Is the Student Loan Forgiveness Call Real: How to Check and Where to Report It

Who is allowed to contact you about your federal loans

Three parties have a legitimate reason to reach you: the U.S. Department of Education through Federal Student Aid, your assigned loan servicer, and, for defaulted loans, a collection agency under contract with the Department. They communicate mostly through your StudentAid.gov account, your servicer’s online account, email from a .gov or servicer domain, and mail. A servicer may call you, usually about a missed payment or a repayment plan question, and a real servicer agent will not ask for your FSA ID password. None of them place recorded calls announcing forgiveness.

Five tells that the forgiveness call is fake

1. It is a recording. Government relief is not announced by robocall. This tell alone is enough.
2. It uses “pre-qualified,” “pre-approved,” or “selected.” Eligibility is determined by your application, not by a caller.
3. It sets a deadline measured in hours. Real programs have published deadlines, posted months ahead on StudentAid.gov.
4. It asks for a fee to enroll, process, or expedite. Federal relief is free. Charging for it is the scam.
5. It asks for your FSA ID, password, or Social Security number. Your servicer already has your records. A caller who wants your login wants your account.

A sixth appears often: the caller names a program that does not exist, such as “the Biden forgiveness program” or “the new federal discharge,” or misuses a real one. Program names change, and scammers borrow whichever is in the news.

How to verify a call in two minutes

Do not use any number, link, or code the caller provided. Instead:

• Log in at StudentAid.gov. Your loan status, servicer, and any real forgiveness activity are listed in your account.
• Call your servicer at the number printed on your last statement or listed in your StudentAid.gov account. Ask whether they contacted you. They keep contact logs.
• If the caller claimed to be the Department of Education, know that FSA’s contact channels are listed on StudentAid.gov and do not include unsolicited robocalls.

If neither the account nor the servicer shows any contact, the call was not real.

Where to report a student loan forgiveness robocall

• FTC: ReportFraud.ftc.gov, which feeds the database law enforcement uses to build cases.
• FCC: the consumer complaint center, for the robocall itself and any spoofed caller ID.
• Department of Education Office of Inspector General: its fraud hotline takes reports of student aid scams specifically.
• Your state attorney general, many of which run student loan scam units.

The full step-by-step, including what to include in each complaint, is on how to report a robocall. Reporting does not pay you, but it is how these operations get shut down.

If you already paid or shared your FSA ID

Change your FSA ID password immediately at StudentAid.gov and enable two-step verification. Call your servicer and tell them a third party may have your login; ask them to note the account. If you paid by card, dispute the charge with your card issuer. If you signed a “debt relief” contract, you can revoke any power of attorney it contained by writing to the company and to your servicer. Watch your account for changes to your contact information or payment plan that you did not make.

Calls that trace to a real, named debt relief company rather than an anonymous scam can be a TCPA claim. That question, and what it takes to bring one, is covered on student loan robocalls: when they are suable.

Related: Student loan robocalls: when they are suable · How to report a robocall · The press 1 robocall scam · Report robocalls to the FTC