The Student Borrower Protection Center is concerned that student loan servicers are collecting money, damaging credit, or threatening collections for those who have submitted a Borrower Defense application, and we want to help. The Department of Education’s Borrower Defense Process allows students to seek relief from federal student loans where their schools have misled them or engaged in other misconduct. While your Borrower Defense application is pending (sometimes for years), borrowers can ask to stop all collection activity. But not all loan servicer companies honored that rule. In some cases, loan servicers, who manage federal student loans for the Department of Education, garnished borrower wages or seized borrowers’ tax refunds. In other cases, these companies took actions that lowered borrowers’ credit scores or just harassed borrowers with demands for payments.
If this has happened to you, your story can help inform lawmakers and regulators as they oversee this process. We do not provide legal representation to individual borrowers, but we can help connect you with resources and additional support.
If you have submitted a Borrower Defense application and a student loan servicer has since collected money from you, damaged your credit, or threatened collections, please fill out this form: