I accidentally made more payments than necessary before applying for PSLF forgiveness. (‘Accidentally’ in the sense that I think the site/payment tracking information was intentionally confusing.)

Literally yesterday I had to make several phone calls to figure out why their website said I’d made 120+ payments, but they emailed to say I didn’t have enough.

My loan servicer’s documents directed me up the federal student aid agency, who directed me back to my servicer.
The servicer’s phone system had several minutes of recordings between each ‘level’ of the phone tree. And ultimately, it stuck me in a loop (press 1 to return to main menu, press 2 to speak with a representative about PSLF forgiveness > enter your social security number followed by the pound sign > press 1 to return to main menu, press 2 to speak with…) until I hung up and called back - this time selecting the options to allow me to make a payment over the phone, which got me to a human ASAP, without 2-4 minutes of recordings at each level for some reason.

The person, much to her credit, told me she knew exactly the issue, and that if you make more than 120 payments, it automatically denies your forgiveness application and says you don’t have enough payments made. She did what she needed to do to override the automatic denial, and now I just have to wait until March to see if it all goes through. It took maybe 2 minutes.

It’s set up for people to fail. It’s set up to be confusing. For folks to continue to pay when they don’t have an hour or more to get to the bottom of every roadblock in a maliciously designed system.