Exclusive: Issues Continue for Borrowers as MOHELA Rejects Employment Certifications
(VultusNews) – Those seeking federal student loan forgiveness are running into more issues with MOHELA, the sole servicer of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, when trying to get their employment certified.
MOHELA has been subject to numerous complaints, and lawsuits, about how the company handles the PSLF program; including not responding to forgiveness applications, incorrect bills, long wait times, dropped calls, and now erroneously rejecting employment certifications for not being signed by an “authorized person” or not including certain contact information for the person signing the form. The U.S. Department of Education announced in October they withheld $7.2m from MOHELA for failing to send timely billings statements, leading to hundreds of thousand delinquencies. To be fair, MOHELA is not the only servicer that had payments withheld.
Sources say they have submitted employment certification forms, which are needed to certify that the borrower works for eligible employers (mostly non-profits and government agencies) when payments are made. Borrowers need to make 120 payments while employed with eligible organizations to have their loans forgiven.
For one source, their certification form was rejected because “[t]he authorized official listed on your PSLF Form does not appear eligible to certify your employment” per the rejection notice. The person who signed the form worked for a third-party HR vendor and put their title as “Administrative Assistant.” According to the rejection notice “An authorized official is an official of a public service organization (including AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps) who has access to your employment or service records and is authorized by the public service organization to certify the employment status of the organization’s employees or former employees….” Other sources state they are having the same issue, including having the form rejected even if the form was signed by the same person in the past.
“I just don’t understand. What am I supposed to do? The HR for [employer] is an outside company and my then-supervisor said they are not able to sign the form since they no longer have access to my file. I’ve tried calling [MOHELA] but gave up after three-ish hours on hold. I worked for [company] for a little over a year, that’s not nothing.” The source resubmitted a new certification but got the same outcome.
Other sources say they had their certification forms rejected for not providing the signor’s name, title, phone number, missing a signature or the e-signature “is not an acceptable format.” VultusNews reviewed the submitted forms and confirmed that they all had the required information and all had a handwritten signature. Some of the sources re-submitted the forms, some with success. One source said they got fed up and stopped trying to get the forms accepted, but when he checked his account a few months later, it appears the forms were accepted because the totals were updated. “I didn’t get any kind of communication about it, nothing. I’m so confused.”
One source submitted forms under the Limited PSLF Wavier (which required all forms be submitted by October 31, 2022), which allowed borrowers to have past payments added to their totals if they worked for an eligible employer at the time. “If I can’t get those forms approved, I will lose three years. I can’t buy a house until my loans are forgiven. I am not even sure I can appeal it this late, every time I try to call to get help, I get put on hold for three, four hours. I don’t have the time to just sit on hold for that long.”
MOHELA did not respond to a request for comment.