Better Business Bureau

[ems154]

I am considering joining the Better Business Bureau. Would this increase my referral base? Increase business? Worth the investment?

 

[Scottwax]

:nixweiss I've never bothered and quite frankly, I am put off by their marketing attempts.



I get a call one day from them, saying it was very important to call them back. I knew I didn't have any unhappy customers but there is another detailing shop with a similar name whose owner I know writes bad checks (I get calls occasionally since the business names are similar and people making the calls are too stupid to notice the difference). Anyway, I call back and it was a damn sales pitch they threw at me. They said it was for a limited time and they'd only charge me $400 to join. I told them I wasn't interested and she said if I didn't join in the next 30 days, they would withdraw their offer to join.



6 months later, they called back, same tactic. :hairpull

 

[Intercooled]

Yeah I'm not too impressed with them either. I've had them tell me that they want me to join their book of contractors and that I have been selected out of 200 other conrtactors in the area for my good business practices. I'm a very small company and doubt very much that they have even heard of me. If you ask me .......they lie alot. They have made a name for themselves ( a positive one) but I really doubt they will bring any business to you.

I woudl reccomend a small business group,Rotary club,etc.

 

[sbkang]

When I had a consulting business they would call a couple times a year and pitch me, but they could never quite explain why it was in my interest to join. At some point, I figured out how their system works and came to the conclusion that joining would be a negative.



They will only record and report complaints against their members, but not against non-members. So the upside was that if people called to check on us, the BBB would report no complaints if that was the case. The downside is they would report the existence of complaints if we had any recorded. If we weren't a member, they would just report we were not a member. They never managed to make a case that we would get more business through referrals. So essentially I was being asked to spend a few hundred $$ so they could track complaints. It was a pretty easy decision from there.