Technology has helped BBB resolve problems

Ah, the Internet. It has changed our world at the BBB, as it has for most businesses, and it has both increased and decreased our workload in ways I never imagined.

In 2008, people requested more than 400,000 individual company reports from our BBB office. That’s up over 100,000 from the previous year. More than 95 percent of those reports were found at bbb.org, with just a small number delivered over the phone. This is good news, because if customers check before they buy, the number of complaints we receive should decrease correspondingly.

Why? If, before buying a car, you narrow the selection down to a couple of dealers, and then check their company reports with us before making your final decision, chances are you will not end up buying from a dealer with a high complaint volume, a pattern of complaints, or someone who simply does not respond to them. The same strategy works for business as varied as accountants and waterproofing services. You can get a list of BBB-accredited businesses by type of business from our Web site, and last year more than 34,000 people did just that.

The good news is our complaints did drop. Last year we closed 5,221 complaints locally, down slightly from 2007. The bad news is our resolution rate was not quite as good, and I attribute that to an increase in companies who have gone out of business. It is hard to resolve an issue when one of the parties is nowhere to be found.

We resolved 69 percent of the complaints, unless the business involved a BBB-accredited business – those had a 100 percent resolution rate.

Locally, the top three issues we dealt with in 2008 were:

1. Phony check scams.

2. Fraudulent work-at-home offers.

3. Sweepstakes and lottery scams.

Seems folks still want to believe there is a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. There is not and never has been. But as times get tough, more people want to believe they really did win the Canadian Lottery, even though they never entered it – if it were to exist.

As the year went on, we saw some disturbing trends:

1. Customers looking for ways to get out of a purchase or receive a price reduction without any basis.

2. Tempers flaring much faster and people making more unreasonable demands.

As businesses cut back and do more with less, the last thing they need is the outrageous customer. Solving problems with reasonable people is a pleasure, but there are few things as draining as dealing with someone you know you will never be able to please. If you feel this challenge is happening more often, you’re not alone.

If you need help bringing reality to a situation, that is what we do at the BBB. It is not always pretty, as some people resist being held accountable.

The biggest change at the BBB this year is the way we report on businesses. After years of testing a computer algorithm that crunches data and assigns grades to businesses, the majority of BBBs across the country have launched the A-to-F letter grade system.

Now it is easier to see how a company measures up to its competition. Rather than the old “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory” rating, you will see a grade, like a report card. I encourage business owners to take a look at their companies’ grades, their competition’s grades and – businesses and consumers alike – the grade of anyone they don’t have prior experience with. Simply visit BBB.org, plug in your ZIP code and click “Check out a business or charity.”

A few things to remember:

1. We report on both BBB-accredited and non-accredited businesses.

2. If we have no report, you can ask us to develop one.

3. If we have no report, that sometimes is a bad sign.

4. BBB.org has information on companies all over the U.S. and Canada.

5. You can inquire anonymously, but we don’t accept anonymous complaints.

Correction

In my last column I wrote about price gouging and how the recent snowfall affected commerce in our area. It brought me a lot of positive comments. One thing I do want to clear up, though, is my praise for the business that held snowblower prices steady. The company I mentioned was Country Home Supply, but the seller that honored its advertised price was Country Homes Power. I took the name from an e-mail and did not make sure I had it correct. So there you have the rest of the snowblower story.