The BBB is the pre-internet version of Yelp…
“That’s a really nice business you have there. It’d be a pity if you started getting a lot of negative reviews. Why not pay us to ensure that doesn’t happen?”
Came here to say this. The BBB is not the good guy in this scenario. It’s basically extortion.
The BBB is a bullshit company just like J. D. Power and Associates.
Bbb is just yelp for old farts. Same business plan of threatening business with shitty reviews if you don’t pay for their protection plan.
Exactly this! I worked for a plumbing company years ago and my old boss told us that businesses pay for their high ratings. Like your company can have a decent rating but if you pay $10k, BBB will list it as a much higher or perfect rating.
Like you said, it’s Yelp for old farts - except those farts pay for high ratings. It’s also pretend power for the consumer, I’ve been threatened with a BBB report at nearly every customer service job I’ve had. It’s just something old people yell about when they don’t get their way, and since learning about how it really works those threats were met with a ‘go on then’ smile.
Okay everyone here hates the BBB and I’m wondering what I missed. My only experience with them has been that they helped me get an insurance company to do the right thing. And it worked perfectly.
it’s not that they’re useless, it’s that they’re self-serving and parasitic. actually providing a service is incidental at best to lining their pockets.
In my situation, I went from hopelessly being screwed out of hundreds of dollars to having that cash in hand because the insurance company felt consequences coming. I still haven’t been told what the BBB does that’s so horrible. I’m genuinely curious. I understand they can do good and bad. I’m asking specifically about the bad.
‘the bad’ is that they shake companies down and give them bad ratings not based on how they treat consumers, but how they treat the BBB. meaning if they don’t pay up and make other concessions to let the BBB twist their arm, they get bad grades.
Ok. What are they paying? Is it a yearly fee or something?
And what other concessions?
it scales with size. local companies with more than just a few employees can expect to pay four digits a year. looking at their website they even have a fee to apply lol (‘may be waived in some regions’, meaning it’s charged anywhere it’s legal to charge an application fee)
other concessions such as in this post’s title, they have to agree to handle customer complaints within BBB’s terms (the specifics of which i’m not privy to).
the reason they really strike a nerve in autistic online communities though is that they’ve committed the cardinal sin of offering a rating service where the rating isn’t really about them, the consumers, but how good they are to the BBB. so does an F grade mean they have terrible customer service and a history of fraud or does it mean they wouldn’t fork out for a membership? maybe bucees is an ass backward business of hucksters but the rating doesn’t actually indicate that.
Thanks for this. I get it now. I think my opinion is now that it’s overall a good thing we have BBB against big companies, but they’re also themselves sort of shady and probably treat small businesses like trash pretty often.
Basically, any complaint made against you is an opportunity for the BBB to sell you a membership.
The argument is that if you don’t buy a membership, then complaints against you tend to substantiated, and your response to those complaints is deemed inadequate. If you do buy a membership, then the complaints against you are generally unsubstantiated, and your responses are exceptional.
That definitely makes sense. I appreciate the explanation. I wonder if there’s actually evidence of this being how it goes. Since again, my only experience with them is they made an insurance company pay what they owed me.
They basically have a glorified mob protection racket going.
Consumers make complaints about a business. That business then receives rating on their site. This rating puts that business on a list (either a list of businesses already paying them, or a list of businesses to extort for money in exchange for a better rating).
The businesses that are already paying them get a phone call or an email etc about how their rating has dipped and they can raise it by doing X or paying X. The businesses not already paying them only get the second offer. Pay X and we will raise your rating.
The rating has no legal standing. It doesn’t mean anything except in the court of public opinion.
What I don’t totally get is how a business can be punished by not being a member. In the recent past a local company closed shop and took my prepayments with them without a peep. On BBB they weren’t a member and the website explicitly said that is why I could not submit a complaint against them. So some of the hatred of BBB may be based on incorrect info, namely that you cannot as a business opt out of BBB. This scummy company seemed to have no issue at all opting out. And there was no rating posted.
Things may have changed but you used to be able to make complaints about a business regardless of whether they were a member. The main problem is that those complaints wouldn’t be public because the BBB wouldn’t post a profile for non-member businesses.
That may have changed because of legal pressure. I don’t know what their requirements for making a business a member are and I wonder if you could have registered the business and then made your complaint and walked away. If you can do that, that’s even more problematic but I don’t know that for sure. My parents and grandparents always swore by The BBB. But my experience with it is exactly that it’s basically a mob protection racket.
I don’t feel like researching it now, but I’ll keep this in mind for the future. Thanks for this response.
When i was younger i thought they were a public institution. Then i learned they are a private corporation beholden only to themselves. Companies basically pay for good ratings.
That may be true to a large extent, but in my case, they paid me (justifiable so) to reverse a bad rating.
Proto-Yelp
From a consumer perspective they are okay and can be helpful.
From a business perspective they use their position to coerce companies into giving them money to expunge both real and perceived mistakes. Which is a very sketchy practice.
I got an email from the BBB once regarding where I work.
They straight up said, we have you listed as C rating. Sign up for the $x plan for a B rating, $xx for an A, or $xxx for a Super AAA Preferred Business.
Maybe it meant something at some point, but not anymore.
Good for them. BBB is predatory af.
BBB is a pay to clean up your business name business model, fuck them.
Yelp for boomers.
I’ll never understand what’s so damn fascinating about an oversized gas station.
Sorry, clean bathrooms and food aren’t enough to convince me the fandom is warranted. But to the people that like it: you do you.
I think it really boils down to people tend to only visit it on road trips / vacations that already have a magical aura around them. You’re excited, on vacation, but you’ve been driving for a few hours and decide to take a stop a Bucky’s to get gas, stretch your legs, enjoy the nice amenities, and get some entertainment and cheap snacks.
It’s unique and has lots of things that are fun to gawk at for a few minutes while you’re on a road trip. Random nicknacks nobody would ever buy, but are fun to browse. Tons of prepped food, fountain drinks, a huge coffee station, etc… Something for everyone to have a good time while taking a break from driving for 15 minutes. And nice bathrooms are a huge benefit when you’ve been on the road dodging needles at every other gas station toilet.
Literally “they have nice bathrooms!!” And “look at this junk and snacks you can buy”. Those things don’t do it for you???
It’s like Walmart fucked a Chevron station. People like that, somehow.
lol well at least they can pass the low bar of cleaning their bathrooms I guess
Their bathrooms are so clean you can eat Beaver Nuggets off the floor. Wait, those aren’t beaver nuggets?
Seriously though their bathrooms are incredibly clean and they have artwork displayed in them.
There are a lot of places out there which don’t do that.
Exactly. The bathrooms are fine at those. But as you said, that’s a low bar (even if admittedly, many gas stations do not measure up)
Thanks, they’re building one of these environmental nightmares near me and I don’t get it, but I don’t own a giant ass truck and eat brisket for lunch in my car so maybe I’m not the guy to ask.
My condolences on your new “neighbor” I’d say maybe one day we’ll understand, but no. I don’t want to lol
It isn’t about the gas. It is about the stellar food they sell. Their handmade jerky, their nuts, their sandwiches, their wall of drinks. They sell a bunch of useless junk too which is a shame, but some people are into that.
I went for the first time the other day, I was quite pleased with how clean their bathrooms were. Employees seemed somewhat happy too. The place is definitely an affront to God with how big it is though.
Employees seemed somewhat happy too.
They pay legitimately good wages for the markets they are in. However, they also know they are paying good wages, so they make the employees earn every single penny. I understand that it’s more stressful and tiring than an average retail job, but as Don Draper would say, “That’s what the money’s for!” In reality, it almost certainly depends on the individual managers and whether the store is hitting targets.
The one I went to in Texas was hiring cashiers for 80k/y and managers for 120k/y. They definitely pay well.
heard good things about buc-ee’s, but an F from bbb is my favorite
Who cares? The owners of Buc-ee’s are conservative pieces of shit. Fuck them.
Don’t they pay their employees really well though?
Yes, but they also extract every penny of value from them. Minimum legal time for breaks, no visible tattoos, cell phones turned off, and broad manager discretion about things like having a stool at checkout. Apparently they are very upfront about it in interviews, at least, but they know they’re often the highest-paying employer for miles around, and they leverage that to the hilt.
