BBB Under Scrutiny

Link: http://www.bbbroundup.com

bbbRoundup turns one year old today. We thought we'd take some time to reflect on the past year.

In January of 2009 the Better Business Bureau rolled out their new Letter Grading System on a national scale. The media outcry was predictable. Short lived criticism before moving on to the next story. This reporter thought the story had legs, and that's when bbbRoundup was born.

Originally, this website was designed to house a ten part investigative report on the Los Angeles Better Business Bureau. Quickly, the story grew to include the Better Business Bureau (CBBB and all the member BBB offices )itself. Recently, the story has grown to include the Canadian BBB. Here is some of what we uncovered in the past year.

- The Letter Grade System was conceived and tested by William Mitchell of the Los Angeles BBB before being adopted by the National BBB.

- The Los Angeles BBB has patent rights on their letter grade algorithm.

- The Los Angeles BBB generates more revenues than any other local office, and by a large margin.

- The Letter Grade System of the BBB has been shown to be completely ridiculous on multiple occasions.

- The BBB makes judgments on businesses they know nothing about.

- The BBB is not a member of the Better Business Bureau

- If you are in certain businesses, you can do no better than an "F" grade.

- Graded by their own system, the BBB earns an "F" grade.

- The next William Mitchell project is TrustLink, now being tested by the Los Angeles BBB and five other regional BBB offices. It is setup as a for profit corporation and owned by the Los Angeles BBB (William Mitchell) and the other five participating regional BBB offices. There is a lot of prime space on the Los Angeles BBB website, a not-for-profit corporation, given to TrustLink. This comes real close to conflict of interest.

- The type of business the Better Business Bureau operates as is a boiler room telemarketing company that sells memberships and grades. (Yes, you do get a better grade if you pay to join the BBB ). They have made clear by their actions that they have no interest in protecting the consumer or playing the role of a consumer advocacy organization. It makes one wonder if they really qualify for their not-for-profit tax status.

- The complaint system which is the "prime feature" of the BBB Letter Grade System is seriously flawed. There are too many reports of favoritism shown members in the complaint process. Non-members have reported multiple cases of their responses to complaints getting mislaid by the BBB. The BBB does not factor in the size of business, or number of transactions, when assigning a business' complaint score.

- Multiple websites have sprung up decrying the tactics used by the BBB to allegedly extort membership dues from businesses.

- This reporter remains mystified as to why the Better Business Bureau chooses to employ the Tiger Woods' PR strategy when faced with these news stories. Is the BBB so arrogant they think we will all go away?

- Law suits are appearing with more frequency with cases in the last year in Los Angeles (on appeal of anti-SLAPP); North Carolina (ruled against BBB in out of court settlement); Minnesota (just going to court). There are also increased rumblings of multiple class action suits against the BBB.

We look forward to providing continued coverage of the "Investigation of the Better Business Bureau," both our own stories and those that represent the best of my colleagues across North America.