Looking up the dept of Ed info on pslf, it states that you must be working at a qualifying place of employment at the time you make the payment. When I called Fedloan servicing, they stated that you must be working at a qualifying place of employment on your payment due date. Which is correct? For example, let’s say you have a payment due October 4th. The bill is generated mid September, and you pay it on September 30th while working at a qualifying place of employment. On October 3rd, you get laid off, and are unemployed when October 4th rolls around. Does the payment count? Fed loan servicing says no, but the dept if Ed website seems to imply that it would….is there any legal documentation regarding this?

Ok the “Dear borrower” letter clearly says

What does it mean that my 120 Direct Loan payments must be made while I am working full-time at certain public service organizations?
For a payment to count as one of the required 120 qualifying payments, you must be a full-time employee at a qualifying public service organization on the date that your federal loan servicer receives your monthly Direct Loan payment.

This completely contradicts what they told me. Am I taking crazy pills?!?

bump…has anyone else encountered this? I doubt I’m the only one…. My request to have the payments count is being reviewed.

Ombudsman time….my written question to Fedloan servicing was never answered, so I called. One supervisor told me it should count, and that I should see it reflected within a week. Of course, nothing happened, so I called the same supervisor who seemed to have forgotten the whole thing, and said she didn’t know why she said that, and that she’d have to look into it…I even had one rep tell me very adamantly that it won’t count, and that it didn’t matter what the Dept of Ed website says….excuse me? I thought the Department of Ed was over you guys… smh. Hopefully the Ombudsman can straighten this out…Something that should take 5 minutes takes 5 months….typical bureaucracy…

I would think the Department of Education controls. The PSLF certification form says that “Qualifying payments are separate, on-time, full monthly payments made on a Direct Loan after October 1, 2007 under a qualifying repayment plan.” Sounds to me like once you make the payment, it qualifies. This might be why the letter you received said it’s the date your federal loan servicer receives your monthly Direct Loan payment.

-Biglaw Investor
http://www.biglawinvestor.com/

The ombudsman came through and Fedloan servicing agreed to count my payments. I wonder if any change was made internally to allow the change so others won’t face the same issue, but I tend to doubt it. So in the end, you must be employed on the date you made the payment. As long as this date it isn’t more than 15 days after the due date, and not earlier than when the bill is actually generated, it will count. Every instance of language that I found related to this states that you must be working at a qualifying organization on the date you made the payment. There is no language stating that you must not only be employed on the date you made the payment, but also employed on the exact due date of your bill. I can see if your payments were $0, the only logical date of payment would be the date the payment was due, but to those with payments greater than $0, it should go by the payment date, not the due date.

Thanks for updating this thread with the news and really pleased to see the payment counts!