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Criticize The Better Business Bureau... And They'll Pull Your Accreditation
from the credibility? dept
For many consumers, the Better Business Bureau is considered the authoritative, objective source on whether or not a small business is trustworthy. Most people think of the group as being quite trustworthy itself. But who's the Better Business Bureau for the Better Business Bureau? Josh King alerts us to the news of how an operation called FeeFighters wrote a rather scathing post, claiming that the BBB was a scam, based on the story of one company who -- the article claims -- was able to bump its rating from an "F" to an "A" basically by paying the Better Business Bureau. I have no idea how accurate the report is, but it certainly is damning.
So how does the BBB respond? Does it explain to the FeeFighters how they got something wrong in the story? No. Does it admit to a problem in the process and promise to correct it? No. As far as I can tell, those seem like the only two reasonable responses. But the BBB went in a different direction. It told FeeFighters to take down the post or it would lose its own accreditation. And when FeeFighters refused to do so, the BBB pulled the company's accreditation, and flat out admits that it's because they don't like such criticism.
This seems really quite incredible considering what the Better Business Bureau does: collecting complaints and seeking to get companies to resolve them. And when someone presents a complaint about the BBB itself, rather than trying to resolve the problem... it attacks the messenger and revokes his BBB accreditation. On this one, it seems like the BBB deserves a big fat F until it apologizes and takes back the revocation. Frankly, it's hard to trust BBB ratings at all after this experience.
So how does the BBB respond? Does it explain to the FeeFighters how they got something wrong in the story? No. Does it admit to a problem in the process and promise to correct it? No. As far as I can tell, those seem like the only two reasonable responses. But the BBB went in a different direction. It told FeeFighters to take down the post or it would lose its own accreditation. And when FeeFighters refused to do so, the BBB pulled the company's accreditation, and flat out admits that it's because they don't like such criticism.
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The letter itself certainly reflects unfavorably on the BBB. They are dropping FeeFighter just because they don't like to be questioned about an activity that looks like it really, really needs to be questioned.
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The BBB has long lost any credibility
Do a search on their website for work at home and then search on Google or Bing for reviews of any company that shows up. The BBB lets any company that pays get special treatment that involves erasing bad comments if the company responds to any complaint. They don't have to fix the issue just respond.
Additionally, those complaints don't reflect in the company's overall rating.
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quis custodiet custodiens?
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Re: The BBB has long lost any credibility
http://www.bbb.org/us/storage/16/documents/stats%20pdf/2010/US%20Sorted%20by%20Complaint.pd f
The two most complained about industries were able to resolve 98+% and 95+% of complaints?
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Part of the Club
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Check these articles about BBB by the Haggler of NYTimes
http://www.nytimes.com /2011/03/27/your-money/27haggler.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/your-money/13haggler.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/your-money/10haggler.html
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Re: quis custodiet custodiens?
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Personal Experience
That's colored my view of them ever since.
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BBB a rip off
I worked for a while for a company that sold and repaired sewing machines. We had a much larger competitor who had an absolutely horrible reputation in the community. They were constantly buying smaller businesses, changing the names on their stores so that it looked like new management, using bait and switch tactics on their customers and offering to repair things that they didn't have a clue how to fix and then offering to trade in the "broken" machine after they couldn't fix it.
However in spite of the fact that people would stop complete strangers from going into the stores and tell them to go elsewhere to shop they had an A+ rating with the BBB.
The way they did this was to keep any disputes submitted to the BBB "in dispute". If you are a paid up member of BBB you can keep disputing any bad reviews till the person gives up. As long as a complaint is being disputed it doesn't show up as a bad review.
I'm now in a different industry but still don't want to piss them off so I'll post anon.
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Re: The BBB has long lost any credibility
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Or It's Accredited Businesses?
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Pay To Play
See http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/business-bureau-best-ratings-money-buy/story?id=12123843
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Pay To Play
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Re: Re: quis custodiet custodiens?
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Re:
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Re: quis custodiet custodiens?
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Re: quis custodiet custodiens?
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Re: Re: quis custodiet custodiens?
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Ah yes, the basis of one of Alan Moore's lesser known comics...
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Re: Part of the Club
So if I understand the website at that link correctly: all imagery of lit torches belongs to and is the work of the Illuminati, and all entities/places that use variants of the word "columbus" (Columbine, Columbia... Columbo?!) in their name are puppets of the Illuminati?
I... I think I'm gonna have to sit down.
(Damn it, Columbo, I trusted you!)
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Re:
or "Who will guard the guards of the guards themselves?"
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I've never worked for the BBB and always thought it had a good rep. This article has changed that viewpoint along with the comments following.
Never again will I depend on the BBB for a recommendation and will instead look to what few competitors might be out there to replace them with.
I can do without an organization that claims to help you decide what is or is not a problem business when they do business in this manner.
To be honest the whole response provided by BBB stinks and reeks of payolla in it's worse form.
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BBB is a Scam
My personal experience when having a dispute with a BBB accredited agency was comic. The guy was the local chapter president and basically said, "It doesn't matter what we did to your car, or didn't do. This complaint isn't going anywhere because I just don't give a 5hi!." Sure enough, even though we complained up to our attorney general nothing was ever lodged against that business.
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And then they got the head to do his best deer in the headlights I dunno what your talking about, we need to look into this sort of crap?
The BBB seems willing to provide all of the ammunition for their own demise.
We made sure you can't appeal, and out terms clearly state you can never make us look bad - even if what we are doing is bad.
I think Mr. Bernas needs to be fired, he has written a letter that clearly spells out the BBB is vindictive and seems only concerned about looking good rather than doing what they claim they do. That seems to cast them in a bad light.
The BBB once upon a time was a good idea, and then I am willing to bet people with MBAs got hired. The MBAs just want to make more money and often have no interest in what the business is actually doing, just needs to make more revenue at it. Like the stories of some Yelp! employees taking money to hide bad reviews, or demanding gifts etc. You normally have to take these things with a grain of salt because they never give you written proof. This time they put it in writing. Rather than defend the company by showing the allegations to be misleading or false, they confirmed them by trying to crush someone who said something they disliked... but can't seem to prove is false.
Hopefully at the next Board of Directors meeting they will be asking why this moron seems to have no grasp of the Streisand Effect and what would have been a forgettable post on the internet is now given much more credibility by their shortsighted and idiotic response.
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I always tell them that the BBB logo probably hurts more than it helps. The BBB "Pay to Play" business model is well known. Too often I see dodgy websites with a big BBB logo and only PayPal for checkout. When such companies can't even qualify for a merchant account - a prepaid BBB logo only points to their struggle for credibility, and I think most customers understand that.
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I don't get mad, I get even. And there is absolutely nothing that the crooked business can do about it. It's nice to level the playing field.
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Businesses without MBAs can all be trusted? But when an MBA rolls in, it all goes to hell?
I don't think a case has been made to prove that assertion, yet. Do you have any citations? Because I've seen douchebag MBAs, and I've seen non-douches. Seems to be a similar cut as the general population.
I've certainly had plenty of folk try to rip me off, scam me, grift me, rob me etcetera who were not MBAs.
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What BBB Accreditation Means
The business in question has a fixed address and contact info.
The business in question has paid its BBB bill.
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(Disclaimer: I don't have THAT negative a view of business students)
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Re: Re:
While I made a generalization I do stand by the concept I managed to not correctly illustrate.
A prime example would be the article I am currently failing to find again, where the MBAs of Hasbro are making huge missteps with the WOTC side of the company. They do not understand what motivates those players and keep trying to "board game" D&D and MTG and when the head of the division compares a roleplaying game to chess... yeah there are some serious problems understanding the market.
You have people with no clue of how it makes the money, and just think they can crank out more stuff and make more money, leaving the consumer out of the equation. They happen to be MBAs in many cases.
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And then there is JD Powers . . .
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You Didn't Even ask for the BBB to comment?
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Re: You Didn't Even ask for the BBB to comment?
> Steve Bernas, CEO of the Chicago BBB, for comment.
Pfui- He can comment here just like every other heretic. I actually think it shows how poorly considered the BBB is considering there were few to none comments endorsing the BBB.
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BBB
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Re: Re: Part of the Club
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bingo!
http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/local_news/investigations/better-business-bureau-under-fire%3A -are-grades-for-sale
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