PSLF Form 404 error, help?

March 30, 2024 1:08 PM

I am trying to help a friend with his PSLF employer verification electronic form on Studentaid.gov. We have all the information required and are able to fill everything out as required. Every time we get to the end of the document (the step where you select if you want to send the verification forms to the past employers electronically or manually), we fill it out and press submit and the form goes to a 404 error page.

We have tried Chrome and Edge browsers on PC, Safari and Chrome on Mac. We have tried selecting both manual and electronic verification options. Every version ends with a 404 page. We have tried calling for help and the phone tree says to email about website problems. We have tried emailing, but the email says it can take up to two weeks for any response. We have tried the chat but it is automated and isn’t able to respond to this type of question.

Has anyone encountered this problem and solved it? Any ideas? Yes, we can submit a paper form but it requires more information than the electronic form and is slower to process. It’s also not immediately trackable in the electronic system.

posted by chuke to Technology (5 answers total)

Reddit's r/pslf was very helpful if you don't get good answers here.
posted by slidell at 1:21 PM on March 30 [1 favorite]

The website is broken. Only the website administrators can fix it. You should contact them, presuming they publish a contact email address, or have a help/support section on the website
posted by june_dodecahedron at 1:21 PM on March 30 [2 favorites]

You might want to check under "My Activity" (on the drop-down menu with the person icon, on the upper right corner) to see if the form is listed as having been submitted. You may be getting an error on the submission page and yet the form still going through.
posted by lapis at 5:21 PM on March 30 [1 favorite]

I also originally chose manual submission for the employment certification form last time and then went back in and changed it to electronic submission. So you may want to see if it works when you choose manual submission, and then go back in and change it. (And some of the people on Reddit's r/pslf forum have said they actually found manual submission was quicker than electronic in certain instances.)
posted by lapis at 5:24 PM on March 30

Also, if things are broken today, they might now be tomorrow. Studentaid.gov is a dumpster fire, filled with cryptic errors, but when I was doing my PSLF application, I would just go back each day and try the step that had failed multiple times the day before, and often I would be able to get to the next step! New versions of the app get deployed, sysadmins restart crashed servers, and other things happen.
It sucks and is super frustrating, but you will get there! I was also super frustrated, but I am finally student debt free thanks to PSLF.
posted by rockindata at 6:48 PM on March 30 [2 favorites]