A former call center agent at MOHELA has claimed there was a “horrendous” work environment at the student loan servicer as it comes under fire for processing millions of borrower accounts.
Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com, the former employee said call center workers were given ‘terrible’ training before being assigned to speak to concerned borrowers about their debts.
Company policy stated that call center agents had to keep customers on hold for at least 15 minutes before transferring them to a supervisor, the anonymous employee claimed.
Many of those who called were concerned about the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program of which MOHELA was the sole administrator until earlier this month, she added.
The Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority – also known as MOHELA – is facing increasing pressure from lawmakers and borrowers over how it has handled the program and how student loan repayments will resume after the pause of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Borrowers have complained about being put on hold for three hours, or having outstanding debts appear on their accounts that they thought they had already paid off.
A former call center agent at MOHELA has claimed there was a ‘horrible’ work environment at the student loan servicer
The anonymous employee, who is in their late 20s and lives in Kentucky, said they were subcontracted by a staffing agency to work for the MOHELA call center.
They worked as a level one customer service representative from October 2023 to February this year.
“Representatives receive very minimal and spotty training and are expected to work effectively under high pressure,” they told DailyMail.com. ‘There was no individual training.’
The training included practicing “mock conversations” in a group, they said, but some trainees didn’t even turn on their microphones during a group video call to participate.
When they answered the phone for actual borrowers, call center agents were given a digital file with reference materials 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 on the company’s performance
“The document is updated quite frequently, but many of the updates are simply irrelevant, inaccurate, or do not get to us in a timely manner,” they said.
Borrower questions were often complex, but call center agents were instructed to handle everything in one call without transferring the call if possible.
“Even when I read through the reference material I had, I couldn’t find an answer for most of these people,” they said.
‘It was company policy that if you had to contact the customer advocacy team you had to wait at least fifteen minutes because they were so overworked.
“People will call MOHELA and think we have a special version of their student loan agreement that only we can see, but we can’t. The information we have is the same information as the borrowers.”
To handle anything other than a borrower paying off a loan or changing a repayment plan, call center agents must transfer the borrower to the customer advocacy team, the ex-employee said.
But it is company policy to wait at least 15 minutes before doing so, they claimed, because the team is so overworked.
‘It was frustrating because you are told to follow the script very strictly.
‘You can’t 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.’
Filing a petition for an investigation into a case can take weeks, they claimed.
“There’s no way to get answers for these people quickly.”
In March, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts invited Scott Giles, the CEO of services provider MOHELA, to testify before the Senate Banking Committee.
Until May 1, MOHELA was the sole administrator of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program – which was a key feature of the Biden administration’s debt forgiveness initiative.
The PSLF program, created in 2007, writes off the remaining balance of borrowers who work in the public sector or government after ten years of eligible repayment.
MOHELA became the sole administrator of the program in July 2022, but it is now in the transition process to instead be managed internally by Federal Student Aid.
The administrator has been widely criticized for the way he has handled the program — and for managing student loan payments, which restarted last October.
In March, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts called on CEO Scott Giles to testify before Congress amid reports of “widespread service outages” impacting “at least 40 percent of borrowers.”
DailyMail.com asked its readers to get in touch if they had become frustrated with the service they received from the servicer – and received dozens of responses from graduates concerned about their loans.
Deborah Soto said she thought she had paid off her daughter’s student loans in full just before interest started to accrue again in September 2023.
But when she logged back into her account in December last year, she was shocked to discover that another loan totaling €16,947 had suddenly appeared in her account.
And without her knowing it, it had been generating interest every day for months.
Deborah immediately tried to contact MOHELA, but was faced with 160-minute wait times and endless requests to reach someone, 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 regularly spent “three or four hours” on the phone trying to reach MOHELA to get clarity on the new refund 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 interest rate pause last September
Pamela and Tom Buchanan saw their monthly repayments double, but could not get an explanation from MOHELA
Employee turnover at MOHELA was high, the former employee told DailyMail.com, and call center agents were often confronted with frustrated and distressed borrowers.
“I saw two trainers quit in the short time I was there,” they claimed, and were yelled at and verbally abused by customers.
“We had a meeting the day before we started making calls and we had to learn how to transfer someone to the death line.
“My trainer said he’s only had three in the 10 years he’s been there. But a few people in my training class on the first day had someone threaten to hurt them, or threaten to hurt themselves.
“We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars for some of these people, and most of that is because they don’t know where it comes 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.”
“From what I have seen from within, I would have to say that there is a lot of incompetence up the chain at MOHELA and also at the Ministry of Education.
‘It’s an infrastructure problem. There is not enough knowledge circulating. The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.’
A spokesperson for MOHELA said in a statement: ‘The average customer service wait time at MOHELA today is between 1 and 5 minutes.
“As a federal contractor, MOHELA was charged last fall by the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) with repaying $6 million in federal student loan debt after an unprecedented pause, while also operating under FSA directives to reduce costs and hours of operation reduction, which resulted in longer waiting times than normal.’
Call center agents go through an extensive training process and receive support in responding to customer queries, the company said.
‘Representatives receive routine (as frequent as daily) updates on any relevant changes imposed by the FSA to the servicing environment that impact borrowers.
“Claims about a company policy that requires a representative to put someone on hold for 15 minutes are false,” the spokesperson added.