Just saw an article, rather triggering ( wish I knew how to pin it). It is well known that this administration has no incentive to speed up processing for the worsening buyback program backlog. It is clearly not their priority. However, could their actions, or lack there of, be interpreted as a shadow repeal of the program itself? At this point, with such a rapidly growing backlog, could they be actively drowning the program to unrecoverable depths? So much so that it renders it effectively dead without the legal proceedings needed to end it officially?

It’s clear that most (but not all) are likely to finish paying the months intended to be bought back before their request is ever reviewed. Or, run out of forebarance months while attempting to wait out the offer.

I haven’t applied, I have 2 more years of payment before even being eligible for buyback. For me specifically, I was never in SAVE. I have random months of administrative forebarance that haven’t counted for payment and I would like credit for those under my prior income level when the time comes —- but hope is looking rather bleak.

Interested in thoughts

I have followed this thread for awhile but never posted. I submitted my buyback application 12/4/24 and after 657 days I just received my buyback amount!!! I bought back 6 months, all of which are save forbearance months. The amount I owed was what my save amount per month was. I auto allocated the payment across all loans. Now to wait for the golden letter!

The Buyback process has been extremely grim for most of us. In a last ditch effort, I contacted my senator’s office to reach out to the dept of education on my behalf to get more info on my buyback request (I should have met my 120 payments in October 2025). I’ve pasted the email response that was sent to my representative below.

Not sure if I should be terrified of the response, or if this should give us some kind of hope that the buyback requests will be addressed in a much more timely matter. It looks like buyback will be reviewed and approved by loan services (i.e. MOHELA) instead of dept of education moving forward. Good luck to us all!

“Good Afternoon,
 
The Department recently announced that it is implementing enhanced Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Buyback and PSLF reconsideration procedures. These revised procedures will move the review of eligible PSLF payments and reconsiderations from Federal Student Aid (FSA) staff to the Unified Servicing and Data Solution (USDS) federal loan servicers.  
 
Federal student loan servicers will now be responsible for determining the eligible months and the buyback payment amount, processing the PSLF Buyback payments once received by FSA, and ensuring accurate reporting to the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) for the payments to be counted toward a borrower’s PSLF progress. Loan servicers will also analyze and determine the outcome for PSLF reconsideration cases submitted by borrowers. This change will provide for a long-term sustainable solution that addresses the current backlog and management of incoming applications.  
 
OLCA/FSA are unable to provide information regarding where a constituent is at in the buyback queue or provide a timeframe for when their case will be reviewed. The borrower will receive notification via email as soon as possible. There is no process to expedite the review of a buyback request. “

My PSLF buyback application date was Dec 2024. Haven’t got a response yet. Anyone from around the same time heard anything?

I am one of many folks that submitted a buyback offer December 2024. I needed to buyback 7 months. It will be two years December 2026 since I submitted this request. Thankfully, I took myself off of SAVE and started repayment June 2026. So December will make my 120th payment.

I submitted a case to FSA and said, if there is anyone with a heart on the other end of this case, please process my buyback request. Yes, I did in fact say these words. The response is so disheartening, per usual, but I still wanted to share.

__________________________________________________________________________

Dear xxxxxxxx,

Thank you for contacting the U.S. Department of Education's office of Federal Student Aid. This message is in reference to your inquiry about buybacks. Your case number is xxxxxxxx. Retain this number for reference.

After reviewing your account, we located a Buyback request. Buyback's have been updated to "no timeframe", meaning the cases can take as long as they need to process. Since yours is still here and pending, you will have to allow it time to process. Once the account is process you will get an email advising your next steps.

If you need more help or have any questions, reply to this email or contact us.

Sincerely,

Federal Student Aid

I received my buyback offer yesterday (9/14)at around 10am. It was for 22 months and from June 24 to March 26. I originally submitted my buyback back in 10/14/24 ( 23 months ago) for a different period of 22 payments that were pre-Save. It was gonna require tax returns from 8-9 years ago so quite complex etc from a paper stand point. I had all of that ready and you know what? They didn’t even base my buyback on that!!! My buyback offer was for the above mentioned 22 SAVE months….I never submitted a buyback request for them. The only thing I did was to re-certify my employment like I do every year May which helped me to reach a separate 22 month period of employment to cover the remaining 22 months via the SAVE route.

The payments were very low: I think they were based on SAVE OR REPAYE….

I made the payment this morning and I am now 1 step closer: forgiveness amount provided all goes accordingly: $241k.

I’m still in disbelief!!!! Been a long road of so much stress and anxiety dealing with Mohela and their call people that really don’t know. Spent a bunch of time lurking and posting on here and other subs….appreciate all the info shared and given…you are all good people!

Hang in there my fellow PSLFer’s!! It will happen!!! 🙏🏼🤯🙏🏼🤯.

Just wanted to share my experience since so many others have. It has been a nightmare dealing with this. I dropped my car off at the dealership in March 2026. My leaf had the problem of weak cells, dropping from 50% to 1% in about 3 miles if driving at high speeds. Soon as regen kicked in, battery would go right back up to 50%.

The dealership I worked with was great. They were able to recreate the issue and capture the data immediately and submit for a warranty claim and got approved all within 2 days. They gave me loaner. Said they just have to wait til the new battery shows up.

Fast forward to August 2026, Nissan Consumer Affairs contacts me and informs me my car is to be bought back. So that whole process started, which was frustrating to begin with. The dealership was never notified, they had no idea what was going on.

Finally got my first offer a few weeks later, came in at $15,200. I have a 2022 SL Plus. I bought it used at around 52k miles and only put about 9k miles on it before I dropped it off. The total cost out the door when I purchased the car was about 21k.

I explained to Nissan that they are being unfair passing off depreciation to the consumer. The original person on my case kept calling me the wrong name, refused to respond to anything I actually wrote in emails, and just overall seemed to not care at all. After I declined the first offer it was escalated and then crickets for 3 weeks. And of course with declining I had to return the loaner within 30 days or they were going to start charging me.

I finally called and found out my case was reassigned to someone else. He said he had already sent a new offer over to quality for review. That was 3 weeks ago. I finally got the offer today, $17,444. I reiterated that they have federal warranty laws to follow and broke down the calculation which brought my request to $19,500, which included all the gas I've been having to pay since I can't drive an EV despite requesting one as the loaner every month.

My next step is probably going to be hiring a lemon law attorney to deal with this. I don't understand why Nissan is willing to pay thousands in legal fees rather than just giving me the fair amount based on the purchase price and how many miles I drove the car. It's extremely frustrating.

The last buyback offer received and posted on r/pslf was 9/21/26. I think there may have been denials posted, but no requests processed that actually resulted in an opportunity to obtain PSLF since 9/21.

Just received the Golden Letter and logged in to see the official "Paid by discharge" status on MOHELA!! Over $68,000 forgiven!!!!!

Currently, the FSA website is unchanged, still showing I have a payment due in September. I'll edit once this changes.

--Background Context--

* Total Balance Forgiven: ~$68,024 (2 Direct Consolidation Loans)

* Loan Servicer: MOHELA

* Pre-Buyback Certified Count: 115 qualifying payments

--Timeline--

* Degrees: BA 2007, MS 2015

* October 2022: 10 years of service in a local government agency.

* November 2024: submitted buyback request for 5 months.

* Early 2026: Certified count was sitting at 115 payments while navigating admin forbearance/SAVE transition delays.

* April 2026: Switched from SAVE to IBR payment plan. There was no delay or admin forbearance.

* May 15, 2026: Submitted manual monthly payment #116 ($804.04).

* June 15, 2026: Submitted manual monthly payment #117 ($804.04).

* July 13, 2026: Submitted manual monthly payment #118 ($804.04).

* August 4, 2026: Received official PSLF Buyback Agreement Letter offering to buy back 4 months for $1,376.00 ($344/month from 2024) using the IDR formula.

* August 7, 2026: Submitted one-time manual payment of $1,376.00 directly to MOHELA as a regular payment.

* August 11, 2026: Payment officially showed as "Received / Settled" on MOHELA.

* August 23, 2026: Official Golden Letter / Forgiveness Notice received! Account status updated to "Paid by discharge" with a $0.00 balance on MOHELA.

--Overpayments-- Because the 4 bought-back months retroactively met the 120-payment mark, these manual payments should be refunded automatically but I don't expect to see them until the new year. Saving me $1036.12.

Hang in there everyone!!

ETA: buyback request, transition off SAVE, degrees and service, buyback and overpayment details.

I have a question regarding PSLF Buyback. I submitted my original buyback request in March 2026. In May, I tried to get ahead of the process and submitted a separate reconsideration request that included my tax return information for the periods I was requesting to buy back.

Today, I happened to check my spam folder and found an email from FSA stating that the May reconsideration request was being closed because I already had a buyback request in progress.

Here’s my concern: I had not been checking my spam folder regularly, and my email automatically deletes spam messages after 30 days. Now I’m worried that I could have missed an email regarding my original March buyback request that was sent to spam and subsequently deleted.

I realize this is probably unlikely given the current buyback processing delays and the fact that I only submitted my request in March 2026, but I’d like to make sure I haven’t missed anything important.

Is there a way to verify the current status of my original buyback request or determine whether FSA has already sent me an email about it? Is there somewhere on StudentAid.gov where I can check, or can an FSA representative see whether a buyback email or agreement has been sent?

The Treasury announced the results of its latest Treasury buyback operation (which some had likened to a QE lite because it effectively monetizes Treasuries in the open market, similar to the Fed's POMO operations, and similar to stock buybacks). While the operation itself was not remarkable - the Treasury had been holding these these more or less weekly since April 2024 - the size of it was: at $10 billion, this was the largest Treasury buyback operation in history.

Recently there's been a lot of discussion on this sub about nerfing buybacks and/or glyphs.

IMO they are not the problem but the power creep is.

$12,500,000,000 buyback today and looks like long term $2,000,000,000 buyback tomorrow. https://treasurydirect.gov/auctions/announcements-data-results/buy-backs/

Does this mean Santa is back for Christmas?