To get them to stop, send cease and desist letter, via registered mail, make sure it is registered. This is the first step. If they continue to call after they have received the letter, then you may want to call the FTC, BBB, and others, and an attorney. a sample cease and desist letter is below.

Collection Agency Name
Agency Address


Today's Date

Re: Account Number

Dear Sir or Madam,
With this letter I hearby request that you CEASE and DESIST any and all efforts to collect on the above referenced account. I will only deal with the original creditor of this account.

You are hearby instructed to cease all collection efforts immediately or face legal sanctions under the Federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. 1692c, and 1692k and the Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act,

PLEASE MARK YOUR FILES ACCORDINGLY.

This is Portfolio Recovery & Associates & they are CRIMINALS!!  REPORT Portfolio Recovery's Corporate phone number 1-888-772-7326. They are a collection agency that acquires old debts... sometimes 20 or more years old after the original debt has been paid or charged off or sold to several other collection agencies who did not recover the money. A lot of the information is so old that PRA does not even know who the original financial institution was or if the debt was actually ever paid off or not. They simply use old outdated information, addresses and phone numbers to harass innocent individuals. I was even told at one point that they run random credit checks on people and simply start calling if they find someone who ever had a charge off or something like that in the far past. If you have a phone number or address that was ever owned by someone who ever owed money at some point and time or your name is in any way close to someone that they are looking for you can wind up on PRAs list and start getting harassed by them forever.

These people are constantly calling and when the phone was answered they refuse to tell what the debt was.

I have nothing but contempt for PRA.  Those people called and harassed me for months
demanding a huge amount of money for Hospice care of my 83 year old wife.  Now here is the problem.  I am 38 and my wife is 37.  Both of us are alive and well In Texas.  The elderly lady, who was in Ohio,  had the same name as my wife,  but of course everything else including ss#  and actual address, as well as husband names,  were obviously different.  All of this meant nothing to PRA who was going to sue me for such a large amount of money.  I made many phone calls to the Hospice care center,  and PRA people trying to get them to understand that they have made a mistake.  To make a short story long,  I finally called  the Governor's office,  whos assistant resolved the problem .within 2 hours.   But Good old PRA kept up the calls. I finally sent them a C&D,  along with my record of all calls and emails and told them to remove all credit report entries immediately or I would sue their pants off. The entries were removed a couple days later. haven't heard from the B*****ds since.

Pure profit for them, collecting the full amounts.
And good luck getting the original statement.
They probably won't provide it.

Ask Portfolio to provide you a copy of the original statement, invoice with their company name header that Shows where THEY Portfolio had Actually provided you a service or product that they are trying to collect on Now if they never in reality provided anything Why are they trying to collect money that was Never owed to them ? ask them what the reason is for trying to do that See what they say another thing is how come they can buy accounts for mere pennies on the dollar Them attempt to collect the full amounts ? I think thats a good question.

Does anyone know the home phone number of the CEO, Steve D. Fredrickson??
If so print it here.   Every one reading it can call him at home, at 2 PM every morning for about 2 weeks.  Ask him how he likes the price of gas, the kids, his wife etc. May be this will help him pull his finger out.

any info?

Everything I've read about Portfolio Recovery indicates they are nothing more then mere scavangers of accounts that thrive on the on bits and pieces of accounts they buy at mere Pennies for on Dollar thats why companies in the business can So Readily be willing to Offer much Lesser amounts If account can be paid Immediately Just like a TV Commercial during the Next 20 Minutes it places a sense of urgency of Take advantage of thise Spectacular Offer but do it now ! Actually I dont see why such an industry should even be allowed to operate since the Initial transaction had and has Nothing to do with them I mean isnt that actually the case Now one thing is there Is a statute of limitations on debts It varies by state and in some cases its a shorter length of time that one would expect it to be check for it online as I understand it if that applies it should be reported to the States Attorney Generals Office, Oh I wonder if Portfolio knows that phones calls to collect on a debt are Not to be made on Sundays maybe another thing that should be reported to the States Attorney Generals Office ever notice never get calls for any others on Sundays

Problem with Portfolio Recovery Associates resolved. ? Thanks to this blog site and the posters I was able to find out who the phone number that kept calling was for. I went to the Portfolio Recovery Associates website and noticed the "Contact Us link". Under the line "For customers with concerns or complaints" is a link to fill out an online form.  It asks for your account number. So I called PRA and got my account number. They asked me if I was going to pay the debt, I said "I'm not paying anything because I don't know what it is for." and hung up. Went back to the website and filled out the form and entered the account number they gave me and filled in the remaining information. In the comment box I typed, "Need to see information concerning debt." ? The next day I got an email from the Assistant Vice President saying "This is a very old account that dates back to 1988. After further review of this account, supporting documents are no longer available from the creditor. Therefore the account has been closed and there will be no further collection activity regarding this account." That means it was 22 years ago! No wonder I couldn't remember having an account with that creditor. It was obviously written off a long time ago and if anything was put on my credit report it's been more than 7 years for it to show there so it's gone. This debt must have been sold twice for them to end up with it. But now it won't be sold again! ? The thing to remember is that a debt collector attempting to collect has to provide you a copy of the contract/application in question showing Your signature on it, otherwise they can not legally attempt to collect for it.

Portfolio Recovery Associates are going to be profiled tonight on NBC at 10pm EST. The owners have felony convictions! Their tactics are detestable.

There is a derogatory picture of Muhammad on their website. As a Muslim, I am deeply offended by that and I have contacted them and asked them to please remove this picture off their website. I hope that they will do so or I shall contact them again.

This is their despicable website:

http://www.portfoliorecovery.com/

i need tha phone number