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JJ Ramberg

JJ Ramberg is the anchor of “Your Business,” MSNBC’s weekly show on small business. In addition to her extensive television reporting experience, Ramberg has a background as an entrepreneur and co-founded GoodSearch.com. She has an MBA from Stanford Business School.



Why the BBB deserves a FFF

Posted: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 12:10 PM by Eve Tahmincioglu
Filed Under: , , , ,

Why does everyone insist on making my life more difficult?

I can't just pop a DVD into the player and have it start playing a movie without watching the previews. People don't respond to my e-mails with a message history anymore. And lately, Twitter keeps saying it's "over capacity" and won't let me tweet.

Now the Better Business Bureau (BBB) is getting in on the make-my-life-more-difficult act.

The agency that tracks the behavior of businesses nationally is sending us all back to school with its decision to give out letter grades.

It used to be so simple -- "unsatisfactory" or "satisfactory" were the only ratings firms got.

But nooo, that was too simple. Now we have to have grades from A+ to F.

Before, if you were a business owner all you had to do was get yourself off the unsatisfactory list and you'd be okay with customers. These days you could get a "D" and then make a good case for yourself with the business bureau and get upgraded to a "C" -- but that doesn't sound that good either, right?

And for consumers, too, it was so clear-cut before. Either a firm was satisfactory or not. If it was unsatisfactory, you didn't deal with the company. Now you have to decide if a "C" grade is bad, or not so bad.

In a press release put out this week, the BBB said it was adopting the new system "to help consumers more easily and quickly identify and compare the reliability of businesses."

I don't know about you, but all this seems way more complicated to me.

The BBB will base the letter grades on a 16-point formula:

1. The type of business and its business model
2. How long the business has been operating
3. Whether the business has appropriate competency licensing
4. Total volume of complaints filed against the business
5. The number of unanswered complaints
6. The number of unresolved complaints
7. The number of serious complaints
8. An overall complaint analysis
9. The number of complaints with delayed resolution
10. Government actions against the business
11. Any advertising issues found by BBB
12. The extent of background information available to BBB for evaluation
13. The extent to which BBB is able to develop a clear understanding of the business
14. Whether the business has honored any mediation/arbitration commitments
15. Whether the business has attained BBB Accredited Business status
16. Whether the business has had its BBB Accreditation revoked

Then the agency's number crunchers take all this information and come up with a grade.

If an entrepreneur doesn't like his or her grade, BBB spokesman Steve Cox stresses the bureau is "more than happy to talk to any business that has any issue with the grading."

"Maybe it's a matter of you fix one thing and improve your grade, but it may not be," he said.

The key thing for consumers, he added, is to look for whether a company has BBB accreditation. To get that, the firm needs a "B" or higher.

I asked Cox if a consumer should do business with a "C" graded firm. His answer: "Maybe."

Jeez, that doesn't help.

What the heck does it mean to get a "C"?

"That's an average grade, just like it was in elementary school," he explained.

I don't know about you, but the last place I want to go back to is elementary school.

What do you all think? Is this a good move for the BBB, or should we be giving the agency an FFF?

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Comments

I'm in charge of the PR for my company. I've been working over the last month feverishly, as we found we have gone from a "satisfactory" rating to a "D+"????? Only to call a BBB rep and be told one bogus line after the other. What was the first explanation out of his mouth, you ask? "Well you probably want to become accredited and pay us $500/year"... ahem.. racketeer... ahem!

After updating our information which took several attempts as they did not receive the online form I filled out and submitted... TWICE! Finally I resorted to just filling in the blanks over the phone. So finally, I was able to increase the business I represent to a "C" rating. The reasons listed for the poor grade are: 1. the length the business has been in operation (4 years BTW seems long enough) and 2. the number of complaints filed.

My company has had 15 complaints filed within the last 3 years and we have over 1000 annual clients... WTF?! That would seem an unusually low percentage to me. To top it off over 2/3 of those complaints are settled as resolved. The BBB rep I spoke to even admitted that she did not know why our rating was not better. Another fun fact I found out is the BBB does not check any of the information you report so you can give them completely false facts and they would never know. What is the point of that? Anyone who thinks the BBB is doing more good then harm is wrong. They developed this rating system as a way to bring in more money... period. And they do not staff the know-how to appropriately evaluate each case.

So that is where I am at. We are losing more potential sales then ever and most are quoting the BBB's "C" rating as the reason. "I just can't trust my money to a company with a C rating", a client remarked just 2 days ago and canceled their $2000 order after seeing our rating.

So, as far as I am concerned, their rating system is garbage. If I could file suit, I would. But they have that handy little disclaimer that says:
"BBB Reliability Reports are provided solely to assist you in exercising your own best judgment. Information in this BBB Reliability Report is believed reliable, but not guaranteed as to accuracy.".

If it continues like this I may just have to pay their bogus fee, as people put too much trust in the BBB as is.

Anyone care to discuss how they have received a better rating please drop me a line. They get an F from me.

Russ J, Bellevue WA (Sent Thursday, January 15, 2009 12:19 PM)

I found all the posts interesting in that some are thinking they'll never have an issues with a company that they need help with and some have actually checked into the service and know what the BBB provides.  The next time you are ripped off - or before you buy why not at least try it before you say they suck.  

And, if you don't want to be a member, don't.  But that doesn't mean that they don't do a good job. I've gotten rebates from Dell, refunds from the NY Times (yes, they wouldn't refund my money when my Grandmother died and I had to discontinue her large print addition), and found out how to get a free credit report through the FTC.  

People - grow up.  If you don't know about it don't dis it!

Sandy B, Minneapolis, MN (Sent Friday, March 27, 2009 5:38 PM)

The BBB is the most pointless, useless organization on the planet, and their ratings are meaningless.  If anything, an "A" rating merely means the business is a BBB subscriber/contributor whereas an "F" rating means the business isn't.  Subscribing/contributing businesses with an "A" rating often have thousands of complaints against them, some even for violating FTC and FCC laws, and I know for a fact one "A" rated company has been investigated and fined to the tune of millions of dollars for federal law violations and the BBB refuses to acknowledge this under the "government actions" category on the company's BBB webpage.  

Now that I understand how the BBB works, I actually consider an "A" rating a liability for any company I'm researching, as do more and more consumers, especially web-savvy consumers.  When I google a company, epinions, my3cents, ripoffreport and other consumer driven complaint/opinion sites offer me much more meaningful information.  Why would I bother with the BBB? I'm a consumer.  I want to hear the truth from other consumers, not a bogus report based on how much the company paid the BBB.

Leanne Murphy, Livingston, NJ (Sent Tuesday, May 05, 2009 4:43 PM)



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