By Randy Hutchinson
President of the BBB
Reprinted from The Commercial Appeal
If you asked ten random people on the street where they would go to file a complaint about a business, responses would include the FTC, their state Attorney General, or another federal or state regulator. But a high percentage would say the BBB.
Many of our services and programs are intended to help consumers avoid having to file a complaint about a business. They include our reports on member and non-member companies that help consumers learn how the business has treated customers in the past. BBB Accredited Businesses have committed to respond to customer complaints in a good-faith manner. Researching a company on bbb.org is easy and free.
Our BBB educates Mid-South consumers on making good buying decisions and avoiding scams through almost 1,000 media interviews, speeches to all kinds of groups, and newspaper columns annually.
When we get a complaint, we work with the consumer and business to try to resolve it to the satisfaction of both parties. The text of the complaint and the business’ response is displayed in our report on the business to help other consumers make a decision on whether to deal with it.
But some consumers don’t want the BBB’s help in resolving a problem. They simply want to relay their experience with the business – good or bad. They can file a customer review that is also displayed in the business’ report along with any response the business submits. Many are complimentary of the business’ products and/or service.
There are many other websites that publish reviews from consumers about businesses in a specific industry or a variety of industries (few of them also handle complaints like the BBB). The degree to which they vet reviews to be sure there really was an interaction between the consumer and the business varies. Some reviews are legitimate, some positive reviews may be filed by employees or overseas content farms the business hires to fabricate glowing reviews for it, and some negative reviews may be filed by competitors. The FTC has landed on companies that only publish positive reviews on their own websites and/or threaten customers who file negative reviews on other websites, which is illegal.
We do our best to weed out bogus reviews before we publish them. Our process includes validating the email address or phone number of the reviewer and allowing the business to confirm an interaction with the reviewer and respond to the review.
We don’t accept anonymous reviews or reviews from consumers who were incentivized to file them, including having received a discount or gift in exchange for the review. The review has to be submitted by the consumer who had the marketplace interaction with the business (money changing hands isn’t a requirement) and the consumer can’t file a review and a complaint about the same transaction. We scrub reviews to eliminate inappropriate language and personally identifying information.
Unlike a complaint, businesses aren’t required to respond to a review. However, the fact that a company has gotten one or more complaints or negative reviews may be less important to prospective customers than how it handles the problem. We encourage businesses to respond to a negative review with their side of the story, and perhaps with a thank-you for a good one.