The Truth About the Better Business Bureau

Disclaimer: This article contains my opinion of what happened in factual situations involving myself and my brother. It is my opinion, my viewpoint and my interpretation of the events. People and businesses are named.

The Better Businesses Bureau (BBB) does do good sometimes, if there are a lot of people complaining. But if it is an individual or 1 or 2 families the BBB ,nearly always, in my opinion, takes the side of the business. In short, the BBB is an anti-consumer organization.

I remember 2 situations, one involving me and the other my brother. I had a truck in a mechanics shop at the time. They told me "let us take a look at", they started work on it without letting me know what was wrong with it or giving me an estimate. I had arranged to make payments, and eventually they gave me that estimate. I went to pay on it regularly. It was supposed to be $800 . One day I went in to make my final payment and they said I owed them more. At first I kept paying them, hoping the next payment would be my final payment. Then I got tired an filed a complaint with the BBB against the Pflugerville Auto and Machine Shop.

What the BBB says is that the business is suppose to call you in order to resolve the problem. I received that call but the mechanic sure had no interest in even trying to solve the problem. He basically criticized me for daring to file a complaint with the BBB with whom "we are in good standing". Ethics, integrity, the truth didn't matter to him, but their standing with BBB sure did.

My brother had supposedly signed a piece of paper with a so called Certified Public Accountant (CPA) by the name of Karyn Ward. My brother was in the hospital and in the mail there was a letter from Karyn Ward's lawyers threatening to sue my brother for $150 if he didn't pay a bill that I think he did not really owe. Basically what Mrs. Ward did was unethically charge my brother $150 for giving him 3 sheets of paper, one he had signed and at the bottom of one in small print, barely visible, was this quote "whether we do the work or not". This wasn't a gym membership where you sign up for a year and don't attend what you are paying for and some gyms will let you out of such a contract if need be. He found out that he could do the work on his own for free and he did.

I filed a complaint with the BBB in the Dallas, Texas area since that is where Karyn Ward's office was.. I pointed out this little fact to the BBB and they took Karyn Ward's side claiming that Karyn Ward had provided proof and I had not. That was a lie!

The founder of the Rip Off Report claims (if I remember correctly) that the BBB does not leave complaints on long enough. And frankly, I think the Rip Off Report is a better place to go when you have a complaint against a business. If it's not a problem the members will tell you. You are still not going to get a solution, most likely, but you will get your complaint heard.

In my Opinion the BBB doesn't care how businesses do their business unless they are ripping off lots of people. They seem to claim that they want businesses to do business in a better way. In my opinion that is not true. It is my opinion that the BBB is an anti consumer organization and no ethical business that understands that their business comes from their customers would join the BBB.