When the Better Business Bureau Can’t Help”I am going to report you to the Better Business Bureau (BBB),” is a phrase often uttered by consumers who feel they are being taken advantage of by a company. However, I am not so sure that the BBB can be as helpful as consumers want to believe. I discovered this when I tried to report a magazine company for falsely representing themselves and their policies, never delivering my subscriptions, and still charging me for them. I sent this claim to the BBB only after sending several letters to the company and trying to contact them
by phone in order to resolve the situation. This is what the BBB suggests, trying to contact the company with which you are having a disbute in order to try and solve the problem. However, after no response on the companies part, I filed my complaint with the BBB. I received an email from the BBB that the company had disbuted my claim and that if I wished I could submit a rebuttal. Otherwise the case was resolved in the magazine’s favor. Resolved in their favor simply because they made a rebuttal to my claim? Of course the company was going to make a rebuttal. I found this ridiculous, but not as ridiculous as what happened next. I did indeed file a rebuttal because the company was lieing in their response to my claim. However, the response I got from the BBB suprised me. They stated that they were sorry but the company had stood by their rebuttal. The BBB also stated that they could not force this or any company to resolve a dispute, but only worked to try and get a resolution that could be agreed on by all. But if the company refused to work with the consumer, then there was nothing further that could be done. The BBB said that they would create a file for this company and include this information.
Oct
27