The recent news about Biden’s plans have a lot of friends contacting me. They’re familiar enough with my saga to hope I will finally be free.
A lot of them are hoping this new TEPSLF thing will work, so they suggest I apply.
Y’all, that was the program I applied for last summer, the one that advised me to consolidate, which screwed everything up!
I did, however, get the loans de-consolidated, which was a miracle. How do I know? Because every servicer I talk to doesn’t even believe that it happened.
For many moons, the DOE information wasn’t updated properly, so it said I owed the de-consolidated amount and the consolidated amount: double, in other words.
When only the de-consolidated loans appeared again, I filed for TEPSLF again. (UCD has to fill out part of the information–in pen–and everything has to be mailed in.)
In the months since then, I have received a letter from DOE saying I “may” have loan payments that qualify.
Since the TEPSLF final application deadline is next month, I’ve recently emailed my servicer to see if the application is at least logged on their end.
Will it work? Who knows.
I AM eligible for the 20,000 dollars off, though the total I owe will still be higher than what I initially borrowed, despite always making my payments on time. The form for that money isn’t up yet.
I’ve heard that the Biden plan is supposed to stop what happened to me: that if a borrower is making payments, their total owed shouldn’t go up. I haven’t seen verification of this, but that alone would save many future borrowers from suffering the way so many of us have.
