Is this a deliberate attack from "customer"

BBB given misinformation on purpose?

[Sunshyn]

I just decided to check our status with the BBB because we never did get any from a spiteful customer who returned a destroyed product and decided to throw threats of reporting it to the BBB along with her personal and childish insults. I mentioned that person here before because her claims of being mistreated were all for complaints which actually showed us as being more responsive and going well beyond what was required of us (like refunding her in full despite our policy about returns of abused goods).

Interestingly enough, I found an unsatisfactory "due to an unresolved complaint" on a company which was spelled just off of our name, with a street address just off of ours (misspelled just enough that no correspondence there would reach us), and a phone number exactly one digit off of ours. I know for sure that no such company exists but it's close enough that anyone looking for us would find that. So I'm wondering if this is how baseless attacks are conducted through the BBB when the customer is well aware that they have no real complaint and what could be done about it since it isn't exactly our company name and address.

[luckychucky]

The BBB's a joke anyway. It's all an illusion. They exist in a vacuum, they're useless, pointless, toothless...let it go, it doesn't matter. The BBB is a total irrelevancy.

[jsinger]

BBB's have been losing membership for years according to a recent article.

We're brick/mortar. I quit our local BBB many years ago when I saw that it was mostly going after tiny local (and powerless) merchants such as those conducting too-long Going Out of Business Sales. Big deal! Our local chapter seemed to wage perpetual battle years ago against oriental rug stores, while large national firms were rarely criticized.

BBBs are an anachronism...a vestige of clubby small town retailing from 100 years ago. Not effective in today's litigious and far more complex business world.

[luckychucky]

Let's say you're an irate, slightly deranged and irrational consumer, and you feel you've been cheated. You're fuming mad but you feel powerless, frustrated. You call your local District Attorney's office. After a morning spent fruitlessly being transferred from bureaucrat voiceMail to bureaucrat voiceMail, you finally reach that harried live person who wearily informs you their department receives thousands of such complaints every month, and unfortunately can't help you. 'Is there nothing I can do?', you whine in melodramatic despair. 'Call the BBB', he says.

The BBB faxes you a form. You fill it out. The BBB informs you your complaint is outside their jurisdiction but they will keep it on file. The merchant is sent a fotoCopy of your rant, rolls his eyes up in his head and chuckles: 'Ah, I remember that loony." File gathers dust in some black hole corner of the universe where light neither enters nor escapes.

BBB makes another cold-call to sell their worthless onsite approval seals.

[Bubba Scruggs]

I used to be a store trainer for a national franchise chain and would watch these BBB salesmen swoop in on each new franchisee trying to scare them into a membership or risk their new business failing. If the franchisee tried saying something like "well, let me think about it" they would get a real hard sell response about not being back in the area for some time and they'd risk this and that in the meantime so they better just sign up now.

I've known people to call the BBB when upset with a particular business, but does anyone call them before they ever do business with someone? I think most consumers think of them as a government body and think the complaints might actually do something, not just be filed away somewhere.

To the original poster, don't sweat it.

[GaryK]

The BBB here in Miami went out of business years ago so you can't even check with them first, much less complain to them later. These days the BBB is about as useful as the over-clocked electric tooth brush demonstrated on The Screen Savers television show last week! ;)