The Better Business Bureau is going old school.
Many Fairfield County businesses overnight found themselves assigned letter grades for their business practices with consumers, after the Better Business Bureau scrapped its former two-tiered system that assigned ratings of satisfactory or unsatisfactory.
The bureau is a network of local organizations that attempts to pressure businesses into maintaining sound practices with their customers. The Connecticut Better Business Bureau has its headquarters in Wallingford.
The change will give consumers more detailed information about a particular business”™s marketplace behavior, according to Paulette Hotton Scarpetti, president of the Connecticut bureau.
The new formula is based on 16 elements the bureau attempts to verify, including:
- the type of business and its business model;
- how long the business has been operating;
- whether the business has appropriate competency licensing;
- a company”™s complaint history, including the volume and seriousness of complaints and how many go unanswered or unresolved;
- government actions against the business;
- any advertising issues found by the bureau;
- the extent to which the bureau is able to develop a clear understanding of the business;
- whether a company has honored mediation or arbitration commitments;
- whether the business has attained the bureau”™s accredited-business status; and
- whether the business has had that accreditation revoked.
The new ratings take into account also the bureau”™s general opinion as to whether businesses violate the law, misrepresent products and services, or are otherwise likely to have high levels of customer dissatisfaction. In cases where the bureau lacks information on a business, it does not grade that company.
Concurrently, the bureau issued a manifesto of standards for businesses to build trust with customers, including safeguarding privacy; responsiveness; and transparency and honesty in business practices.
“Consumers want more than marketing spin or a few comments about a business posted on the Internet, and rightly so, because given tough economic conditions they literally can”™t afford to make bad buying decisions,” said Steve Cox, a bureau spokesman.
Businesses can be searched on the www.bbb.com Web site by name, region and industry sector.
Two Fairfield County companies received recognition at the bureau”™s annual awards event last November, with Stamford-based Rocci”™s Asphalt Paving winning for excellence in customer education and Westport-based SunPorch Structures Inc. winning for excellence in responsible Web-site marketing.
