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      AN INVESTIGATIVE NEWS SERIES
    ON THE STANDARDS AND PRACTICES   
    OF THE BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU

          START WITH TRUTH


  V 1.1  April 2009

PART FOUR:  LOS ANGELES BBB --  THE COMPLAINT PROCESS

This is the fourth of a ten part investigative report into the standards and practices of the Better Business Bureau of the Southland, Inc., here-in-after referred to as the LA BBB.  This ten part report is the result of months of research, interviews, and information supplied or confirmed by a highly placed LA BBB employee of long standing who has requested confidentiality.

THE ANATOMY OF A COMPLAINT PART 1
A DISSECTION OF THE COMPLAINT HANDLING PROCESS OF THE LOS ANGELES BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU

In our first three parts of bbbRoundup we covered possible reasons behind the National Better Business Bureau (CBBB) rolling out their controversial Letter Grade system, which got its start in the Los Angeles Better Business Bureau office.   The BBB positions itself as a not-for-profit enterprise working to protect the consumer.  As such they are in the public spotlight and by definition, they must be held accountable to a higher standard.  This means even a hint of impropriety is not acceptable.  We believe we have shown more than a hint of impropriety behind the CBBB’s decision to adopt the Los Angeles Better Business Bureau Letter Grade policy on a national level in our first three parts of this series.  In case you missed it you can catch up here.  Background, Part One, Part Two, Part Three.

Now we will turn our attention to the complaint process by dissecting the anatomy of how a complaint is received, reviewed, and judged.  We will learn that there is much room for error in the process, with a great likelihood of no due process available to the small business.  We will also see that the complaint process is an integral part of the telemarketing process, as practiced by the Los Angeles Better Business Bureau, a misuse of public trust that has the potential and elements to grow far wider and deeper.  We will also show, in a future article that the complaint process is one of the most weighted grading categories in the BBB algorithm. We believe that the complaint process, as practiced under the existing standards and practices of the Better Business Bureau, when used in conjunction with the Letter Grade system is a far greater impropriety than any uncovered previously; as always, we ask you to be the judge…

In both the initial Los Angeles BBB grading algorithm and the ‘tweaked’ version currently mandated by the CBBB, complaints are the single biggest factor in determining the grade a business receives yet there is no standardization of how complaints are handled, displayed or explained.  As recently profiled by George Gombossy of the Hartford Courant, the CBBB is being very aggressive in forcing all regional offices to employ the standardized Letter Grade system.  One wonders why there is no similar directive on how complaints are handled, displayed or explained by the various regional BBB offices.  Here is a comparison of how different BBB regional offices choose to display and explain the complaints they have on file against similar businesses (newspapers) in the six largest cities in the U.S.
CHICAGO BBB COMPLAINT DISPLAY
Chicago Better Business Bureau Complaints
PHILADELHIA BBB COMPLAINT DISLAY
Philadelphia BBB complaints
LOS ANGELES BBB COMPLAINT DISPLAY
Los Angeles Better Business Bureau Complaints
 PHOENIX BBB COMPLAINT DISPLAY
PHOENIX Better Business Bureau complaints
HOUSTON BBB COMPLAINT DISLAY
Houston BBB Complaint Display
NEW YORK BBB COMPLAINT DISPLAY
NEW YORK BBB complaints
This alarming inconsistency is only the beginning of the inadequacies of the Better Business Bureau’s handling of the complaint process.   Let’s start at the beginning…

Complaints arrive at the Los Angeles Better Business Bureau in many ways:  some come by fax, others by mail, some are delivered in person at branch offices, a number of them come from over the phone, but the majority of them are received via the Internet.  In all, the Los Angeles Better Business Bureau receives over 1000 complaints a week, with approximately 800 of these received via the Internet.  What happens next should give the reader pause.

If the complaint comes in by any means other than the Internet, it is handled by the Los Angeles Better Business Bureau’s Customer Services Group.  Numbering approximately 25 people, this group will take down, condense and sort the complaints by severity before entering them into the system.  This group is also responsible for other duties including dealing with phone, written and faxed requests for the BBB report on businesses and giving out advice to consumers on how to handle certain transactions.  On the other hand, if the complaint comes in via the Internet, it is handled by the Web Services Group.  Numbering approximately six people, this group is charged with processing, filtering and matching up the complaints with the business they were filed with before entering the system.  This group also handles Internet based follow ups and rebuttals in the complaint process.  Therefore, the average BBB employee working in the non-Internet complaint group handles an average of 8 complaints a week, while their counterpart in the Internet complaint group averages more than 130 complaints per week.  By way of contrast, the average BBB telemarketer closes 5 new member deals a week.

Most alarming in this complaint intake process is there is no standard operating procedure or clear cut guidelines on how to classify, categorize or handle the complaint in the first place.  Again, reasonable men can make the reasonable assumption that what might constitute a complaint issue that strongly impacts one company, might easily be of no significance to another company, simply by luck of the draw in which employee, on which day, handles the complaint intake process. 
NEXT: ANATOMY OF A COMPLAINT CONTINUED.
We’ve already seen that the complaint intake process at the Los Angeles Better Business Bureau is a hit-or-miss proposition; now we turn our attention to what happens next in the complaint process: how businesses are notified of complaints, the potential for favoritism towards BBB members in this process, and the lack of due process throughout.

Editor's note:  Neither I or this website have a problem with the Better Business Bureau.  Indeed, there is a need for a consumer advocacy group that the public can turn to, and in most cases, the Better Business Bureau fulfills this role adequately.  What we do have a problem with is the BBB's "A-F" grading system.  It is demonstratively biased, based on hearsay, weighted in favor of dues paying members and offers no recourse when the BBB makes an error.  It is obvious the Better Business Bureau does not now, nor ever will have, the resources to fully investigate the four million businesses in their database, much less grade them with any sense of accuracy.  It's an impossible job, and to think otherwise is a mistake that the BBB should acknowledge so they can get back to their reason for existence--protecting the consumer.  There's an old saying, "who will watch the watchers" and it applies here as the BBB has set themselves up to be above the law.  We are simply here to help the Better Business Bureau do a better job so that they may properly serve the consumer, the business community and themselves.
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 Previous Articles About the Better Business Bureau of the Southland, Inc. (LA BBB)
background  part one  part two part three