Progressive Financial Services, Inc.

Review: Progressive Financial (a collection company) in Tempe, Arizona is leaving numerous harassing phone recorder messages at the [redacted] residence saying it is looking("fishing")for someone by the name of [or close to the name of] "Mr. [redacted] (or [redacted]?)". There has never been anyone by the name of "[redacted]?)" that has ever lived or visited the [redacted] residence; and there has never been anyone by the name of "[redacted]?)" that has ever been associated with their phone number or address, nor has there ever been anyone the [redacted] have ever known by the name of "[redacted]?)".Desired Settlement: Mr. and Mrs. [redacted] request that Progressive Financial (a collection company)in there attempt to find someone by the name of "Mr. [redacted] (or [redacted]?)" Cease and Desist from making any and all future calls to the [redacted] residence in Texas.

Business

Response:

I have been asked to respond to the above-referenced complaint regarding Mr. and Mrs. [redacted]. We received the complaint on/about 31 July 2014. These consumers state that they have been receiving calls from Progressive for a person who is not them and who does not live at their residence. They want the calls to stop.Promptly upon receipt of the complaint, we located the relevant account on which calls were made to these consumers’ phone number (###-###-####). We show that on a number of occasions we left a message at that number for the account holder. Even though each message starts with a request that any recipients of misdirected calls please phone a toll free number and so inform Progressive, we are showing no inbound calls from the above-referenced phone number about calls to their residence.That phone number has now been removed from the relevant account and added to our internal “do not call” list so it cannot be dialed again. We are showing no further calls after receipt of the Revdex.com complaint. We apologize for the unintentional misdirected calls to these consumers. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.Sincerely,[redacted]Corporate Counsel

Review: On November 30, 2007, I received a letter from the [redacted] (Hawaii) [redacted] stating that they Overpaid my Housing Subsidy by $5,281.22. I was ordered to repay this amount. Unemployed, this debt was eventually acquired by Progressive Financial Services, Tempe, AZ. This past December 2013, the debt was finally "PAID IN FULL". Progressive Financial Services was supposed to Mail me a "PAID IN FULL" Receipt within 6 to 8 Weeks. It never arrived. When I call them to ask where my Receipt is, they imply I still owe them Money & tell me "This is an attempt to Collect a debt..." etc. I am suspicious that this may be Criminal by saying they are trying to collect a debt from someone who does not owe them money. So my complaint is: 1. They have not mailed me a "Paid in Full" Receipt for $5,281.22; 2. When I call them to request a receipt be mailed to me, they say they are trying to collect a debt from someone who does not owe them money. I believe this is Illegal.Desired Settlement: I want a "Paid in Full" Receipt in the amount of $5,281.22 mailed to my current mailing address. Is that too hard of a request to accomodate? No!

Business

Response:

I have been asked to respond to the above-referenced complaint regarding Mr. [redacted]. We received the complaint on/about 23 May 2014. Mr. [redacted] states that he satisfied the balance on his account that was in our active inventory. Notwithstanding this, he has been unable to secure a paid in full (“PIF”) letter stating the obligation has been satisfied. He also states that our staff is still attempting to collect the debt from him, notwithstanding the PIF status of the account. He wants the PIF letter mailed to his current address.

Promptly upon receipt of the complaint, we located the relevant account. Mr. [redacted] took steps in early January of this year to pay off the balance on the above referenced account. During a call with one of our staff on 3 January 2014, the agent promised to generate a PIF letter to the consumer once the final payment posted. Several times thereafter, our staff had conversations with this consumer and promised to send the PIF letter. Unfortunately to date, that had not been done. My staff is working today to get that letter finalized and sent to the consumer under separate cover.

The consumer also states that our staff continued to try to collect the debt even though the balance was paid in full. The only “collection efforts” our staff engaged in when the consumer called in to inquire about his PIF letter was to do a required “mini- Miranda” disclosure stating that “this is an attempt to collect a debt, etc.” At no time did the staff actually try to collect any specific amount from the consumer – the account had a zero balance. Nevertheless, we understand the frustration this mandatory disclosure caused Mr. [redacted] and we are sorry for that frustration.

We also are very sorry for the way that this account was handled – our training and expectations dictate that PIF and SIF letters be promptly generated upon request. We are notifying all collection managers company-wide to reiterate that PIF and SIF letters are to be promptly generated when a consumer requests such a letter following the payment or settlement of the account. In particular for this account, we are advising the relevant senior managers about how their substandard customer service was as far as Mr. [redacted]’s account was concerned.

Again, we are sorry for the inefficient handling of this consumer’s request for a PIF letter. He may call my staff directly ([redacted]) if he does not have that PIF letter in hand within a few days. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Consumer

Response:

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and find that this resolution would be satisfactory to me. I will wait until for the business to perform this action and, if it does, will consider this complaint resolved.

Regards,

Review: The company continues to call our office looking for a party that had our phone number several times. We have had this number since April 2014. We have asked them to remove us from their calling list for the last three months and they have not complied. I spoke with [redacted], a manager, on 11/05/2014 and he was very argumentative and of little to no help.Desired Settlement: Remove our office from their call list.

Business

Response:

Dispute Resolution Consultant Revdex.com of Central/Northern Arizona [redacted] Re: Complaint # [redacted] Our Acct. No. [redacted] To Whom It May Concern: I have been asked to respond to the above-referenced complaint regarding [redacted]. We received the complaint on/about 6 November 2014. [redacted] states that he is continuing to get misdirected calls from Progressive even though he has spoken with our staff and previously asked for the calls to stop. First, I want to apologize for my tardy response. Although the matter was corrected promptly by my staff, I have been away from my desk a great deal lately and this formal response was overlooked. Promptly upon receipt of this complaint, we located not one but two accounts on which calls to the relevant number (ending in [redacted]) were being made. It appears the number is for a business/place of employment. We see that indeed, we had calls from [redacted] regarding the misdirected calls. We found errors by our staff who did not remove the number from the account as promised. Furthermore, calls were being made on a second account – neither account was held by anyone who worked at the place of business [redacted] was writing about. Our staff also failed to recognize that there was a second account being called. We apologize for the multiple errors made by our staff that resulted in further calls being made to [redacted]’ number. The staff person(s) responsible for the errors have been identified to their respective collection managers and the mangers have been asked to work with the agents to ensure this kind of error does not repeat. Again we are very sorry for the continuing frustration that our shortcomings caused for [redacted]. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance. Sincerely, /s/ [redacted] Corporate Counsel

I was called by Progressive Financial in regards to a debt collection from a bill I thought had been resolved. Progressive had my information incorrect (SSN) and when I asked to speak to a manager (I received a man name [redacted]) for some sort of resolution he was abusive rude and hung up, when I explained with the information incorrect I was not comfortable making a payment over the phone.
They have no means of securely handling personal information and the phone calls sound exactly like a 'phishing' scheme when they pursue collections after a week of research I resolved the issue personally. With no real help from the agency.
My situation and information were very poorly handled by Progressive.

Review: first of all I was sent wage garnishment notification papers about 1 week before the process was to begin, not the required 30 days. I instantly began calling to work this out, they askede to send s form and I will get a call from them in 48 hours. I waited until 3 days passed and called them back. I learned that they went a head with the garnishment because I did not call them, so they lied to get through the loop. after researching I discovered while speaking directly with the one who hokds y debt, I am exempt from a garnishment for one year, due to a new job. I called them and they asked for papers again, this time I called them. and when I do I am now placed on hold for 30 minutes at a time. then they tell me to do do ething totally opposite of what the department of education says, the department of education has hired them as a go between, yet progressive acts like they are not the one to handle paper submissions for the department of education, even though theDOE has told me they are!Desired Settlement: you need to fax over my paperwork to get my garnishment stoed. not pay games on order to collect more money. how can you sleep at night with these sort of practices?

Business

Response:

Re: Complaint # [redacted]Progressive Acct. No. [redacted]/Dept. of Education Ref. No. [redacted]To Whom It May Concern:I have been asked to respond to the above-referenced complaint regarding Mr. [redacted]. We received the complaint on/about 15 July 2015. Mr. [redacted] is stating that he was not permitted sufficient time to dispute his wage garnishment before it went into effect. He states that Progressive’s staff has not been responsive to his concerns.Promptly upon receipt of the complaint, Progressive located the relevant account. Mr. [redacted] lists his address on his complaint as [redacted]. Importantly that is the address that was on the file from the inception of Progressive’s collection efforts. Multiple collection notice letters were sent to the consumer at that address; none were returned. He did not respond to those letters. Nor did he respond to multiple calls from our staff to his phone number (ending in [redacted]) that were placed in February, March, and April of this year. When Progressive was unable to get this consumer on the phone to set up voluntary repayment arrangements, our client started the process to involuntarily recover the amount due via an administrative wage garnishment (AWG).The Department of Education (“ED”) mailed out a “notice prior” letter to this consumer on/about 11 May 2015 advising him of the impending AWG. The letter was sent to the same address listed above – the address the consumer listed on his Revdex.com complaint. Although he states he did not get that until “1 week before the process was to begin,” there appears to be no reason why he did not, at that time, promptly contact Progressive to alert us to his need to request a hearing. Had he done so, our staff would have assisted him in getting the request timely filed. Instead, the first inbound call we have from this consumer is listed on 22 June 2015 – more than 40 days after the notice prior letter from ED was mailed to him.On that call he was advised to fax relevant document to Progressive that day. He was further told that it was his responsibility to check back with Progressive 24 hours later to see if the documents were complete or if there was anything else that needed to be sent. Our records show that it was another week before he sent in the documents (received in our office on 6.29.15) and then he did not call Progressive until 7 July 2015. By then, the garnishment order had been issued by ED to his employer. 2On 10 July 2015, the consumer called in again. On that call he was provided with information from which he could submit a request for a hearing directly to ED and request that the garnishment be stopped based on the fact that he was laid off from his previous job and had been working at his present employer less than a year. Our staff assisted in getting that information to the consumer so that an “untimely” request for a hearing could be sent to ED. The staff told the consumer that the hearing process could take 30-60 days to complete and that if he was successful, the garnishment would be suspended following that hearing outcome.We did not that our staff mishandled the account at any point. The consumer failed to respond to letters and phone calls when the account was initially place with Progressive. When the garnishment notice prior letter went out, he did not timely request a hearing and then failed to promptly get documents in when Progressive asked for those to be immediately faxed to our office. Thereafter, he neglected to call Progressive back to check on the status of the documents (they were not complete). His failure to timely respond to various requests by Progressive (written, voice mail, conversations on the phone) contributed to the fact that he did not get a timely hearing requested with ED before the garnishment order was sent to his employer.Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.Sincerely,[redacted], Esq. Corporate Counsel

Progressive is calling daily to look for someone that does not live at this residence. I have called them 2 times to tell them to take me off the list. Calls are still coming daily. I want them to be reported as a nuisance. Thanks, [redacted] M [redacted]

I have had an account with Progressive Financial Services, Inc. for the better half of a few months now for a [redacted]. I recieved a call on August 23, 2013 from a Collector named [redacted]. I set up a payment arrangement with this collector to have 5 payments taken out of my account automatically with a debit card. I advised this collector not to remove the first payment until September 13, 2013. A week later on the 30th of August they had debited the first amount from my account. I called them promptly when they were open and available. I spoke with a Supervisor/Manager on the 3rd of September, this gentlemans name was [redacted]. I advised him of the situation and asked that he listen to the call that had taken place on the 23rd to confirm that I did, in fact, verify with the Collector as well as the second party supervisor who had come onto the line during that call to verify the payment arrangement. He advised me he would listen and call back in 15 minutes. I waited 45 minutes before calling back to which I was told they would take my information and have this supervisor get back to me. Well 6 outbound calls later on my behalf and I finally was able to speak with another supervisor, [redacted]. I explained the situation and when he did finally listen to the phone call he stated that he would have my money sent back to me via Express Mail check within 48 hours, and would call me back in 24 hrs with a tracking number. It has now been 6 days since I have heard from [redacted], or any other manager from this business. I have tried to call multiple times to speak with a representitive that may be able help and the only answer I get is "It looks here like your money has been refunded, however as a collector I am not able to assist you in this matter, our manager is not available, I will take your information down and pass the message along." I am extremely dissapointed with this company and the way they handle their business. The fact that they had two people come on the line with me on the 23rd to confirm my payment arrangement, were still not able to get the debit correct; and then have a manager confirm a refund with me, only to never call me back with the information I need in order to receive a refund for over 100 dollars that never should have been removed from my checking account in the first place. Not to mention that the majority of collectors I have spoken with were not only completely uninterested in assisting with my dispute, but were rude and completely uncaring. I think there needs to be a serious review with this companies guidelines and the way their management handles the accounts. I am hoping by submitting this review it will help not only my situation but also anyone in the future who may have the displeasure of dealing with this company.