Told Interest Had Stopped? which holds actually accrue

Told the hold carried no interest

Your servicer put your loans on hold while your application was processed. You were told no interest would build during that time.

Then an email arrives saying interest continues to accrue. Your balance is higher than when you applied.

Two representatives, two answers

1. You applied to change your repayment plan.
2. Processing took months. You were put on hold while it happened.
3. You were told the hold carried no interest.
4. The account showed interest building anyway.
5. You called. The first person agreed it looked wrong.
6. The second person said the no-interest rule applied to a different hold.
7. The difference was never explained in anything you were sent.

Why there is more than one kind of hold

There is more than one kind of hold, and they are not the same. Some carry interest, some do not, and which one you were put on is a choice the servicer made without telling you.

The letter you received says your payments are paused. It usually does not say which type of pause, and the two are described in nearly identical language.

The signal: a paused loan that grows

The balance. If a loan is on hold and the amount owed rises, one of the two things you have been told is wrong.

Where Plenee fits

• It tracks balances on loans you are not paying. A paused loan is easy to stop

looking at. Plenee keeps watching it, which is exactly when nobody else is.

• It shows the direction of travel. A balance going up while payments are paused is a

simple, visible fact, and it is the fact that starts the phone call.

• It puts a number on the gap. Between the date you were told interest stopped and

today, the balance moved by a specific amount. That figure is what makes a complaint concrete instead of a feeling.

Getting interest reversed after wrong information

• Ask which type of hold you are on, by name, and ask for it in writing.
• Ask for the interest to be reversed for the period you were told it would not

accrue. Being told something wrong is grounds, and servicers do reverse it.

• Ask whether unpaid interest has been added to the balance. That is the step that

makes the mistake permanent, and it can sometimes be undone.

• Keep the email. The exact wording of what you were told is the whole case.

How often interest is the complaint

Complaints about student loan fees and interest are about one in twenty of all student loan complaints.¹ The largest share of them describe interest building during a period the borrower believed was interest-free.²