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They mailed me a fake statement saying I owe First National Bank of Marin $3093.35. I never heard of National Bank of Marin, let alone take out a loan from them. A new wrinkle, send a statement instead of phoning.

My room mate got a letter from them saying he owed $516.96 for an account he's not paying from HSBC (House Hold Bank Credit) dated January 17th 2013. He also got a letter from Portfolio recovery saying he owed $774.44 on February 05 2013 for HSBC. Then got a letter from Portfolio recovery saying he owed $678.34 also for HSBC.

So what collection agency does he pay and what amount? 3 different collection services for one credit card.....REALLY?

Sounds like a load of crap to me. something is fishy.

Contact HSBC & find out who they sold the debt to. At this point you cannot pay HSBC, as they have probably written off the debt when they sold it. As it it obvious your room mate has no intent to repay this debt, fair warning to you - since you live with this person, get ready for a LOT of annoying phone calls, from early morning, to late night.

Well guess what, nice try on trying to convince someone they will be harassed.  This is a scam plain and simple.  All Banks have something called a recovery department for those debts that have been written off.  Northland group is known for sending out fake attempts to collect debt and they are just throwing darts hoping one will stick.  Unfortunately so many out there have some negative information they believe it to be true.Debt collection agencies do not send out letters offering reduced payments for debt they purchased.  They contact you directly through skip trace and not by just sending  a letter. They have all of the information at their finger tips and must verify the identity of the person to whom they are speaking to.  They would have all of the particulars of the account including a detailed payment history, amount owed, monthly payments, and most importantly a copy of the signed agreement for repayment of the debt of which they would be able to provide a copy of to you to verify the legality of the debt.

The simple answer and the best would have been to pay none of them and *dispute all of them*. Just at a guess, junk debt buyer Portfolio Recovery's computers couldn't decide whether to collect in-house or farm it out or what kind of metrics to apply to the dubious "settlement" offer. That's what these companies get for trying to run their whole debt machines on auto-pilot, not to mention attracting FDCPA lawsuits.

No, "it is obvious" the collectors can't get their (expletive) together and maybe can't prove the debt valid anyway. Why should anyone pay those jokers? As for the "annoying phone calls" warning, the roomies are perfectly capable of sending notices by Certified Mail to each agency to dispute claims and ban all phone calls.

} Debt collection agencies do not send out letters offering reduced payments for debt they purchased.

I do hope that was an innocent misstatement, for if it became true tomorrow the entire debt buying industry might implode within two weeks. A huge part of their business is buying debt portfolios at fire sale prices, knowing full well that collecting face value is unrealistic. Hence the buyers and collectors make "discounted" offers -- and yes, they do so on their dunning letters -- which still compensate them handsomely.

} They contact you directly through skip trace and not by just sending a letter

A scofflaw agency often already has a valid phone number for an account and doesn't need to skip trace, but pretends to anyway for generating false shame. It may not be common, but I've seen collection agencies rely only on First Class mail, never bothering to call. Debt lawyers are also prone to work silently.

} They would have all of the particulars of the account

I'm not sure if your pronoun "they" refers to collectors or original creditors now. The bank is likely to retain data to prove a debt claim and the collector typically won't have it. The agency is required to fetch proof on demand when filling a validation request, but sometimes can't get it. Banks destroy old records at varying ages, and will often stipulate in their debt portfolio sales that the purchase is made at the buyer's risk .... which is to say they know the assets are messed up and they don't want any demands for old records.

An agency hired directly by a recent lender generally won't have those problems. An agency chasing junk debt is rather easily defeated by the breaks in chain of title.