Emergency Forbearance

The COVID crisis effects on student loans continues. This pandemic has highlighted a complete lack of communication between the Department of Education and the loan servicers. You may have noticed that your federal student loans were automatically placed into forbearance last week.

My loans are held with FedLoan and they automatically placed my account into an emergency forbearance in 2017 while I was living in an evacuation zone due to a California wildfire. During this wildfire, FedLoan automatically placed my loans into forbearance without my consent. Undoing the automatic forbearance was not possible during this event. I contacted them and asked that I opt out of any future emergency forbearance and they confirmed that my loans would never again enter forbearance without my request.

Fast forward to 2020. I contact FedLoan by email to confirm that my loans would not enter forbearance on March 27th. No reply. Last week, I noted all of my loans were in forbearance.

It is not clear if any outstanding interest will be capitalized when a borrower exits emergency forbearance due to COVID. I have contacted FedLoan requesting clarification, but have received no response. This entire system to handle direct student loans is beyond broken and needs a reboot.