Milliamp BBB Review (Complaints and Rants)

Milliamp BBB Reviews (and Renews) Membership

Milliamp just renewed its’ membership with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) for the third year in a row, but does so with mixed emotions. We have been in business for five years now, and we joined the BBB because we believe having the BBB logo on our website helps gives customers peace of mind knowing that they are doing business with a legitimate company.

But most people do not realize that, while the BBB does a cursory overview of a business before it ranks them, the BBB does not actually perform a physical inspection of a company, or perform any true due diligence to determine if a company is trustworthy or not.

In fact, lots of people believe the BBB is some kind of US-government-sanctioned entity that interviews businesses, speaks with hundreds of their customers, performs a credit check, and then meticulously ranks each business. Few (if any) people really know that the BBB uses an algorithm, or perhaps better defined, a grading scale, when it comes to judging where a business ranks on its’ A to F chart.

Last time I checked (and I rarely check), Milliamp LTD had an A ranking with the BBB:

milliamp.com BBB

That’s great, I guess, but the method derived to get to that grade is quite mysterious. Just like you cannot really give a person a credit rating if they don’t have or use credit cards so you can see if they pay off their charges in a timely manner, the BBB has difficulty ranking a company if there are no complaints, wait, I mean submissions.

I did a bit of research into this for this post during my recent vacation (yeah, I know, lame), and I learned that your BBB grade is also based on others in your industry: if you have a few rotten apples as competitors, and their grades with the BBB suck, and you have decent responses to your complaints, your grade will likely go up. It’s not quite as simplistic as that, there are several criteria, including how long you have been in business compared to your peers, but you get the point.

See, in order to get a grade with the BBB, it actually helps if people submit a complaint with the BBB, and then you end up resolving the issue with the customer in a timely manner. If you resolve the issue to the customers’ satisfaction, there’s a good likelihood that your grade will move in a positive direction. Bumble your response with the customer, or let’s say you don’t get a notification that you even have a complaint with the BBB and it goes unresolved, and your grade will drift to the negative (in addition to getting an email from the BBB, they actually call now, too, which is a nice touch and helps reduce the chance of not knowing that there is an outstanding issue that needs to be addressed).

There is something else that most people do not realize: to display the Milliamp BBB logo on your site and Milliamp BBB stickers on your door, you need to pony up for your membership. We just paid $500 to be able to use the BBB seal on our site and shop for another year. Still worth it, I suppose, largely because of the conclusion most people draw about your business when a company is a member of the Better Business Bureau, but as time goes on, I find myself continuously evaluating the need for such bluster.

It is also argued that businesses that have paid to be a member of the Better Business Bureau actually get a grade weight in their favor, giving them a leg up over other businesses in their vertical that are not members of the organization.

There is even a grass-roots movement to “out” the BBB – these guys at bbbroundup.com have an undeniable distaste for the Better Business Bureau, and it seems their mantra is to help get the word out that a ranking from the BBB is not a real indication of the trustworthiness of a business. Companies that have A+ ratings can still rip you off, and companies with F grades can provide superior service.

I suppose having the BBB is better than nothing for consumers, but it needs to be viewed by shoppers as just one factor to consider when deciding to do business with a company, and not the be-all end-all decision point for shoppers.

This is one of the reasons why I like to post my personal contact information on our website – if I have a customer that is upset, or someone that is on the fence about doing business with my company and needs some re-assurance, I want them to call me so we can figure it out.

Unbeknownst to most people, submitting a complaint to the BBB might just boost the companies’ ranking that you are attempting to negatively influence.

One thing that frustrates me about the BBB is that there is no way for a customer to submit a compliment about a business on their website – it is for submitting a complaint or nothing.

The only way that I am aware to get a complement on the BBB site from a customer is to first have them submit a complaint, and then resolve it to their satisfaction, and hope that the customer details your response and confirms that the matter has been resolved.

Another thing I do not like about the current grading scale is that the BBB has no idea of how many total customers a business has. Knowing this number, and then viewing the number of complaints submitted, would greatly help this organization gain some credibility with its’ ranking equation. But one must quickly see that the BBB would have to rely on the business itself for these numbers, and that could easily be abused, so I can see why they have opted to exclude such a measurement.

I know a few (disrespected and respected) companies in our repair field that simply want no part of the BBB – they would rather let their BBB rankings fall where they may, and hope customers never head to the Better Business Bureau website, or they hope that the consumer is enlightened and understands the subjective nature of the BBB ranking, the flaws of which were mentioned here. By taking this path, they also avoid having to pay the aforementioned annual fee to be a part of the BBB.org.

In conclusion, I urge customers searching to know more about Milliamp LTD to read the hundreds of customer testimonials (which include actual order numbers to help prove their authenticity) that are on our website, or give us a call or email with your questions or help with a particular concern that you have, and then evaluate our response. And please do not forget that you always have my ear, too.

What do you think about the BBB? Have you found the BBB to be useful in any way?

Best regards,

Anthony Magnabosco, Owner
Milliamp LTD

Tagged as: Algorithm, Bbb Logo, Better Business Bureau, Credit Cards, Credit Check, Credit Rating, Cursory Overview, Customers Satisfaction, Doing Business, Due Diligence, Grading Scale, Last Time, Legitimate Company, Likelihood, Milliamp, Mind Knowing That, Mixed Emotions, Peace Of Mind, People, Rotten Apples, Submissions, Timely Manner