Bally's and Charge Off's....? How can Bally's charge off memebership's(lie to you about it) and then give you a new one?? I had gotten behind on my intial membership. We had moved and called to make payment arrangements so I could start working out again at the new club. Well, somehoe the guy pulled the ole switch-a-roo. Gave me a new membership without me knowing. Told me he rewrote the old one so I wouldn't lose the money I had paid and could start working out again and resume payments. The initial membership was a lifetime membership. I ended up having to move back to North Carolina for a while and there are no Bally's there. I sent letter to club to cancel. Moved back to Florida. Come to find out, Bally's charged both memeberhips off and want to give me a new one?????? Now I have two debt collectors hounding me to collect on the Bally's memberships. What can I do?? This is so crazy. How can they do this to people?? Now I have a judgment from Asset Acceptance for the inital memebership. What can I do to get out from under this??? They keep sending letters requesting my bank acct info and employer info so they can garnish my pay and wipe out my bank acct. Can they touch my bank acct without the bank info from me?? Ticked off...
Health clubs pull this all the time. They take advantage of "New Years Resolutions" and annual promotions to sign up a bunch of suckers many of whom will want to drop out, move, or cancel. The club never looks better than it will during these periods, clean and spotless. The sales people give you such a great deal for signing up for a contract, verbally promise you can cancel for various reasons, or later even that they processed a cancellation for you, but it just never seems to happen, the sales person who promised you is no longer there, you still get billed, or debited, and then you go into collection. They pull out the contract, where the fine print says that the cancellation clause puts a bunch of restrictions on how you have to do it, what you have to submit to be eligible, you have to send it "CRRR" so you can prove they got it, or they will claim they never did, etc. They set up multi-year "memberships" with monthly payments, as loans for the full amount thru a separate but actually related company, that pays them the full amount up front, and then goes after you for the full loan payments whether you think you have cancelled or not, so that the loan company can ignore any cancellation you attempted with the healthclub, pile on some more payments, and claim it was just a mix-up if they get caught. Why wouldn't they want to give you a new one, even though they charged off two already? They never had to give you 3 people worth of services, they made a profit on you despite charging you off and selling the account, and the charged off accounts were sold off to a CA who probably handles a bunch of them and knows what they can squeeze out and how to do it. On top of which, you won't even know you failed to cancel until the CA contacts you after your membership is up, and you are being sqeezed for payment on an already expired membership that you weren't even using since you thought you had cancelled it. Think for a moment. Who is "Bally's"? What else do they do, and who are you really dealing with? Then look them up under the various different health club names under which they operate, on www.bbb.org Or check out what to watch out for at the Massachusetts Attorney General's website.
Your best best is to scream like hell everywhere you can, based on any and all misrepresentations. Throw in everything you can think of that looks like fraud, and make use of all FDCPA violations if you are dealing with a CA. Make it too hot, or too embarrassing, and based on some BBB reports and some consumer reporter articles, they appear to back down. May or may not solve the judgement, although there might not be proper service there. The purpose of setting up extended contracts as loans appears to be to create a salable asset of sufficient value to be worth it for a buyer to work the debt and even sue profitably, while shifting the collection job to a separate party to cut off and muddy your legitimate defenses against the original party due to their misrepresentations made at the time of the sale or cancellation. Defending against an alleged debt in the hundreds to several thousand dollar range is a no-win situation for most consumers, after legal expenses if they can even afford them. Start with BBB in Florida, in writing. Also file complaints with FTC, your local DA, and Florida state AG. And see if you can get a TV or newspaper consumer reporter interested in doing a story. It is bad press they want to avoid the most. There is enough information on the net to see what they are up to. http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2004/feb/feb16b_04.html And it didn't just start recently: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/predawn/F95/bally-health.htm Also check with the state AG to see if there are any state laws violated, or if they are under any consent agreements. Some states have laws requiring them to disclose terms and process cancellations in certain ways, because of past problems. That is the reason they usually take your "cancellation" in some informal, undocumented manner, so they can claim you never made it.
