Are you a "BBB-accredited" business with the Better Business Bureau®?
What kind of reputation do you have?
Our company has been independently checked out and frequently recommended or cited as experts with such respected media organizations as the WALL STREET JOURNAL, FORTUNE Magazine, Lifetime Television, LAPTOP Magazine, SmartMoney.com, REDBOOK, ESSENCE and many other magazines and local newspapers, including our own local newspaper, the San Antonio Express News. These organizations frequently feature us as a “scam-free” resource and are all positive evaluations of our company that we didn’t have to pay for. We are the ONLY work at home-related company to have earned these impressive distinctions. Read more about our Media Coverage here!
We have also been members of our local Chamber of Commerce for approximately the past ten years. The Chamber of Commerce is an organization whose objectives and motives are transparent and honest and we are happy to support it.
Please Note: Our local Better Business Bureau® is the San Antonio Better Business Bureau® which is operated by the Better Business Bureau of Central and South Central Texas based in Austin, Texas. When we say "Better Business Bureau®" or "BBB®" in this information we're referring specifically to the those office(s) in particular.
If you’re going to use the Better Business Bureau® as a tool to evaluate whether or not you should do business with any company, including ours, we believe it is important that you educate yourself about the Better Business Bureau® first. Sadly, most consumers are very misled about the Better Business Bureau®.
Most consumers believe that if a company is “BBB®-Accredited” by the Better Business Bureau®, it is because they were checked out and found to be a good and reliable company by the Better Business Bureau®.
The truth is that “BBB®-Accredited” businesses are actually businesses that pay large sums of money to the Better Business Bureau® for the privilege of being “accredited” so you believe they are trustworthy. BBB® Members or “Accredited-Businesses” pay hundreds or thousands of dollars every year (up to $12,000 per year, depending on the size of their business according to some reports).
While the Better Business Bureau® claims to support honest advertising, ethical business practices and transparency, in actual practice they won’t even tell a prospective new member how much their fees are until they have highly sensitive information about the company first, such as their income.
One of the benefits that companies receive in exchange for paying those large fees, in addition to buying your trust, is that the Better Business Bureau® will help them resolve problems with their customers through arbitration in such a manner that protects the company from being sued by you, the consumer. If you, as a consumer, agree to arbitrate a dispute with a “BBB®-Accredited” business, you may actually unknowingly be giving up your right to sue the company in a court of law!
Why would a consumer TRUST a company that pays hundreds or thousands of dollars every year to have the Better Business Bureau® help protect them from consumers??
According to reports by business owners and employment listings on the internet, many businesses are actually “invited” to become “Accredited” by the Better Business Bureau® by sales people who are paid on commission and who have no idea whether a business is good or not when they call!
The Better Business Bureau® does expect you as a consumer to “trust” their “BBB®-Accredited” businesses, but the Better Business Bureau® doesn’t endorse its own “accredited” businesses itself. The Better Business Bureau® itself states: “BBB® accreditation does not mean that the business’ products or services have been evaluated or endorsed by the BBB®, or that the BBB® has made a determination as to the business’ product quality or competency in performing services.”
If the BBB® won’t endorse its own “accredited” businesses, maybe consumers shouldn’t either!
The Better Business Bureau® also expects consumers to believe that “BBB®-accredited” businesses are better than non-accredited businesses. They depend heavily on your willingness to believe this because, without the trust you place in their paid members, there would be no incentive for companies to pay money to the Better Business Bureau® and they would probably be out of business. (Yes, the Better Business Bureau® operates much like any other business, except that they are a nonprofit organization that does not pay taxes like most other small businesses.)
Like many good companies, our company has never applied for accreditation with the Better Business Bureau® or paid the fees associated with becoming accredited and we are not “BBB-Accredited”. We feel we have been greatly discriminated against as a result.
The Better Business Bureau® has denied it in the past, but we have found that companies that pay large fees to the Better Business Bureau® receive more favorable reports than companies, like ours, that do not pay. Unfortunately, it is you, the consumer, who is misled by Better Business Bureau® reports.
“BBB®-Accredited” businesses are required to meet BBB® Accreditation Standards, including the payment of the fees, and agree on paper to abide by certain business principles/procedures. Companies, like ours, that are willing to abide by the same principles/procedures are NOT welcome to become “Accredited” unless they pay large sums of money.
Unlike a credit bureau which will report good and bad credit equally, the Better Business Bureau®, who has the same power to help build or destroy any business at will and affect the livelihoods of all the families affected by the business, has a policy of reporting only negative information, which furthers their own cause. While the Better Business Bureau® does expect you to use their reporting services which may allow them to sell more memberships to more companies at higher prices, in our case, they have declined many opportunities, most sent to them by certified mail, to improve our report so that it would be more helpful to you as the person viewing the reports. We have asked, for example, to be allowed to provide proof of our independent media coverage and we have provided information about our business practices that they could have certified as accurate and included in our report. We have found over the past ten years that in most cases, the Better Business Bureau® won’t even answer such requests.
Most or all Better Business Bureaus® are independently owned and operated (and don’t pay taxes), but they are all affiliated with the CBBB®, Council of Better Business Bureaus®.
Better Business Bureau® Ratings
At the time of this writing, Connecticut’s Attorney General Blumenthal had begun investigating the Better Business Bureau® after discovering that a remodeling company who passed bad checks and took money for work they never completed was a “BBB®-accredited” business and was even given the esteemed “Torch” award by the Better Business Bureau® for its business ethics.
Better Business Bureau Investigation article 1
Better Business Bureau Investigation article 2
The Better Business Bureau® is also becoming the subject of an increasing number of criticisms and investigations which are available through internet searches. We are evaluating the information and have chosen not to link to it at this time, however, if this topic is of interest to you, we strongly recommend searching the internet for information about the Better Business Bureau®.
We have worked hard to try to encourage the Better Business Bureau® to publish a FAIR, ACCURATE and NON-MISLEADING report on our company. Doing so is of such importance to them that they won’t even answer our letters most, or all, of the time. We have cooperated with them in every way we know how, but it doesn’t seem to do us much good. Unfortunately, we have no choice but to defend ourselves here on the internet.
As a company that does NOT pay large sums of money to the Better Business Bureau® every year, we have had many problems with our reports in the past. There were derogatory remarks in our report, for example, about the fact that we do not have a public office and that we used a professional mailing service (the BBB® called it a “mail drop”) as our mailing address. We use a professional mailing service because our entire company works at home. We are unapologetic for that and our mailing address doesn’t affect the “reliability” of our customer experience in any way. We found that there were BBB® Members that used the same mailing address, but did not have negative remarks placed in their reports to scare off their customers, like we had. Of course, those companies paid a lot of money to the Better Business Bureau®. We do not pay. It is sad that the Better Business Bureau® has no accountability for its actions, and seems to be free to place any disparaging information it wishes into a report, whether it is true or not, misleading or not. In our case, we feel the worst crime is that every day they could be misleading consumers giving up their dream to have a work at home lifestyle that some parents really want for their children, a decision that impacts many lives in a huge, huge way.
We have tried to obtain and exchange information with the Better Business Bureau® concerning our current rating, which we feel is as absurd and as unfair as the ratings many other businesses also have that do not pay. There are many reports on the internet concerning this and you should read them. To date, the Better Business Bureau® has refused to join us in finding constructive solutions to ensure a more accurate report in fairness to us and to the benefit of consumers.
Our company had a non-unsatisfactory rating with the Better Business Bureau® for approximately ten years before the new rating system came out in January, 2009, at which time, even though we’re the same company, with the same excellent customer service and we handle issues exactly the same way, we were suddenly given an F rating.
Thousands of other companies also have poor ratings in the new system that appears to be designed to encourage even more companies to apply for Accreditation and PAY MONEY so they can have a better rating. There is one report on the internet that claims one Better Business Bureau® office alone increased its revenue by approximately $4,000,000.00, after switching to the A-F system.
McDonalds, the fast food company we all know and trust, also has an F rating… not for the nutritional value of the food, but because – despite the hundreds of millions of successful and honest transactions they have had with their customers, employees and vendors all over the globe, at the time of this writing (The BBB® will probably change it after this is published) McDonald’s had an “F” rating for refusing to answer one complaint, out of the millions of successful transactions they handle every day.
We would have liked to link to Better Business Bureau® pages that would have improved this information for you, but in the past when we’ve linked to the Better Business Bureau®, they demanded that we remove the links. We respect their request and do not link to them, however, we do find it odd that, as a nonprofit organization that is allowed to avoid paying taxes, they don’t allow links to their site.
About the Better Business Bureau® and working at home
The Better Business Bureau® was founded around 1912 and it appears that they have not changed their attitude toward working at home since that time.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor Work at home Report almost 21,000,000 million people in the U.S. worked at home in 2004 – legitimately – at least one day per week. Yet, although we were the first to create an HONEST home-based employment industry in 1996 and are still are the leader of our industry to this day, the Better Business Bureau® still cites our type of business as a “work at home company” – which the BBB® seems to regard as being similar to having leprosy (even though work at home complaints are not even in their top 10 any longer) and they heavily count this against us in our BBB® Rating. There are also critical articles on the internet that claim the Better Business Bureau® discriminates against online businesses, a notion that our company would tend to agree with.
Ironically, the company that pioneered the computer networks that enable so many people to work at home now, AT&T, has been a dues-paying member of the Better Business Bureau® since 1952 and enjoys an A+ rating, even though they have received over 8,000 complaints in the past three years. AT&T also reportedly employs approximately 250,000 people that work at home.
We hope that someday the Better Business Bureau®® will join the rest of us in the 21st century and understand that in these modern times people really do work at home!
It is true that there are still many “work at home” concerns on the internet, but it is a shame that the Better Business Bureau® continues to hurt families by scaring and misleading innocent consumers with outdated and biased information that is simply no longer accurate.
Twenty one million people that work at home legitimately can’t be wrong.
Questions or comments about our BBB® report? Had a bad experience with an "accredited" business?
We'd like to hear from you!! Please email us by clicking here.
"Better Business Bureau" and "BBB" are registered service marks of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, Inc. We are not members of the Better Business Bureau and by the use of "Better Business Bureau" or "BBB" herein we do not intend to suggest or imply any affiliation with or endorsement by any Better Business Bureau. To determine whether a company is a member of a Better Business Bureau, you should contact the Better Business Bureau serving the area closest to which the particular business is located.
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