But the system can also hand out grades in what seems to be a haphazard, unfair, or outright absurd fashion. What he found was that the accredited businesses — even those that get numerous complaints — very often received higher grades than unaccredited companies with spotless complaint records.
But how often are complaints truly resolved? The BBB brags that it handled nearly one million complaints about businesses last year. How much time can BBB staffers devote to each of these grievances? Perhaps a few minutes? There is more than one incentive to make complaints go away and not damage business grades. This scenario works out well for businesses, which can maintain their good BBB grades and see their annual dues as money well spent:.
Errors seem to abound at the Better Business Bureau. As reported by an anonymous blogger the BBB also awarded an A minus rating to a non-existent sushi restaurant in Santa Ana, California and an A plus to a skinhead, neo-Nazi web site called Stormfront. Terri Hartman, the manager of a Los Angeles antique fixtures store, Liz's Antique Hardware, was told only a payment could change her grade, based on one old complaint that had already been resolved.
Hartman then read off her credit card number and the next business day the C grade was replaced with an A plus, and the one complaint was wiped off the record. In a second case, Carmen Tellez, the owner of a company that provides clowns for parties was also told she had to pay to fix her C- grade, based on a two-year old complaint that she says had already been resolved. Cox said the examples provided by ABC News were violations of sales policy and not a standard way of doing business.
In his demand letter to the BBB, the Connecticut attorney general said, "I am deeply concerned that certain BBB practices threaten its reputation and effectiveness as a reliable resource for consumers.
As a result, its rivals -- such as Yelp and Google Reviews -- have taken off. And, it doesn't hurt that Google is the largest search engine in the world by market share. Still, our team continues to use the Better Business Bureau. After reading what our experience is with the BBB, you may want to consider relying on it as well. What I've found is that the benefits we've received from maintaining membership have outweighed the expense when we've leveraged it correctly.
So, at least for the foreseeable future, I see the Better Business Bureau as a good use of money from our budget. SEO is a complicated matter. First, Google reportedly does its rankings based in part on how valuable and relevant the information is.
Second, sites may get classified because they develop content that is authoritative on the topic area. Third, the writing should generally be easy for not only humans, but also Google bots to read.
Meaning: if you think that you'd like to join the BBB or another organization because it will help you with your SEO rankings, that is probably not a good enough reason. You may get a bit of an increase in rankings because BBB links can redirect to your site. But it's probably not enough to make a material difference in your search engine ranking results.
Despite my first point, although the BBB is not the only game in town, I've found that the public still looks to it when they want to see the reputation of a business. We have hundreds of BBB reviews. What's more, we have been able to close on new opportunities because prospects have come to us and said they read them.
So, from a business lead development standpoint, the BBB accreditation doesn't hurt. In fact, it can help.
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