I apologize if this has been asked already, but I couldn’t find anything about it on the forums. To summarize our situation, my husband made about 2 years of payments that weren’t counted when Sallie Mae and the Dept of Ed split up his loans in 2010, and was given misinformation about qualifying payments without consolidation. We finally realized this in 2012 and it took almost a year for the various loan companies to consolidate everything under one Direct loan. Then, it needed to be transferred to Fedloan Servicing and it took another 9 months for them to start billing us. So, we have been making payments since 2010, but only had them start counting towards PSLF in 2014. I was told by Fedloan Servicing to submit a request to the Dept of Education to get past payments that haven’t qualified through Fedloan Servicing to be counted. I’m not sure whether this will even be considered because they weren’t all made under direct loans, but all the transitions in the banking industry made his payment situation a mess, and then when we verified with people from both Sallie Mae and Dept of Ed on the phone we were told that they would count. No one ever suggested consolidating. Unfortunately, I don’t have those conversations taped.

I was wondering whether there are any particular formatted letters or phrasing that has been successful in the appeal process? Has anyone on this site appealed and had the Dept of Ed count their payments? I’ve read the threads about all the payments that have not counted due to misinformation from loan companies, and I have yet to hear whether someone disputed this and was successful. I read the mixed reviews of the Ombudsman.

I know that part of the issue is that everyone has a slightly different situation, but if there are particular things that would be helpful to include in an appeal, I would love to hear them. I feel like the spirit of this law is getting completely lost in all the disorganization and misinformation! I’m appalled to hear how many people are in this boat and have lost thousands of dollars in disqualified payments.

Thanks!