wpbbb.com

The heart of the BBB is their rating system applied to compare businesses

Consumers go to the BBB franchises’ web sites to determine which business to use and which one to avoid.
Consumers’ decision is influenced by the business rating as advertised on the BBB franchises’ web sites.

The advertised rating has financial consequences, especially in competitive industries.

When the BBB advertises one business rating as C+ and another as B and both businesses offer the same services, customers with “vivid memories from elementary school”, will prefer the business graded B.

The BBB rating scale consists of 14 levels.
The BBB represents itself as if they have an accurate, reliable, non biased and uniform mechanism to compare the quality of one business to another and to properly grade businesses over the 14 level spectrum.
This is a very serious undertaking.

Unfortunately this is not the case.
The truth is shocking!

The CBBB, the central body of more than 100 privately owned BBB franchises, advertises various information how a rating should be done, but it is not being followed.

Here is what really happens:

The main factor affecting a business rating is the number of valid complaints against the business; they call this process of passing a judgment and making the decision “validation”

Each privately owned BBB franchise is judging complaints submitted against businesses under its jurisdiction. The validation is done in-house by employees with no legal qualification, no thorough understanding of the industry of the business they are judging, no court of law experience, no time or resources to properly investigate each complaint, none of the requirements one would expect in order to carry on such a task properly.
Judgments are passed in haste according to the employee “flavor of the day”.

Many times judgments are passed by these individuals without any regard to the advertised description what makes a complaint valid and what does not.

It is well known and documented that businesses protesting against wrong validation manage to reverse the wrong judgment, but in most cases they are ignored; no matter how substantial the evidence is that they present. The BBB privately owned corporations act  as if they are beyond reproach, without any accountability to the financial damages their malpractice is causing.

Complaints from businesses about a franchisee wrong doings are ignored. Erroneously, the BBB franchises are not members of there own organization. They are the only business for which one can not find a rating. They are enjoying amnesty from being graded on the BBB web sites, allowing themselves to not follow descent and proper business etiquette or ethics.

In 2001 Florida Congresswoman Corrine Brown alerted Congress and the General Public about the BBB’s wrong doing.
Click here for the Original Congressional Record E1550

E1550 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD – Extensions of Remarks August 3, 2001
CONCERN-REGARDING BUSINESS OWNERS AND THEIR EMPLOYEES
HON. CORRINE BROWN
OF FLORIDA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Thursday, August 2, 2001

Ms. BROWN of Florida. Mr. Speaker and fellow Members of Congress, I want to alert you to a matter of concern that I have regarding business owners and their employees, particularly small business owners, within our country.
This problem has been told to me by some of my constituents and is a problem about which business owners throughout the country have written to you.
We are a nation that is built upon the rule of law.
This has assured a system of accountability for our conduct as individuals, businesses and institutions.
Congress, as elected representatives, meets and acts to improve and refine the system in order to protect the people and their property.
The foundation as framed by our nation’s founders in the Constitution is the concept of due process and the right thereof. We each have the assurance that the law protects our person and property from libelous, slanderous, and otherwise tortuous interference with our reputation or business.
Unfortunately, I have learned that we have within our country a private organization that with the appearance of being quasi-governmental and without any legal or regulatory oversight and control can libel and slander and tortuously interfere with a small business.
They can do so with virtual immunity.
This organization is the National Better Business Bureau and their franchise local Better Business Bureaus.
At times, some of these bureaus classify small business owners as unsatisfactory, libel and slander them with opinion and innuendo, and provide them no due process to correct the problem.
If sued in court, they argue qualified immunity under the guise of the public good.
No one disputes the right of a Better Business Bureau to print facts. It is when they print falsehoods, opinion, or negative innuendo that a mechanism for redress or correction must be assured.
When closely examined, however, one finds that there are Better Business Bureaus that arbitrarily and capriciously exclude and negatively classify those they don’t like.
They also frequently rate companies with terrible records as being satisfactory.
No written guidelines or rules are available that require the Better Business Bureau to adhere to any legal standard in their dealings with business. (With the internet, the conduct of one local Better Business Bureau is then taken as true and disseminated everywhere.)
The Better Business Bureaus also charge money for these reports.
They make money without responsibility for how they make it.
Why are they above the law and other businesses?
On a first-hand basis, I recently inquired of the National Better Business Bureau regarding the process and I was met with hostility and rebuke.
Prominent members of my community who tried to ascertain information about how to redress a concern with a local Better Business Bureau were hung up on by senior ranking National Better Business Bureau employees.
The process I have described is not in the public’s best interest.
It is not appropriate for us to allow our business owners and their employees, the men and women who make our country strong, to be exposed to this arbitrary and capricious process.
A right to redress the actions of the Better Business Bureau when libelous, slanderous, arbitrary, or capricious action is apparent is a fundamental right we must insure.

Thank you.

1) The Better Business Bureau is NOT a government agency.  Instead the BBB is a private 501(c)(6) organization with $143 Million in annual revenues derived from membership dues it receives from the very businesses it reports on.

2)  Attorney General questions new BBB Grading System.  The Connecticut Attorney General is looking into the practices of the Better Business Bureau after they gave their annual Torch Award for Best Business to Custom Basement, a firm under investigation for violation of consumer protection laws.

3) U.S. Representative says BBB negatively classify businesses they don’t like.   Addressing Congress, US Representative Corrine Brown said some BBB’s libel and slander small businesses they don’t like while rating other companies with terrible records as being satisfactory.

4)  Membership in the BBB guarantees a better grade.  By their own admission, membership in the Better Business Bureau improves a business’ grade.   Calling this a membership service is a misnomer, it more closely resembles an advertising service where “members” pay to play.

5) Even the Better Business Bureau is NOT a member of the BBB.  Not only does this exhibit a lack of confidence in their own product, it makes it impossible for anyone to complain about the Better Business Bureau to the organization.