by Ashley
I have a long history of issues related to my student loans, even across several student loan service providers. I think my loans have been sold 3 times over the course of time that I’ve been blogging here. Most recently, my loans were sold to Mohela at the same time I applied for public service loan forgiveness. I don’t actually qualify for forgiveness yet (I still have approx. 2 years to go), but I just applied to the program during the pandemic timeframe.
Payment Pause and Resumption
As folks with student loans are aware, student loan payments were paused for about 3 years during the pandemic. After all this time, interest started accruing again in September, and payments resumed in October. But….did they, though?
You may have seen one of the numerous articles written in October about Mohela (my current loan provider). Apparently, Mohela made a big mishap and did not actually get their borrowers into repayment status, causing over 800,000 borrowers to be considered delinquent.
Alternatively, there were also borrowers whose debt had already been forgiven who received past-due bills from Mohela. Sounds like their process to resume payments was a big old mess.
I counted my lucky stars that I was not among one of the botched repayment jobs. My payments resumed as normal and everything was fine for the months of September and October.
Loan Forbearance that was Never Requested
That changed quickly. In November, I received an email that the status of one of my loans had changed. If you recall, to qualify for PSLF, I had to consolidate two of my student loans into one. That consolidated loan, all a sudden, was showing up as being in forbearance. The problem is, I never requested this! And, in fact, I couldn’t figure out a way to get it OUT of forbearance.
I started googling, “Why is my student loan in forbearance when I never requested it?” Guess what, friends. I’m not alone. Looks like LOTS of student loan borrowers had a similar problem with Mohela in November.
From reading articles written about this random forbearance, it sounds like Mohela has done this automatically to cover their own butts while they figure out some issues in their loan processing system. That said, they don’t relay this information to borrowers. So others, like myself, are left scratching our heads as to why our loans are suddenly in forbearance when it was never requested.
In my case, my assumption is that this occurred due to my loan consolidation throwing things off. I consolidated my loans and made a single payment toward the new consolidated loan, and then suddenly received a forbearance processing message the same month. In fact, my payment was submitted on 11/9, and the forbearance suddenly appeared on 11/28.
Interest Paused and Future Communications
The one bright side of this conundrum is that, while Mohela struggles to figure their “ish” out, they’ve paused the capitalizing of any interest. In the letter I personally received, it says this is the case until the end of February.
Even so, I prefer not to be in forbearance. And it does not appear that I can change my loans to be in normal repayment right now, even if I try!
When I log into the Mohela website, I receive a big alert at the top of the screen that it has high call volume and to expect long wait times. Sigh. Hard to get much done with them when you have to set aside a 2-hour chunk of time for a simple phone call.
Watch and Wait
Rather than try to chase down this issue at what is one of the busiest times of year personally (kid’s holiday parties, performances, and weekend activities) and professionally (semester wrapping up, final exams, excessive grading!)… I’ve decided to just follow a “wait and watch” approach.
I’ll continue monitoring any happenings with my loans through the Mohela site. But I’m not planning to sit for 2 hours for a phone call to the loan servicer anytime this week (or month for that matter!).
My hope is that they straighten up their stuff and my payments will automatically resume as I’ve been promised. I can revisit this sometime in the New Year to ensure that’s happened.
Does anyone else have Mohela as their student loan service provider? Any similar loan servicing issues?
Hi, I’m Ashley! Arizonan on paper, Texan at heart. Lover of running, blogging, and all things cheeeeese. Freshly 40, married mother of two, working in academia. Trying to finally (finally!) pay off that ridiculous 6-digit student loan debt!
I’m grateful everyday that I managed to finish my Bachelors without loans. But now that I’m looking to do my Masters, I’m nervous because at this point I’m almost sure I will have to take loans out. I’ve heard so many horror stories from friends, as well as older people in my life who still have loans in their 50s
Good luck! If you are able, try to find a program where they cover your tuition in exchange for you completing work (e.g., as a TA or RA). I know that’s not an option with all programs and it depends on the field, etc., but it’s something to look for.
Thank you for sharing this! I had the exact same thing happen EXCEPT (!) MOHELA continued to charge me 6.5% interest! I had to go through my State Senator’s office and finally got a) interest backed down to 0% while I’m in this unrequested forbearance, and b) my October payment was backed out and reapplied as principal only. A bonus c) is that my PSLF-qualified payments have finally moved from 54 to 85. However, there are still 14 months (July 2019-August 2020) that show “employment not certified” although I have submitted all required paperwork. Not sure why they skipped over those months and my last email on 11/13/23 has not been replied to. At present, I have less than 24 months to go (September 2025 will be payment #120). The end is in sight!
For now, I’m just happy with the progress that’s been made and am looking forward to seeing what other adjustments might be made (part of my consolidated loans are from 1996!). I’ll be just shy of 52 when this time comes, and have made student loan payments since 1996 (consolidating from the Associate’s with the Bachelor’s and then those new loans into a Master’s). MOHELA definitely has a mess going on and it’s nice to see Congressional leaders holding them accountable. What I really hope, though, is that Congress and the Department of Education take a good hard look at how the student loan program is run. Serious reform needs to happen (which I have ideas about but wasn’t chosen for the review board). Keep the light shining on this!
100%! I want to do the applause emoji for your remarks in paragraph 2. I’m so sorry you’ve had similar (and worse!) struggles with your student loans! The whole industry is just a dumpster fire of a disaster!
Oh, also, I was told by the MOHELA rep that these months of forbearance WILL count toward my PSLF. I have made two payments which will go toward principal only, but that’s really just because I want a nice round number to start back up with. My forbearance is only until 12/28/23, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets pushed out again with the additional review. I also did not get a letter from them until I called and asked why my loan was in forbearance. Seems they “forgot” to do that part….
I was also officially switched to the SAVE plan, which reduced my payment by about $100/month. At least it is still covering the monthly accrued interest (again, 6.5%).
So much joy with the process!
What a pain! I’d recommend keeping an eye on https://www.reddit.com/r/StudentLoans/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/PSLF/. I found the reddit subs to be a huge resource in figuring out some of my student loan issues during the pandemic pause.
Thanks for the recommendations!
It’s not that your loans ‘got sold’ again. Mohela is THE provider that services the loan forgiveness accounts. Your loans were moved there (along with everyone else who is in that PSLF program) to make it easier to track. I’d give them some grace. Also, everyone who logs in sees those alerts.
All of a sudden is an idiom that is a more poetic way of saying “suddenly.” A common mistake to make, especially for English learners, is to write all the sudden or all of the sudden. On a sudden is a historic but outmoded variant. Currently, all of a sudden is the only accepted usage.
Thanks for the clarification! I often struggle with overly-wordy writing. And using passive voice too frequently! They’re both things I’m working on (said in passive voice, then almost corrected, then left as-is) 🙂