Portfolio Recovery - Inquiries, Daily?

[NichelleN]

Hi all. I need some advice.

  I've been working on rebuilding my credit and have made some progress. A few years ago, I was feeling pretty hopeless as there were a number of collections and late payments on my credit reports. To be quite honest, I don't remember much of the collections other than they were pretty old. Now after a long period of getting my act together, carrying a limited # of cards (3 of which were secured) and working through my reports I have a clean credit card payment history with no late payments on any of my credit cards. There are also no collections on any report.

  With this and a good credit score, I decided to open new accounts a few days ago. I had a series of hard pulls over a 3 or 4 day period with good results. Today, I reviewed my scores and reports to see the list of hard and soft pulls. I now have DAILY inquiries from Portfolio Recovery that started when I applied for new credit with the most recent being today. There are older inquiries from Portfolio as well. Whatever account(s) Portfolio is interested in are at least 7 years old.

Here are my questions:

• What information does Portfolio gain from doing an inquiry?

• Is an inquiry somehow triggered by new activity?

• I have received a number of calls from Portfolio. I have never been available to answer them but when I've researched the numbers online they come up as Portfolio (along with a bunch of angry comments from other recipients. The numbers are always from different states and when you call back, you just get a weird tone). They have never left a message. I'm certain I have received no written communication from them in the past 2 years. Before that I'm not sure. Since this is old, does it make sense to investigate or just leave it be? I'd like the calls to stop.

I hadn't put this at the top of my list but the recent inquiries have made me a bit concerned.

[Anonymous]

Here are my questions:

• What information does Portfolio gain from doing an inquiry? If soft pulls, they are trying to assess your potential ability to pay. If hard pulls they are attempting to depress your scores by skirting the law, since they cannot place the item on your reports. I would personally consider it to be abusive application of the the FCRA rules allowing creditors to do a hard pull.

• Is an inquiry somehow triggered by new activity? CRA's will provide creditors like portfolio with a list of consumers that are actively improving their credit scores.

• I have received a number of calls from Portfolio. I have never been available to answer them but when I've researched the numbers online they come up as Portfolio (along with a bunch of angry comments from other recipients. The numbers are always from different states and when you call back, you just get a weird tone). They have never left a message. I'm certain I have received no written communication from them in the past 2 years. Before that I'm not sure. Since this is old, does it make sense to investigate or just leave it be? I'd like the calls to stop. This is kind of a gray area. They have not really initiated first contact via phone, and they obviously cannot do so via placing the item on your credit reports, so a dunning notice trigger has not occurred. You could send them a generic cease communications letter, but I don't know if it would be enforceable without any account references. 

I hadn't put this at the top of my list but the recent inquiries have made me a bit concerned.

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[NichelleN]

Thanks for the response. Much appreciated. I had no idea that collection agencie are provided information on those who are rebuilding. All of the pulls are soft or inquiries. I'd never paid attention to soft pulls much before as they have been on existing credit lines. I was just surprised to see a collection agency on the list.

Maybe I will just leave it alone for now. It just seems crazy that suddenly they are pulling information on a daily basis.