Better Business Bureau (BBB) | Pay to Play Case Study

I have been trying to prove that BBB doesn’t have an actual algorithm and that its pay to play game with BBB. Some of you might remember 2010 scandal around Hamas accreditation and “A-” rating by California BBB.

Under pressure of scandal, BBB expelled its biggest office but it clearly showed a few things first: BBB can be corrupt. It has a huge conflict of interest in taking money from businesses it ranks, and it didn’t have algorithm at that time, it was “human” decision to give business “A-“.  For the last two years we have been calling council of BBB, local offices in Texas, Minnesota and Colorado and after talking to many high ranked authorities at BBB we are 100% convinced in one thing: BBB doesn’t have “Machine algorithm to rate business.  When any profile is in question (we have been questioning profiles of Home Advisor, Angies list and few insurance companies) BBB authorities always have answer within line: “We have 16 factors and we do look at consumer reviews”

Let’s Compare HomeAdvisor (Colorado based company managed by Colorado BBB) and My Pillow (Minnesota based company managed by Minnesota BBB).  HA was recently downgraded in 2018 from “A+” to an “A-” BBB rating.  MP has an “F” rating after being downgraded in 2016 from an “A+” BBB rating .  We compared  My Pillow and HomeAdvisor Ratings head to head:  MP Has 473 reviews averaging 3.1 stars. HA: 734 reviews averaging 1.1 star.

In last 3 years on BBB:  MP Has received 250 customer complaints with 60 in last 12 months (1.15 per week average) . HA Has received 1376 reviews, 543 in the last 12 months (1.5 per day average).  When we asked BBB why Home Advisor has rating in the “A” range they always answered: we look at a size of the company, number of employees and transactions.  Let’s compare two companies: HA has 2000 employees, and MP has 1500 employee’s. Considering the fact that Home advisor has many locations and many BBB profiles its fair to say that Colorado location has less than 1500 employees since other offices in Indianapolis, New York and other states also share 2000 employee estimate, so for the sake of “Employee comparison” its fair to say they are pretty even.  Lets compare volume: MP has sold over 42 million pillows!!! They received 250 complaints and owner replied to all of them.  Home Advisor Has 158,000 contractors they sell Home Owners information too. We don’t know the numbers but since HA has been only BBB accredited since 2015 we don’t believe its more than 42 million transactions….

Government actions: Home Advisor has been sued by state of California (Mentioned on BBB website) . Home Advisor is under pending Class Action law suit they are tried to dismissed but it’s moving forward. BBB Doesn’t mention class action at all!  BBB also has been mentioned in Class Action Law suit documents:

The documents state “150 former Employee , who almost exclusively dealt with complaints that had been filed with the BBB, confirmed that HomeAdvisor could retain its positive rating as long as it could show that it affirmatively reached out to complainants in an attempt to resolve the issue(s), but that a resolution was not required to close a complaint.”

According to this testimony that as long as HA “Just Reply” they rating will not be affected even if resolution is not reached. I have to give My Pillow responses credit here because they actually “resolved” many of their complaints and their responses are more reasonable in our opinion.

Lastly lets look at complaint summary:

One more note: Home Advisor is a paying customer of BBB, My Pillow is not. We have confirmed it with both Bureaus but BBB of Colorado or council of BBB wouldn’t disclose how much Home Advisor is paying BBB for their services, they just say it’s based on volume and number of complaints.

Another important note: since Roofing Insights made last video exposing HomeAdvisor complaints on BBB they stopped publishing complaints and as early as July 26th 2018 they simply have a message next to complaint:

“Complaint Details UnavailableSummary”. We strongly believe (but we have no proof at this time) that the Better Business Bureau is helping Home Advisor with class action law suit and hiding complaints from users so lawyers and public cannot use it against Home Advisor, while keeping them “A-” rated and “trusted by BBB company.

We found “Complaint details unavailable” dated as far back as 5/15/2018 at the end of October 2018! According to Colorado BBB managing profile, they are “Overwhelmed and working on it as fast as they can”.  They stopped publishing complaints after Roofing insights videos reading complaints were published on YouTube.  I believe it was an attempt of “Damage Control” on BBB of Colorado to protect reputation of paying client “HomeAdvisor”.