You didn't need to be a chess grandmaster to see how this will play out. You barely even need to see one move ahead. What moron at BBB OK'd this? How incompetent is the rest of their organization?
Really incompetent in the last complaint I filed with them. Just basically threw it out without communicating why. When I called to ask why, no call back. Looks like these guys are on the way down - they used to respond competently and quickly to consumer inputs.
Looking at timing and tactics - its possible they are recently taking a page from Yelp - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Business_Bureau#Criticis... - sad.
We first wrote the BBB, who resolved the matter when the head office of my landlord responded to us that "we had misunderstood the situation". Regardless of their wording, they require a $100 fee to terminate tenancy.
We decided that letting our tenancy lapse and have the extra 30 days to move. We moved out on the 18th, planned to clean on the next friday like the 26th. We found our landlord had entered our property without permission and allowed contractors in (who trashed the carpet by pouring a gallon of solvent out) and told us they intended to charge us for the damages.
We contacted the BBB again, whilst taking the matter past the local office to the companies legal department. The BBB never even registered our second complaint, stating the matter was already resolved. We got the issue resolved by dealing with their legal department and threatening to haul them in front of small claims court and the landlord and tenancy board (and we had not only an admission of illegal entry on their part, but also photographic evidence over a week of illegal entries), and then one of their lawyers apparently drove down to the local office to yell at the staff.
My impression of the BBB is not good. Here in ontario the threat of the BBB is a lot weaker than threatening the consumer protection act.
Consumers are not the customer of the BBB. Businesses are. All else proceeds from that.
Yeah, it will all blow over in a week or two because Fee Fighters is relatively small. A few more people will find out how sleazy the BBB is, but not enough to actually impact the BBB.
Having been in the room with PR people during (supposed) crises in the past: every single one of them would tell you not to do what BBB just did here.
Where those that are rapidly becoming elderly, grew up in a generation that had to rely on these data aggregation and trust business entities. As those people become less and less of a consumer force via attrition, entities like the BBB in their current form will cease to exist. I think they sense it and are selling that last thing that they had (their credibility) in the death throws. All efforts to adapt their model has thus-far failed.
I think Google is actually the most poised to solve this problem at the moment, and I'm interested/excited to see how the Trusted Stores thing they announced today http://www.google.com/trustedstores/ plays out. Certainly a step in the right direction.
To the extent it allows Google users to interact directly, perhaps. To the extent it demands any (non-development) support from Google staff, "forgetaboutit".
(To clarify, I can sign in and update the listing all I want. It shows correctly on that page. Access the Places listing while not signed in, however, and they are, months later, STILL listed as being at their old address.)
On the other hand, when your business is corrupt to the point that it was investigated for pay-to-play practices by a third party, well, completely expected.
I don't think anyone at the BBB is thinking about the outcome; rather they're protecting their (stupid) business model.