Success with Portfolio Recovery and LVNV settlements

[Jess1214]

Long time lurker, first time poster. Today is a good day! I settled 5 collections for much less than owed. LVNV sent me a settlement offer a couple months back for 30% of the balance. I finally decided to just pay it with the little extra I had from a Christmas bonus. I also weighed out my options for taking out a high interest short term loan to pay off 4 PRA collections I've had for a few years now, especially given that they do PFD. I'm hoping I should be able to get a consolidation loan at a credit union with a much more favorable rate after a couple months with those collections removed. When I applied about 7 months ago, they said the only reason they couldn't approve me was because of the number of collections on my CR, even though my score was not horribly low (600's) and my income was good. 
These are the accounts and amounts that were settled:

LVNV (OC- Commenity/VS)- $933 for $280

PRA (OC- Cap1)- $458 for $184

PRA (OC- Cap1)- $1,468 for $588

PRA (OC- Old Navy)- $1022 for $287

PRA (OC- PayPal Credit)- $1908 for $754

So I was able to settle the 4 PRA accounts for about 37% of the total balance and the LVNV for 30%...and they'll be deleted from my CR. I'd call that a win! Hopefully I see a significant score bump. But I do still have one more collection from NCB on my EX and EQ, and 3 other smaller collections on my TU. 

Anyone else have a similar experience of removing most, but not all collections? What kind of score increase did you see? 

My husband and I are also hoping to buy a home in June/July of 2023. We're trying to be free of all collections a couple months before then. 

[crrredit]

Did you negotiate those settlements with PRA or did they offer those amounts. Looks like they were all around 40% except the Old Navy one. If you negotiated them, what was your initial offer?

[Jess1214]

All of the PRA accounts were negotiated over the phone. I logged into their website and the only account they had an "offer" on was the $458 Cap1 account...for 10% off of the balance 😒. So I decided to call them and see what we could work out.

I told them I had gotten a little bit of money set aside from a Christmas bonus and I otherwise wouldn't be able to make any monthly payments because I live paycheck to paycheck (stretched the truth a little). He asked me how much I had to work with. I said I only have $1600 (a little bit lowball). The rep I talked to essentially told me without telling me, that there are numbers they have to give customers (highest offer) and then the numbers they can essentially go down to without extra authorization, if you say you can't afford that. So basically he was telling me to say "I can't afford that" on a recoded line so that he was in compliance but could then offer me a lower amount.

The initial "high" offer was about 70% of the balance. The "I can't afford that" offer was about 50% of the balance. After he gave me those numbers I said that I still couldn't do that and reiterated I only had $1600 and wouldn't be able to do any monthly payments to pay off the rest because I live paycheck to paycheck and have a lot of medical bills, but that I really would like to take care of this all today. He said he would talk to his manager and see if they could approve something closer to $1600. He came back with a little over $1800 for all 4 accounts. I pushed back again a couple times but he insisted he couldn't get it approved for any lower. So I accepted. I was hoping to get around 40% anyway and was prepared to pay that much, but not any higher. So just a little  lower than 40% was good enough for me. 

The guy I talked to to was really nice and didn't give a ton of pushback to get down to those offers. It probably also helped that it was the end of the month, end of the year, and end of their business hours 😂. 

[OmarGB9]

Congrats on all of those successes. If you still have one collection remaining, you may not see the significant gains you're hoping to see until it, too, is gone. But there may still be some score boosts to be had. Just give it up to 60 days for the dust to settle. 

[Jess1214]

Ok, Good to know. That's what I was wondering if they all had be gone to make a significant difference. But makes sense since one, two or three collections hitting your report for the first time is a major blow to your score.  Then any more added after that don't make much more of a huge impact, score wise. So it makes sense that it would be the same when removing them. 

[myscoresucks2]

May I ask how old these accounts were? 

[prologue]

I thought they only delete if you pay in full ? Guess I should give portfolio recovery a try . Congrats on your win