Does our A+ BBB Rating Mean Anything?

Did you know we’re a better business? Like we’re actually accredited by the Better Business Bureau (BBB)?  Pretty awesome, right? Not so much because what do they do?  When I was a child, I thought they were part of the government like the Department of Labor protecting worker rights.  Thank you California public education for not teaching me that bureau also refers to non-government organizations and a chest of drawers. The BBB is a consumer watchdog group that accredits businesses and fights corporate corruption… at least it used to. Nowadays, we have Yelp, Angie’s List, and dictionary.com.

The BBB still has its place. I still check it for companies that cold call me for advertising, but I’m checking that no one has reported a scam on BBB, Yelp, Angie’s List, Ripoff Report, Glassdoor, or any other websites out there.  Internet Lesson 1: If you’re trading currency for goods and services, search the company name and review to see what comes up. Click here for an example.  The internet will tell you who to trust! Take everything with a grain of salt, anyone can publish to the internet, even me! (That’s lesson 2)

Over a year ago, the Los Angeles BBB chapter got a bad review from the national BBB.  So bad in fact, they kicked the BBB of Southland out of the national BBB. Turns out they were selling good ratings, and that even Hamas had an A+ rating! Yeah, that Hamas. The businesses served by the Southland chapter have been absorbed into other chapters until Southland is re-established.  We’re now part of the Silicon Valley chapter #Exotic! We worked 14 years to maintain that A+ rating and now… well it seems pretty worthless.  The best part, the former BBB-Southland people started their own Business Consumer Alliance… so if you trust an organization that sold their top seats, check out BCA or Congress.

BBB re-accredited all of the businesses in our area, but is it still worth it to be on the BBB?  To give you an idea, we got 11 people to come to our website from the BBB. On Yelp, we got 7 people.  The kicker, it took 52 times longer for those 11 from BBB people than from Yelp. This is how society is changing though.  We’d rather hear from a collective’s anecdotal experience than a chest of drawer’s aggregated rating. It’s cool though, we’ve got good ratings everywhere.  Check out Yelp, Angie’s List, and SolarReviews.com. When your business does good work, society will reward with success, growth, and reviews… somewhere in the world.