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A former MOHELA call center worker shares their experience of working for the beleaguered student loans company - where staff are TOLD to keep customers on hold
A former call center agent at MOHELA has claimed there was an 'atrocious' work environment at the student loan servicer, as it comes under fire for its handling of millions of borrower accounts.
Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com, the former employee said call center workers were given 'abysmal' training before they were tasked to speak to concerned borrowers about their debts.
Company policy stated that call center workers had to keep customers on hold for at least 15 minutes before they could transfer them to a supervisor, the anonymous worker alleged.
Many of those who called in were worried about the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program which MOHELA was the sole servicer of until earlier this month, they added.
The Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority - otherwise known as MOHELA - is facing mounting pressure from lawmakers and borrowers about how it has handled the program and student loan repayments resuming after the Covid-19 pandemic pause.
Borrowers have complained about being left waiting on hold for three hours, or having outstanding debts appear on their account which they believed they had already paid off.
A former call center agent at MOHELA has claimed there was an 'atrocious' work environment at the student loan servicer
The anonymous worker, who is in their late twenties and lives in Kentucky, said they were subcontracted out to work for the MOHELA call center from an agency.
They worked as a level one customer service representative from October 2023 until February this year.
'Representatives are given very minimal and spotty training and expected to be able to effectively work under high pressure,' they told DailyMail.com. 'There was no individual training.'
The training involved practicing 'mock calls' in a group, they said, but some trainees did not even turn on their microphone on a group video call to take part.
When they started picking up the phone to real borrowers, call center staff were given a digital file of reference material, but received very little support from more experienced departments, the former employee claimed.
Elizabeth Warren slammed CEO Scott Giles (pictured) after he said he would not attend a Senate hearing about the firm's performance
'The document does get updated fairly often but a lot of the updates are just irrelevant or inaccurate or don't come to us in time,' they said.
Often the queries from borrowers were complex but call center agents were instructed to handle everything in one call without transferring escalating the call if possible.
'Even reading through the reference material that I had, I could not find an answer for most of these people,' they said.
'It was company policy that if you have to reach out to the customer advocacy team you had to wait at least 15 minutes because they are so overworked.
'People will call into MOHELA thinking we have some special version of their student loan agreement that only we can see but we don't. The information we have is the same information that the borrowers have.'
In order to deal with any issue other than a borrower paying a loan or changing a repayment plan, call center agents have to transfer the borrower to the customer advocacy team, the ex-worker said.
But it is company policy to wait at least 15 minutes before doing this, they alleged, as the team is so overworked.
'It was frustrating because you're instructed to follow the script very strictly.
'You're not allowed to say "I'm looking for this" or "I can't find anything". You have to sound confident. You have to sound like you know what you're doing.'
Submitting a request ticket for an investigation into a case can take weeks, they claimed.
'There's no way to get the answers for these people quickly.'
In March Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren invited Scott Giles, the chief executive of servicer MOHELA, to testify before the Senate banking committee
Until May 1, MOHELA was the sole servicer of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program - which has been a major feature of the Biden administration's debt forgiveness initiative.
The PSLF program, which was created in 2007, writes off the remaining balance of borrowers who work in public sector or government jobs after 10 years of eligible repayment.
MOHELA became the sole servicer of the program in July 2022, but it is now in the process of being transitioned to instead be managed in-house by Federal Student Aid.
The servicer has faced widespread criticism for its handling of the program - and for the managing of student loan repayments restarting in October last year.
In March, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren called on chief executive Scott Giles to testify before Congress amid reports of 'widespread servicing failures' impacting 'at least 40 percent of its borrowers.'
DailyMail.com asked its readers to get in touch if they had been left frustrated by the service they had received from the servicer - and received scores of responses from graduates concerned about their loans.
Deborah Soto said how she had thought she had paid off her daughter's student loans in full just before interest began accruing again in September 2023.
But when she logged back in to her account in December of last year, she was shocked to find that another loan totaling $16,947 had suddenly appeared in her account.
And, unknown to her, it had been building interest every day for months.
Right away Deborah tried to get in contact with MOHELA but faced 160-minute wait times and endless prompts to try to get through to a person, she said.
MOHELA opened an investigation into her case in December, but she has yet to receive any explanation from the company.
Tom Buchanan, 71, claims he would regularly spend 'three or four hours' on the phone trying to get through to MOHELA to get clarity on new repayment figures he had been given.
Deborah thought she had paid off all the student loans for her daughter Elena (right) before the end of the pandemic-era interest pause in September last year
Pamela and Tom Buchanan saw their monthly repayments double, but have been unable to get an explanation from MOHELA
The turnover rate for working at MOHELA was high, the ex-worker told DailyMail.com, and call center agents were often facing frustrated and distressed borrowers.
'I saw two trainers quit in the short time I was there,' they claimed, and they were shouted and sworn at by customers.
'We had a meeting the day before we started making calls and we had to learn how to transfer somebody to the death threat line.
'My trainer said in the 10 years he's worked there he's only taken three. But a couple of people in my training class their first day got somebody either threatening to hurt them or threatening to hurt themselves.
'We're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars for some of these people, and the majority of that being in interest that they don't know where it came from. And we can't tell them because we don't know either.'
There are people at the company who want to do their jobs well, they added, but the system is 'very messy.'
'Seeing what I saw from the inside, I would have to say there's a lot of incompetency higher up the chain at MOHELA and also at the Department of Education.
'It's an infrastructure issue. There is not enough knowledge going around. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.'
A MOHELA spokesperson said in a statement: 'Average customer service hold times at MOHELA today are between 1 minute and 5 minutes.
'As a federal contractor, MOHELA was charged last fall by the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) with returning 6 million federal student loan borrowers to repayment after an unprecedented pause while also operating under FSA’s directive to reduce expenses and hours of operations, which caused higher-than-normal hold times for a period of time.'
Call center representatives go through an extensive training process and receive support to respond to customer inquiries, the company said.
'Representatives are provided with routine (as often as daily) updates on any relevant changes mandated by FSA to the servicing environment that affects borrowers.
'Claims of a company policy that require a representative to put someone on hold for 15 minutes are false,' the spokesperson added.