I have worked as a public defender for 6.5 years and have made every monthly payment on my federal consolidation loan (totaling more than $32k) since that time (dating back to about November 2007).  When I consolidated my federal law school loans, I was really just presented with the one option through my lender—Citibank—at the time.  I did not know until last week that the consolidation had to be through Direct.  I know, shame on me for not confirming somehow that I was going about everything the right way but I had no idea that the loans had to be handled in a specific way.  Asking around, no one I have talked to knew this either and some of them have Direct consolidation loans by chance it seems and others don’t.  My question is whether there is anything at all that can be done to make all of these 78 payments count?  This is really crushing for me because I have really had to limp by on a poor salary for all these years in order to make sure these payments (not to mention my private loans) got made.

Exact same problem.  I have 96 payments under my belt but did not know I had to consolidate into a Direct Loan.  It seems like a paperwork issue that should not cost us so much.  There has to be a way to get our payments counted.