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AN INVESTIGATIVE NEWS SERIES ON THE STANDARDS AND PRACTICES OF THE BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU START WITH TRUTH |
| V 1.4 Feb 2010 | ||
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| TRUST
LINK. THE REAL STORY. PART TWO. |
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We ended part one
of our story on TrustLink with the following questions taken from the
BBB minutes of a March 31, 2009 meeting.
We'll do our best to answer these questions for the Better Business Bureau. To answer question "a" we offer the following visual evidence. Here's how Better Business Bureau report on Disneyland starts off. Note size and positioning of the TrustLink
banner (circled in red) in this screenshot from the LA BBB website.
 Compare that with the TrustLink report on
Disneyland. Note the smaller size and less desirable positioning.
 The question was who was driving traffic to whom. Clearly, the objective is to drive more traffic from the BBB to TrustLink, not the other way around. Both the BBB and TrustLink websites shown in the above screenshots fall into the realm of things Bill Mitchell, so this should come as no surprise. We thought we'd refine the question by finding out how much traffic are we talking about here. We used the services of compete.com to find out. Here's screenshots of our findings: Monthly traffic going to the Gang of Six
BBB Offices that are conducting the TrustLink experiment.
 Now, let's compare those figures to monthly traffic going to TrustLink itself.  Here's where it get's
interesting. We see that TrustLink is doing very well. It's
traffic trends are going up. It's already getting over 212,000
unique visitors each month which means in just about a year, TrustLink
has grown to 2/3rds the size of the the Gang of Six Better
Business Bureaus. We should be able to find more....
Where
the traffic to TrustLink.org is coming from
 What this means is that the Gang
of Six BBB sites (which represent around 10% of the total national BBB
web traffic) drives over 60,000 people a month to TrustLink.org.
The same cannot be said in reverse. The BBB does not show up in
the Compete referral statistics for TrustLink. That should answer
question "a."
Question "b" is tough to answer. We're working on it. Question "c" can only be speculated upon, but we feel our speculation is pretty accurate. First, can TrustLink.org be monetized? Answer, absolutely. Any website with a quarter of a million visitors a month can be monetized. The real question is what's brewing? Here's a few hints at the direction the brain trust for TrustLink is no doubt looking into.  In the Internet business, this is called lead generation and has great value. Hot, exclusive leads like T-Quote is designed to deliver go for $10-$25 each. Multiply this by the number of quotes and the money starts becoming interesting. Right now, the T-Quote feature is free, but one wonders how long that is going to last. Here's a screenshot of a portion of the
TrustLink.org home page
 The potential for product placement revenues generated throuhg the "Featured Company" or "Best of TrustLink" business would seem to attractive for this group of Better Business Bureaus to overlook entirely. Perhaps they will offer them as part of a package deal along with the business' BBB accreditation dues. To me the whole situation looks a lot like the fable of the scorpion and the frog...sooner or later, this whole thing is going to bite the BBB in the ass. You have TrustLink, a privately owned, for profit corporation. (Ownership is by the six participating Better Business Bureau offices, or as I refer to them, the Gang of Six BBBs. In the case of the Los Angeles Better Business Bureau, that means William G. Mitchell.)  Then you have the BBB (a
not-for-profit entity) that is essentially donating its goodwill, its
image, its reputation to establish TrustLink as an authoritative and
reputable brand. Finally, you have many obvious opportunities for
generating revenues from the TrustLink website in the hands of someone
(William G. Mitchell, the very gentleman who brought the BBB Letter
Grading System into being) who has a track record of jumping on such
income generating opportuntities. If and when that happens,
it will be interesting to see how the IRS would look at the Better
Business Bureaus not-for-profit tax status. The potential for
conflicts of interest also appear to be extremely high, something even
the national offices of the Better
Business Bureau acknowledged internally.
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| 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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