sigh
I don’t understand the sweeping, absolute proclamations like Jackmannii’s and Dmarks’s.
Look, MOL says the BBB was ineffective in resolving a dispute with a bad vendor. Yet, an after-the-fact BBB review reveals the company had many complaints. So the BBB was an effective early warning sign had she them consulted before making a purchasing decision.
Heres another example: There is a large HVAC company in Cincinnati that has over 100 positive reviews on Google places. Yet the BBB has a rating of “F” with many complaints.
Why the discrepancy? Digging around reveals that many Google reviewers for that HVAC company also reviewed other exact same businesses-----many of which were hundreds of miles away from Cincinnati. Even more unlikely they seemed to review every high end auto dealer near Akron, a couple hundred miles away. It’s clear that their webmaster, or marketing firm has put up dozens of fraudulent positive reviews all over the internet, which Google harvests and posts on Google places. It’s fraud, plain and simple.
You can’t game the BBB system like that. I wouldn’t trust any source completely, but in this case the BBB is more accurate.
Given that the BBB site is easy, free, and fast, I think you’d be well served to take a quick look before making any large purchase. Would it be my only source? No. But could it potentially save me some heartache? heck yea.
BBB may not be the cat’s meow but its far from useless. It takes less than 2 minutes to pull up a company. (which is free, and you don’t have to register or sign up) Is 2 minutes a waste of time?