In 1997 I joined Bally's Total fitness. The next day I called up and cancelled my membership. In the contract you have 3 days to cancel. Well, I didn't hear from Bally's for about 3 months. When they called me they wanted me to pay my dues to bring my account present. I told them I had cancelled my membership the day after joining and that I have never even received a membership card other than the temporary one you get when you join. I also told them that I had never stepped foot in the club after the first day. They told me they would do some research and get back with me. I never heard from them again. Years went by and I ordered a copy of my credit report and saw that a CA had a tradeline stating I owe $1613 to Bally's. I had never received any notification from the CA of them trying to collect on this account. In fact on my CR it states no forwarding address. However, yesterday I received a notice from the CA stating I owe 1852.17 and asking me to pay 648.52 and they will match it and then I will ONLY owe them 555.65. What should I do? Should I call Bally's and dispute with them? Should I call CA and dispute that I never had a Bally's account? Or should I send a validation letter asking for copies of the contract? Please advise. Thanks
good grief what a sucked up situation (yes I wrote sucked.LOL) I guess at this point its safe to call Ballys to see what they have to say about the situation..although its was so long ago I woul dhave no idea what kind of records they keep. Obviously the recording keeping is bad. If that doesn't get you anywhere I would send a validation letter to the CA. One thing that I learned about situations like this whenever things get all confused like that I would never ever let it go.I would make sure to follow up on the account to make sure that it was close and that the chances of anything slipping through the cracks a minimized... with that said... Uhmmm yeah call the place...
Oh and don't call the CA,... the have a knack of making every phone call unproductive.. By any chance what was the cancel procedures for Ballys at the time? do you have any proof on you? (not that it matters at this point)
You need to find out how long the statute of limitations is in your state. If it is past the sol, you won't have too much to worry about except for getting it off your reports. I also would start with Ballys and advise the mgr that you cancelled years ago and you want them to immediately take the acct back from the ca and have it removed from your report. If they fail to do this, your atty will follow up.
They pulled the same crap on me back in 1994. If creditnet was around back they I would have sent them a validation letter and taken their rumps to court. I just let it fall off my report though and never did a thing. EdG
