Customer service
Savvy consumers and small firms owners are increasingly checking the Better Business Bureau’s list of businesses before they make a purchase or decide to partner with a company.
That’s bad news for small businesses that some how end up on the BBB’s bad-boy list.
OK, it’s not actually called a bad boy list, but if your company ends up in the BBB’s data base with an unsatisfactory rating you can bet you’ll probably lose at least a few sales as a result.
The BBB has reliability reports on about 4 million businesses and of those about 24 percent have an unsatisfactory rating, says Alison Preszler, a spokeswoman for the organization.
So how do you keep from ending up with a “F” on your BBB report card?
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The ice cream king and entrepreneur Irvine Robbins died earlier this week and I couldn’t help but be sad a bit. I have fond memories of making trips to the Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop in Queens, N.Y., with my dad and ordering Pink Bubblegum ice cream.
Oh man, was that delicious. Well, delicious to a kid I suppose, among the many other flavors that ended up in that frosty ice cream case. Endless flavors were part of my reality as a kid. I couldn’t imagine how boring my parents’ childhoods must have been with just vanilla and chocolate.
Indeed, Robbins took some credit for opening up our horizons to wild flavors. He said as much in a New York Times article from 1976: “I think we’ve had a little bit to do with making it more acceptable.”
Which brings me to bacon ice cream.
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Craigslist is being sued by eBay because it claims it’s management team “unfairly diluting” its holdings in Craigslist.
The online auction site has had a nearly 30 percent stake in the classifed-ad Web site since 2004.
The two companies are essentially competitors, but EBay, with thousands of employees, dwarfs Craigslist, which only has about 20.
And it’s a whole different mentality over at Craigslist.
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When blogs first came on the scene, they were basically online diaries.
I remember this freaky guy I worked with about nine years ago at a newspaper in Florida was writing this new thing called a blog. His posts were mainly about his sex life, or lack of it. And he also blogged about how he hated journalism and really wanted to be a musician.
What got me thinking about the origins of blogs was a story in the New York Times Friday about how blogs are now being used to air dirty laundry.
Duh! That’s why blogs were created. But recently, blogs have turned into little more than advertising sites for businesses and places where journalist can write shorter stories that are infused with a bit of opinion, and sometimes humor.
But alas, the best-read blogs are filled with personal musings, sex, and the more dirty laundry the better.
So what’s a small business owner to do if they want a blog that’s well read? Should they start writing about their escapades in the bedroom?
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It’s like we’re watching a scene from that dumb reality show, “The Bachelor,” and in this case the bachelor is Yahoo.
Who will walk down the aisle with Yahoo? Microsoft? Google? Time Warner’s AOL? Even News Corp. is getting into the act, considering a plan to team up with Microsoft in its bid for Yahoo.
(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)
The Bachelor, aka Yahoo, has a lot of hot, crazy babes to choose from. If you’re a small business that wants to place ads on search engines to get people to click over to your Web site, you just may want to tune in.
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Two years ago, the owner of one of Philadelphia’s favorite cheesesteak joints, Geno’s Steaks, ended up at the center of the national immigration debate when it’s owner Joseph Vento put up this sign in his store:
“This is America: When Ordering Please Speak English.”
As you can imagine his sign got him in hot water including a two-year investigation by the Philadelphia Human Relations Commission that looked into whether the small business owner discriminated against any patrons and violated the city’s fair practices ordinance.
Well, the commission found recently he did not discriminate against anyone and now this entrepreneur wants payback.
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Does your small business really need a cell phone with James Bond type surveillance capabilities?
Sometimes all you need to do is call someone.
Cell phones are becoming so complicated these days, just calling a business contact takes a bunch of strokes, beyond just dialing the number. And I keep hitting the stupid speaker button on my iPhone with my cheek, allowing everyone near me at the supermarket to hear my conversation while I’m ordering cold cuts.
Small business owners must be at their wits end when it comes to all the options cell phones offer these days. What’s right for your business? Is it worth getting 3-D maps, or voice controls, or GPS?
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I was shopping at my local fishmonger the other day and my jaw dropped when I saw the price of Rockfish went up nearly $2 a pound.
I didn’t say anything but one of the owners caught my shocked facial expression and rushed over to say two words, “gas prices.”
We both shook our heads in quiet understanding. But I still went on to protest a bit about the size of the jump in fish prices.
It was easy for me to see the prices for all the items at the fish shop. There are only about 20 to 25 products sold at the small bare-bones store, and prices are written on a blackboard.
I realized at that moment I was being a bit unfair. When I walk into a giant supermarket or department store it’s harder to figure out right away whether price tags have been jacked up. And there’s probably no one in power to complain to even if I did notice.
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I’m feeling pretty lonely.
Lately I’ve noticed my emails are going unanswered for longer and longer periods of time.
I check my email every few seconds, and I can’t imagine not getting back to people in a flash.
But maybe I’ve bought into this crazy way of life.
Maybe I should take a page from the owner of a tea lounge in San Francisco who has taken a machete to email.
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I live right outside of downtown Wilmington in a suburb that’s overloaded with retail stores because Delaware is the land of tax-free shopping, so folks on the Pennsylvania border flock here.
When I need to buy a book fast this is what I do.
I drive down the main suburban retail drag and go to Borders. When they don’t have what I want – which is typical because none of these big box stores stock variety anymore – I go to the Barnes & Noble a few blocks down and check for the book. When that turns up nothing, I head to my favorite bookstore, the Ninth Street Book Shop, which is right downtown but is the farthest away.
It’s an independent store and tends to have a more eclectic mix of books.
Well, when I heard Borders was putting itself up for sale and that Barnes & Noble is considering buying its competitor, I immediately thought this would be good news for Jack and Gemma Buckley, who own the Ninth Street Book Shop.
I was wrong.
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