the discrepancy and was informed that they were still “under review” (They have been since July). I asked what the time frame for completion would be and the guy said he had no idea as those qualifying payments are tabulated by the Department of Education and not Fedloan. So, I called the DOE and inquired with to see if they could help me out or at least shed some light on the process. They could do nether and referred me back to Fedloan instead. So despite the fact I’m done… I’m not.
I hadn’t heard of the Ombudsman phone line until this evening and for that I’d like to say thank you. I comes as a bit of light after a frustrating afternoon on the phone. Needless to say, I’m not feeling optimistic at this point.
Wow that’s tough. Hope you get some help with that resource Fred.
Ombudsman told me they want calls from people like us that are experiencing horrible service from Fed Loan. 1-877-557-2575. Now since I have been fussing with fed loan, they are now not applying my payments correctly to my sub and unsub loans. This is a mess!
Can you explain how they’re distributing payments April?
When I consolidated, my loans were split into two loans. One that is a subsidized and another that is unsubsidized. Both loans are supposed to have a certain amount per month distributed to each loan. I pay one bundled payment and they distribute the funds to each loan. The funds have been distributed correctly every month and now this month when I started to make a fuss about the PSLF they are now applying different amounts than what the contract is stated.
Over a year ago our payment count went from 72 to 60 in one month AND has stayed there since. We have called multiple times and continue to be told that FedLoan switched computer systems and all accounts had to be reenteted by hand and that it would just take awhile. In the meantime we keep making payments and our payment count stays at 60. Scary.
Wow crazy to hear. Makes a lot of sense that FedLoan is run off some random excel sheet that somebody in the back updates on Wednesday afternoons.
Fed loans is the absolute worst! I was perfectly happy with my previous student loan provider direct loans which got changed. Then when I had applied for a public loan forgiveness Grant and small tiny writing which I apparently didn’t see it said that the loan will be sold off to fedloans. And this is done before they even tell you if you qualify! Then after it was transferred they tell me I don’t qualify because I did not have an income-based payment plan. I told them I wanted to go back to my previous loan provider because I was happy with them. In the meantime I had made a payment to my previous loan provider because I didn’t realize it was getting transferred and all of a sudden I get a letter saying I’m two months late at Fed loans and I didn’t even realize I had a payment due because I had no bills from them previously!!!! Also , before they sent the late notice…they had sent me a letter saying it was going to go back to cornerstone. Long story short and hundreds of hours on the phone with them over a years time and it still has not been sent back to corner stone. On top of that they tell me they don’t have the same type of loan corner stone had so they doubled my payment! This is like a switch and bait or something. I have proof they said it would go back to corner stone but now they’re saying they can’t do that. Long story short and hundreds of hours on the phone with them over a years time and it still has not been sent back to corner stone. On top of that they tell me they don’t have the same type of loan corner stone had so they doubled my payment! This is like a switch and bait or something. I have proof they said it would go back to corner stone but now they’re saying they can’t do that. I seriously think people need to do a class action lawsuit! Every time I call this company it’s hours on the phone. It’s absolutely ridiculous. I finally just started paying them but I’m looking into just getting a regular loan through a regular bank just so I do not have to deal with them. I should not have to pay double the price of my original loan because of their incompetence!!! I can’t believe how many people here are having problems with them. Seriously….maybe we need a class action lawsuit!?!?!?
If you’re at a qualifying job it’s worth waiting if you owe more than your income in debt. If not, it could very well make sense to get rid of the debt rapidly by refinancing, especially if it’s below say $30,000.
FedLoan just sent us a letter stating that since my wife received the TLF assistance of $5,000 that those 5 years of payments cannot be used towards the PSLF program, even though I was told I was already enrolled in the PSLF program with my other loan providers. There has to be a way to reverse this. I’m not sure if I should contact my local senator on congressmen or just give up. This has eaten up so much of my time over the years.
Thanks so much for providing the FedLoan ombudsman phone line. I called them, and it was a much better experience than calling FedLoan. They told me my case for my payments not being counted properly toward PSLF is still in review and they haven’t gotten to it yet – at this point they are still working on people who have reached the 120 payments (so yeah, this could take a while…). I think I am still going to file a complaint with the Attorney General because I still find this unacceptable. You would think that with the incredible amount of interest we area paying Dept of Ed could hire more personnel to address this properly — and so I hope a complaint will speed them along the way to preventing more lawsuits. Thankfully, I have time, but I am completely prepared to join or start a class action lawsuit if we are a few years out and they are still not done reviewing (I submitted my request a year ago!!).
Glad to help
I am having the hardest time and am where you are right now, only I do not agree with the results and have a great argument for it – it is simply incorrect. They owe me 6 years still, even though I did 3 back already after getting the Ombudsman case worker on it. But, they have 6 years to give me back still. April 2020 is my forgiveness date – it is simple – all payments are qualified and made on time – one servicer prior FedLoans, and they cannot get it right. OH – BEST PART – the TOTALLY CONTRADICT THEMSELVES in the letter you are sent. the years that didn’t count on the next page summary the table says they qualify, so……??? OH..AND – I have had the same employer all 10 years and all of a sudden a random date of May 18th, 2019, they cannot verify my employment; I didn’t event submit it until my re certification date in OCTOBER 2019 so how would I not be employed after May 18, 2019??? I mean, come on people?! They exhaust me so! UGH! this is immediately after a letter I received saying they will let me know if my ECF qualifies for PSLF and they are not sure it does (since when?!?!) They review my account after every ECF I submit. So…ummm…..now, nothing from May 2019 and on is counting toward PSLF all of a sudden??? what??? why??? Why would my employment end on May 18, 2019 yet signed that I am currently employed in October 2019.
If you go to the Attorney General, I would love to join in somehow. I am in Arkansas, but i will do whatever i can to receive justice – nothing more than what I have earned, and if that is what it takes, i will join in and do whatever i can to get this thing corrected and laid out. now is the perfect time since it is only 10 (11) years since it began so I don’t think they have many “rules” in place at forgiveness time. So, they need to make some. We should help set these rules and maybe the next round of folks will have a MUCH easier time, It is only counting, folks – just counting. UGGGHHH!
I work for a non- profit and applied for PSLF. I was informed I’d have to switch to an income driven plan, which would more than double, close to triple my current monthly payments and I would be paying off the loan myself in 10 years, there’d be nothing left to forgive. I had been paying on my student loans for 2 years and Fedloan said only 1 of the payments I made was a qualifying payment. They say it’s because the payments made where not under a plan which would give me the most benefit of loan forgiveness, when in reality I wasn’t on one of their plan which had me paying off the loan quicker so there wasn’t much of or any loan amount for them to forgive. I think this program is a scam to get people to payoff their debt sooner.
If you owe a small amount relative to your income it’s true that you’ll pay your loans off and get no forgiveness. In that case refinancing is the better choice https://www.studentloanplanner.com/refinance-student-loans/
Unfortunately I owe close to 74k, which is more than I make annually. When adding my husbands income our AGI is around 120k. Do one of the IBR plans take onto account monthly living expenses such as mortgage, utilities, food…
I just applied for PSLF. I was told that it would be best to submit the ECF at least once per year. Then after 120 payments apply for forgiveness. I have worked for a qualifying employer previously and was told to have that employer complete the ECF and submit it. I did that today. I am waiting for updates.
I plan to stay on top of things. I have read the horror stories posted here and I am taking notes on the course of action should I encounter any of those issues.
I may be in luck, because my loans were already with FedLoan Servicing. Best of luck to everyone!!
Sounds like you’re doing all the right things just keep doing what you’re doing Bettina
Also, I submit a new ECE within a month of switching employers to make sure that they qualify and I also won’t take a job with a new employer unless they should qualify. Also, I’v saved every ECE signed certification, the cooresponding response/approval from Fedloan, and the follow-up updates to how many qualifying payments I know have. I have this for every year since 2016. The online portal will only save these for a few months, so save them for yourself in secure/lasting place like google drive. I imagine they can’t then later refute payments if you have documentation from them stating they already approved it.
I’ve been with Fedloan for a very painful ~4 years paying on the PSLF plan for a loan that was originally ~$220,000. About 2 years ago now, when it was time to recertify my income, they delayed the processing of my application by repeatedly assuring me that it was complete when it was not. I continued not getting responses, calling them, and being assured that my application was complete. They later requested additional documentation and informed me that my application was past the due date. As a result, I had two months where my income based repayment could not be processed. They billed me for the full 10y amount which I could not afford. When I appealed, they told me that they would submit an override request and make the payments retroactively, but I would have to go into forbearance. After being coerced into this forbearance, my interest was capitalized, increasing my principle balance and the subsequent interest accumulated. Over the life of the loan, this would amount to ~$30k that taxpayers would have to cover. But I was told that once the override was approved, this would all be reversed. Months later, they contacted me saying that the override had been approved for one month, but not both. They later changed their story and said that both months had been denied. After numerous additional appeals, they agreed to override one month (still costing the taxpayers ~$25k). I made the retroactive payment as requested, but they failed to apply it to my PSLF or to reverse the increase in the loan amount. I called continuously over the next 8 MONTHS to see why the payment had not been applied. Each time they assured me that it would, but nothing happened. I finally called the ombudsman’s office, they gave me a direct line at Fedloan, and I got a dedicated agent at Fedloan to submit an appeal. Again, they only granted the override for one month, and they asked me to make a payment for the other month to be applied to my PSLF. After picking my jaw off the floor, I explained AGAIN that I had already made that payment and was asking for it to be applied to my PSLF. After another month, they finally applied the payment, but REFUSED TO REVERSE THE INTEREST CAPITALIZATION, so the taxpayer is back to paying another $30k for this fiasco. I once had a supervisor explain to me that I wouldn’t have to pay the increased loan amount because it would be forgiven. They knowingly push their PSLF borrowers into forbearance and expect them not to care because the loans will eventually be forgiven. This results in huge increases in the loan amounts which eventually have to be paid for by taxpayers. Any lawyers reading this, I’d be happy to enter into a class action suit and I have LOTS of proof. I’ve kept every piece of paperwork and started recording my calls with them over two years ago. Their negligence and incompetence would be comical if not for the millions of dollars they were costing their clients and taxpayers.
Yeah that’s a phone rep trying to get out of an unpleasant phone call
This is a common con that they pull, forcing people into forbearances when really the problem is their inefficient processing. “Oh, we can’t retroactively do that.” Actually, they can. But none of that matters if they just process things in a timely fashion.
I’m actually joining a class action that’s centered on forbearances and recapitalization, but I’m mostly in it because they screwed up my payment calculation and then ignored 11 months of written correspondence–having the nerve of telling me I’ve ignored *their* attempts to bring the account current.
That’d be interesting to hear the results of that suit
Obviously, FedLoan servicing seems to be intentionally making the borrowing process for PSLF harder. The only possible reason could be financial gain. Are there any statistics on who was able to recently qualify for forgiveness? What was the magic formula for the 1% who qualified? Since PHEAA is the parent to FedLoan (as a contractor), was anyone at PHEAA able to qualify for PSLF?
These are taxpayer dollars used to run this company. We, as taxpayers, would not be satisfied firefighters only putting out 1% of fires after 10 years of preparation.
I agree that I don’t think they deserve to keep the contract for PSLF, but the way the law was written most organizations would’ve done a terrible job at implementing it
I would say that w 60k of debt you could likely earn more money in the private sector. There’s no evidence PSLF is not going to happen for those who set up their loans the correct way, confusing and terrible as it is
There’s also very little evidence that it’s working for very many people, regardless of how their loans are set up.
That’s because the program was set up to only forgive Direct loans, which were mostly issued after 2010. Add 10 years to that, and 2020 is the first date you’ll start seeing loans forgiven in large size. Before that, it’s only people who lucked out and attended one of the few institutions that issued Direct loans. Before that it was FFEL loans which are not PSLF eligible
Although I am beyond furious with FedLoan Servicing and PSLF I feel rather lucky that I am coming to terms with this scam early on. I graduated Physician Assistant school and began working at a county hospital in the ER. Due to California Law, with few exceptions, Physicians are not employed by the hospital. Therefor, as a PA, I am employed by a privately run small physician group, not the county, even though all of my time is spent at a county hospital. I VERY CLEARLY explained this to FedLoan who informed that was “totally fine” and just to have the “hospital fill out your form”. 27 qualifying payments on IBR (although per FedLoan I’ve made 11…) I was told that it is not “totally fine” and that I am not eligible for PSLF. Knowing this information would have completely changed how I managed my student loan debt. I can tell you I wouldn’t have been on the IBR plan, accumulating interest at 6.4% the way I have been. I find it absurd that front line medical providers in county emergency rooms don’t qualify for PSLF because of who signs our paychecks. Never mind the fact that we deal and take care of one of the most vulnerable and underserved patient populations. I suppose it is time now to weigh all my repayment options… 2 years later.
Sorry to hear Alyssa. The House Democrats are trying to pass the Aim Higher Act which would qualify you for PSLF in that case. Right now it’s correct that you dont qualify. You might be able to get a qualifying job at a university hospital system. Those are the most common PSLF eligible places that I find in California.
do not let the media tell you that you cannot fight your loans. the media will push a message on you that it is not possible. you can do it. big brother is at work, constantly churning out articles and websites trying to get you to think you should consolidate, trying to get you to think you should sign more documents for them, trying to make you pay more interest over the long run. they will sugarcoat ANYTHING to make you eat it. we can stand up
Hi Travis,
Do you know if AltaMed in CA would qualify for PSLF. I’m currently a dentist in CA, graduated 2009 and I plan on getting full-time with AltaMed in the near future. I do plan on consolidating all my loans into a Direct Consolidated loan to qualify for PSLF. Right now I’m sitting on about $376K loan with Navient and about $6K with HPSL. My AGI is about $180K as a 1099. I’m incorporated so my corporation pays me $134K/year. I don’t know which repayment plan I should go with, REPAYE, PAYE, IBR, Extended Standard Repayment? Any advice would be helpful!!!
Not as a 1099 no. This is a case where you could benefit from the consult service clearly. You need to weigh filing separate w equal distribution of income under PAYE if you get married vs filing joint and doing REPAYE to benefit from the subsidies. Very complex case
Do you know if AltaMed qualifies for PSLF if I’m a W2? Thanks for your speedy response!!
I kept a low-paying job, in a dangerous prison, for 7 years with the promise of student loan forgiveness and the ability to begin my work before I completed licensure. While I was able to get a lot of amazing experience prior to completing licensure, I was not able to get my student loans forgiven. I am currently in the process of fighting with FedLoan regarding the number of qualifying payments I have completed. I was originally managed by SallyMae, then Navient, then FedLoan Servicing. I have been paying on a qualifying payment plan, while working at a non-profit for seven years. They claim I have made 1, yes you heard that right, 1 qualifying payment. Additionally, it took them 11.5 months to give me that answer. That’s how long it took them to apparently track down my payment history to determine how many payments I had made, and they only found 1, which is COMPLETELY inaccurate. I will be trying the phone number you gave. Is there a place where we can challenge this through the actual education department, or does it have to be through the lender who has a vested interest in your loans not being forgiven?
I’ve heard contacting Congresspeople’s constituent services offices is currently the most effective way to get your situation fixed.
Holly, I have a similar experience. I also work in a Prison with the idea that I will have my loans forgiven. I have waited a year to hear back that I only had 8 qualifying payments after 4 years, and I asked to dispute several. I have now waited months to hear back again. Good luck!
Diana
Contact your congressman’s constituent services office!
I’ve only been with FedLoans since March, Since then I have had these issues:
– Placed in a payment plan that is not the lowest and had to transfer, this apparently take 4 months during which I cannot make a qualifying payment (therefore robbing me of 4 months of job freedom in the future) with an unclear/ conflicting explanation of the process and no way to track the progress of this myself.
– My audit of qualifying payments which I received in March, shows only 14 payments, I got an itemized record from NelNet before I left and count 47, I have been waiting 4 months for a recount with no idea how long this will take
– Have had my direct pay payments not accepted 3 times with the claim from FedLoans that there is an incorrect routing number and account number. I have checked myself, re-entered, and called my bank about (they say that FedLoans never electronically requested payment any of the times). There is NOTHING wrong with my account/routing number, I even had it work for one month! Now I have missed 2 qualifying payments due to this issue and nothing is being done about it. They deny that it is there problem and told me that I can call in every month and make a payment using my debit (NO NOT DOING THAT) If I do that I will forget and also miss out on the break in my interest rate. I HATE FEDLOANS and I have only been with them for 6 months! HALP!
Hi Sarah,
I’m sorry to hear that FedLoan is causing so many problems. It might be a good idea to look into contacting your congressional caseworker for help dealing with this. You can see how to do this here: https://www.studentloanplanner.com/fix-pslf-qualifying-payments/
FedLoan has been nothing but a headache since my loans were transferred to them from Nelnet. After making about three years of payments, I found out I was eligible for the PSLF (I am a social worker) and applied. When my loans were transferred, they started an “investigation” because they claimed I made zero qualifying payments during the 3 years of making income based payments monthly. I called to inquire and they opened an “investigation” which has been going on for over one year. At this point, I have made over 4 years of qualifying payments and none have been counted toward PSLF. They made an allegation that I was in delinquency status with Nelnet before the transfer and when I called Nelnet in a panic, they assured me this was not true and sent FedLoan the proof. Still waiting on any sort of reply from them. When I call, no one seems to know anything and I get different information depending on who I speak to. I never had issues such as these with Nelnet.
I have made numerous payments to Fedloan servicing via their online portal and their automated phone system that have never been posted to my account. I’ve called and made extra payments, yet they still put my account as delinquent and reported it as a delinquency on my credit report (dropping it by 100 points). Finally, I switched over to automated payments, and now one of those payments has not posted to my account. I do not understand how they have so many problems posting payments made every month when I consistently see the payments coming out of my account. Now I’m going through the process of putting together all of my statements and necessary documentation to file complaints in order to recover my credit score and make sure all of my payments made are posted to my account.
I was on an auto-payment plan to pay off the interest on my loans. The real payments set in and FedLoan did basically nothing to contact me to let me know. Nothing was ever sent by mail, despite my home address being on file with them. No phone calls. Just a couple of emails sent to an email address that was no longer in use, made when I was a junior in high school. My credit is ruined now because of their irresponsible communication with borrowers.
“FedLoan is telling me I have to make a huge payment on the Standard 10 year plan before they’ll let me re-certify for IBR. Can’t I pay $5 on a one month forbearance?”
“Yeah knowing about the $5 fee is a huge deal but so few people know about it when you want to change plans that you have that option.”
I just transferred my loans to FedLoan for PSLF. What is this $5 fee for going on forbearance while they re-certify my IDR?
That’s if you’re trying to change repayment plans from PAYE to REPAYE, REPAYE to PAYE, IBR to REPAYE, etc. It doesn’t apply if you’re just transferring over loans there for PSLF purposes.
The $5 forb is an “exit payment” Is specific to switch from IBR to a different plan. They may offer forbearance if you can’t make a monthly payment while switching from PAYE to REPAYE for example, but it doesn’t cost the $5 like it does to switch off of IBR
You can pay $5 on studentaid.gov to switch at least that’s what I’ve seen. Have you seen something different?
I’ve had two different issues with FedLoans. One was them advising me to consolidate loans that already had payments therefore losing those payments. The other was them telling me they would withdraw a due payment on a month I lost employment, which they did not do and ended up going on my credit as over 180 day late payment. They would not approve a credit dispute, so it has remained on my credit. FedLoans is AWFUL.
I have sent them papers ever since I graduated from the Masters program at Concordia. (December 2013)- It is the fall of 2019 and still have not received any loan forgiveness amount. They asked for five years in Title One schools and I have given them 5 years. TEACH grant was supposed to be 4 years. It took almost 5 to get noticed on that. Meanwhile I am sending in the OMB No. 1845-0059 again as they told my Representative, Lloyd Doggett’s office, that for one thing I did not fill out paper work correctly. And two, that they figure I will be eligible for loan forgiveness by 2020. What on earth is going on? If someone makes an error on the paperwork, send it back and let them fix it. And why is adding and subtracting hard? I gave them 5 years now. One at Edgewood ISD (famous for its landmark case) and 4 at SWISD which is also an entire Title One district like Edgewood. So, why am I waiting?
I’m glad you’re working with your Rep’s office that’s exactly what we recommend. Just keep at it sounds like you’re close
FedLoan would purposely process my PSLF late to force me into a forebearance. I would purposely submit my paperwork 60 days ahead of the due date so they could not claim they did not get it, and they would simply say “We did not get around to processing your forms so you have to take a forebearance.” This is their trick to kick people out of the PSLF program because it would offset them of 120 consecutive payments which is the criteria towards loan forgiveness. I have never heard of a company taking more than 60 days to process a form I have been sending them every year for years, hence its a routine process. I have yet to get a response from FedLoan regarding this practice. My years of working towards the PSLF was raped by a criminal based service provider.
Are you submitting everything online? That’s what we recommend to avoid this kind of thing.
Luckily you don’t have to make 120 consecutive payments, just 120 payments total. However they are intentionally slow with paperwork and do force people into forbearance. What this does do is result in interest capitalization which increases the loan amount dramatically. Borrowers aren’t supposed to care because they will still make the same payments, just have a larger amount forgiven. This results in millions of extra dollars of forgiveness footed by taxpayers. Pure government waste.
IDK. My experience with FLS was great. I had NelNet, and Aspire and Mohela. I graduated with a BS in 2007 (24k in student loan debt) and a MS in 2015 (with another 54k student load debt). I was cold-called by a FLS rep in 2019 still having 83k in student loan debt. I know I closed a number of smaller NelNet loans but my total debt was crazy. My BS was in Mathematics and I couldn’t figure out how they came to that total. I had great repayment history even though my balances were not going down. FLS submitted paperwork for me which I made 3 monthly payments to them totaling about $1000. Everything else was completely forgiven. Everything.
I have no idea what the PSLF points are or how many I had at the time or how to check. Post graduation, I have never worked directly for the government even though I have contracted with DoD my entire career. So I wouldn’t think I had any PSLF points.
That’s a bit of an odd story haven’t heard that before but sounds pretty nice!
That’s odd because I currently am a government contractor(DoD) and they said I won’t be eligible for any form of forgiveness unless I start to work directly for the government. You never found out how or why you got forgiven?
Correct you need to be directly employed
I was feeling the same way that you were feeling about fed loan. Reps suck, every once in a while you talk with someone who gives you some hope, but overall a lot of banging my head on the wall. With that being said I feel your frustration. Hang in there though. My loans are in the process of forgiveness. One is completely gone and the shows paid in full. With a refund on the way. The other loan is being processed for forgiveness. It shows 122 payments made towards IBR. Yes Fed Loan is a joke, but it is legit. Remember that there are a lot of people applying for this. What was explained to me is a computer program calculates your payment balance, but doesn’t catch every payment you made. When you get close to forgiveness someone has to personally get in contact with your previous servicers to make sure full payments were made.
Hang in there. The debt will be forgiven. Just stay on them
Great advice Matt! Couldn’t have said it better myself.
I just recently consolidated my loans FROM nelnet TO fedloan because the representative that helped me praised fedloan and their programs and how consolidation best suited me. I owe 30k and I make 66k fresh out of college. I gave them my 1040 from last year to try to get low payments for a year but the following year I’m expecting it to go up ALOT. I’ve been reading up on fedloan because nelnet discouraged my girlfriend from leaving them and consolidating. I figured that at this point, with only owing 30k it was between choosing the lesser of 2 evils. But after researching I’m worrying that I chose the GREATER of 2 evils with fedloan. I guess my roundabout question is; should I leave fedloan before I make a payment to them? More context: I owe 30k with a 4.38% rate.
I’d suggest applying through our cash back refinancing links: https://www.studentloanplanner.com/refinance-student-loans/
You may or may not get below 4.38, my guess is youd only get lower than that with a variable rate so if that happens just keep it w them and pay it off
This company is a nightmare! I was told I was on the PSLF for the past 3 years and recently spoke with a customer service associate that told me I was actually never put on it. They lost all my paperwork and say they have no proof of anything. Multiple times I filed the forms for the income based certification and they lost that paperwork as well.
Now I’m running into the issue of not being approved because my employer hires in at percentages. I was hired for 50%. Which means I’m guaranteed at least 50% out of 40 hrs a week. The past 3.5 years I’ve been working there, I’ve worked 40 hrs a week. So they are now declining me saying I’m only part time. Which in their description it says you either need to be full time OR work at least 30 hours a week, whichever is greater. My employer verified I work more than 30 hrs a week and they are still declining me. So now I lost out on over 3 years and multiple headaches along the way. Was looking into an attorney to look at the wording and qualifications. Please let me know any advice you may have. Thanks so much!
The employer has to consider that full time and they have to sign to that effect. You will have better luck contacting constituent services office of your local congressperson. They’ll intervene with FedLoan if you ask them
So my 20th payment was made last month. I would qualify for TPSLF (the first 10 payments were made on a non-income based plan, so I know I’ll get rejected for regular PSLF). Last week I received notice from my servicer (not FedLoan) that my loan was being placed in an administrative forbearance until September and that each month would count towards PSLF as if I were making on time payments.
Does anyone know if the fact that my loan is in an administrative forbearance would prevent me from being approved for TPSLF?
That should read 120th payment!
It wont
Thanks Travis. I am nervous about applying and having my info transferred to FedLoan, mainly because my consolidated Direct Loan was serviced by a now defunct servicer (Direct Loan Servicing – ACS) between March 2010 and September 2013. My current servicer claims that they do not have my payment information from that period of time, which makes me think that *no one* has that payment information, and FedLoan won’t be able to see that I made payments during that time. No one, including the chat reps for the federal government, seem to know who I should contact.
Both my husband and I work for the Army now for 12 years. My husband was active duty briefly prior to honorable discharge (medical). We transferred all my loans over from Direct Loans and he was told there was 112 months of credit towards PSLF but still needed to qualify other payments. Which I figure would’ve met the last 12 months needed or most of it. I was told I had 96 months of credit towards PSLF. Now this year I go back in. We didn’t choose a pay plan because it was too much for us to do so “none of our payments” from the past year is getting credit towards the PSLF. (We had two kids in college when we started this one already graduated.) Now this year we submitted our PSLF forms got qualified and now we both have 120 payments to make to qualify for credit. I’m sorry but something really needs to be done about this organization. If this is how they are allowed to do business.
Travis,
My wife has FFELP loans serviced by FedLoans as well as Navient. I understand that these are not PSLF eligible. If we refinance these loans with a private company, will we lose the months we already made on the PSLF eligible loans serviced by FedLoans?
I was thinking it shouldn’t, since to my understanding FFELP loans are private loans. But I have not been able to find a definitive answer. Thanks!
FFELP loans that aren’t federal loans are “commercially held” – if you refinance with a private company, you won’t be eligible for PSLF at all. You might find this article helpful: https://www.studentloanplanner.com/ffel-loan-forgiveness-repayment-get-rid-loans/