To BBB or not to BBB

[NathanNasby]

I had a funny instance happen once after a year of fighting with fender to repair or replace my Fender elec violin that was on warranty. After a long year of writing emails and calling fender reps with no resolution I finally emailed the Head office of the music store where I bought the instrument and told them I guess the only thing left to do was submit a complaint with the bbb. I got a note back saying "do what you feel you must... Does anyone really give a crap what the bbb says about a business?"

Oddly enough a week later I got the replacement part in the mail ! I laugh about it now, but I agree that I don't think the bbb holds much pull with the really large retail and online outlet mentality. I certainly have never looked up business with the bbb to see if I would deal with them !

Sounds like you made the right call to me!

[pboss]

..would it make a difference if they are BBB.org accredited?

Not at all. If I have any questions about the credibility of something, I'll do a web search. If I suspect something bad or a scam, I'll include those words in my search. And then, it's pretty easy to weed out the fake testimonials from the real ones. The Web of course is full of mis-info and dis-info mixed with the true info, but again, with a little bit of discernment, it becomes clear.

These days, the BBB is the people. No one cares anymore about the BBB, I guess except if you are building a case (legal or not) against someone and need some data, a BBB status may be something someone wants to add to their 'case'. Before other sources of referrals the BBB, founded in 1912, was probably really helpful for decades. People now look at Google and Yelp reviews. Those are worth a lot to a biz. Yelp has an algorithm that rates reviews, and is conservative in deciding which reviews are fake, or initiated by the business owner. Even the authentic ones get screened out by Yelp unfortunately, but if I were you, I would focus my efforts on those.

[coachdebra]

..would it make a difference if they are BBB.org accredited?

Not at all. If I have any questions about the credibility of something, I'll do a web search. If I suspect something bad or a scam, I'll include those words in my search. And then, it's pretty easy to weed out the fake testimonials from the real ones. The Web of course is full of mis-info and dis-info mixed with the true info, but again, with a little bit of discernment, it becomes clear.

These days, the BBB is the people. No one cares anymore about the BBB, I guess except if you are building a case (legal or not) against someone and need some data, a BBB status may be something someone wants to add to their 'case'. Before other sources of referrals the BBB, founded in 1912, was probably really helpful for decades. People now look at Google and Yelp reviews. Those are worth a lot to a biz. Yelp has an algorithm that rates reviews, and is conservative in deciding which reviews are fake, or initiated by the business owner. Even the authentic ones get screened out by Yelp unfortunately, but if I were you, I would focus my efforts on those.

You make a really good point - when BBB was created, the internet didn't exist and there really wasn't a centralized database of companies or any kind of customer rights organizations. Now, word of mouth is accessible to everyone via yelp, google reviews, facebook and twitter and the multitudes of websites devoted to scam busting.

So you could say that the role of the BBB has been crowd sourced!