Truste

Is it worth the money?

[kris]

I need some opinions. We are looking at getting a truste logo put on our ecommcerce site. We already have a BBB and Verisign. Do you guys think a Truste logo on your site is worth the money?

[Robino]

It seems incredibly overpriced- IMO.

I looked into this a while back and it would have cost around $10K per year. That's money that could be spent on PPC or other marketing.

[luckychucky]

My bookkeeper gave me some great advice once. He said be really careful buying anything from someone who calls you first, from out of the blue. Over time it has proven to have been very wise counsel, especially every time I ignore it and realize how right he was.

BBB cold-called me. Sounded good so I signed up, then a few days later fought them to cancel and get my money back, after I had done the research I should have done beforehand... boy, did they resist before finally cancelling and refunding.

What does BBB do? Pretty much zilch. Whether or not you're a member, repeat: whether or not you're a member, all they do is tell a potential customer if you've had any complaints filed with them against you or not. And that's it. Wow. Oh yeah, and they collect, I forget- like $490 a year from you.

I was thoroughly disgusted after my interactions with BBB, they get really sleazy in their sales tactics if you really question their legitmacy during the pitch, which apparently no one ever does. In my opinion, The Better Business Bureau is nothing more than a dressed-up scam. The irony of it is just too bizarre. Don't take my word for it, just really do your homework before you dive in, OK? Don't fall for it. You don't need them. Project credibility through high quality products, a decent guarantee and return policy, excellent user interfaces/navigability, a strong privacy policy and good credit card verification. And tell BBB to go relieve themselves in their hat.

That's my $0.02

[SiLPHEED]

I don't think the BBB is a scam, I believe that it originated with a legitmate purpose of providing consumers with a mediator for problems with businesses, but they are not going to deal with every little complaint because they'd be overwhelmed. They step in mainly if the company receives a lot of similar complaints.

I signed up for the BBB online reliability program because it gives people a sense of security when shopping. After paying about $620 for the first year, I let my subscription run out but I did not remove the logo. They contacted me and asked me to renew, but here is the interesting part, they said that I did not have to pay them AND I could continue showing the BBB Online Reliability logo. So that's what I did.

SiL

[Direwolff]

If you read the guidelines for the use of these symbols you can see that they're simply trying to establish clarity on the data gathering and usage policies for your site visitors. Their symbols are a way to quickly convey to end-users that you're adhering to this.

My experience bas been that end-users don't really have a clue what these symbols mean (perhaps they understand the BBB a lil' better because of its physical world presence over the years). The way I've dealt w/this w/all of the sites I've worked with is to get them to outline their data usage policies clearly on their sites. In other words, follow the guidelines provided by these organizations, but don't subscribe to their services since it is indeed costly and not well recognized. All a visitor really wants to know is "what are you gonna do w/my info?", so answer that and that should take care of things.