Portfolio Recovery Associates is closing its office in Birmingham, Ala., which will affect 133 employees who worked there. The company filed a notice with the state Department of Commerce in late July. The office will close at the end of September.
The office in Birmingham is one of 10 the company has across the country. It closed an office in Las Vegas last year, just after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Employees in that office then filed a class-action suit against the company, accusing it of violating the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act by firing them using the coronavirus pandemic as the reason for closing an office when it fact the company had been planning on closing it for months because it was under-performing. That case is still proceeding but a motion has been filed to settle the case.
PRA most recently opened a new office in Danville, Va., back in 2018. The company announced a $15 million investment that would bring 500 jobs to the region.
The Alabama Department of Commerce did not appear to make the actual letters filed by companies with the state public, so PRA Group’s reasons for closing the office were not immediately available.
Back in 2013, the company announced an expansion of its Birmingham office, with plans to increase the number of employees working there to 270, from the 170 that were there when the expansion was announced. The company received $200,000 from the Birmingham City Council to lease an extra floor of office space to house the new employees, according to a published report
I worked for PRA Group and that company is straight trash, Brittany Williams was a manager there and had a trashed personality as well, EXTREME GARBAGE, GOOD RIDDENS OF PRA GROUP in my Great State Of ALABAMA…