Bally's Stinks

After we sent Bally a letter threatening to sue, Bally decided to sell our account to a debt collection agency. My husband was surprised to receive a phone call from someone at Zwicker Associates telling him he had better pay up. We had assumed that since we filed our suit, Bally would realize we meant business and cut the crap. Apparently, we were wrong.

Anyway, the well-mannered individual we spoke with told me that my husband must be an idiot who couldn't read and that we should drop our court case. Good legal advice from someone who isn't even an attorney.

From this experience, I learned that you have the right to send a letter to any debt collector asking them not to contact you. Once you have done so, they can only contact you again if they decide to file suit to collect the debt. In this case, I wasn't worried because we filed our suit before our account was even sold. Whoever files first gets to pick the court, etc. The defendant must then file their claims as counter-claims in the same suit.

I have been told by the nice people at Zwicker that they await the outcome of our litigation and will not be calling us again, so that's good news. It looks like Bally has screwed them too by selling a debt that they cannot legally collect. It's good to know that Bally doesn't just stick it to the little guy.