The BBB & Me!

By L. Leitgeb

June 2010

Who or what is the Better Business Bureau (BBB)? The Better Business Bureau explains the following on their website:

We are NOT a government agency.

This much is true. The problem is that they act like a government agency. Just like government, they take advantage of a perceived image from the public that they are there to serve the people. Nothing can be further from the truth.

If you go to their website, www.BBB.org, you will be able to look up numerous businesses across America and to see the rating the BBB assigns those businesses. In theory, they provide an excellent service being the consumer reports of businesses themselves instead of the products. In reality, wherever there is power, there will be corruption. And without oversight, the corruption goes unchecked.

Today many people are waking up and discovering that something is very wrong with our country. We are witnessing the strengthening patriot movement and the birth of the tea party movement. Many people are seeing our politicians and our bureaucracies as the self-serving entities that they are. Government no longer holds the aura or the respect with its constituents that it once did.

Politicians are showing themselves to be no longer willing or able to serve their constituents. The decisions they make are frequently contrary to the will of their voter base. And the further removed they are from their election cycle, the further they are removed from their constituents.

Government agencies/bureaucracies are even further removed from the citizens they allegedly serve. Most bureaucrats are appointed, not elected. This means they are never held accountable for their decisions except by the politicians themselves. And we have already decided that politicians frequently have agendas that are contrary the will of their constituents.

Ronald Reagan referred to the ever expanding role of bureaucracies as the fourth branch of government. It is a branch, he insisted, that is only accountable to themselves, never the people.

The result is a fourth branch … : a vast federal bureaucracy that's now being imitated in too many states and too many cities, a bureaucracy of enormous power which determines policy to a greater extent than any of us realize, very possibly to a greater extent than our own elected representatives. And it can't be removed from office by our votes. [www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ronaldreaganhillsdalecollege.htm]

After my own experiences with the BBB and after reading about so many other people's experiences, I realized that the BBB is just like the many government agencies that have lost touch with the original purpose for which they were created.

As stated above, the BBB is not part of government. They are not elected. They are not even regulated by an elected body. There is no one over or under them to hold them accountable for their decisions.

And because they are not government, they do not have the ability to search your business. They cannot serve a search warrant. They cannot obtain a search warrant. Their authority is limited to ratting a local business out to the government. This is a procedure that they have learned to use to empower themselves.

Under certain businesses, the BBB will state for their evaluation the following: “Failure to obtain a required competency license.” And “On [this date] BBB confirmed that the business had not obtained a necessary license from LLR, Labor, License, and Regulation.” (Note that while the BBB cites this as a reason why certain businesses have a low or failing rating, they never list the exact licenses they feel are required. By not making a substantive statement, the BBB makes it difficult for injured parties to prove libel or slander.)

The BBB's focus on licensing begs the question, “Should the government be involved in licensing?” The irony here is that it is the BBB's behavior regarding licenses that testifies why government itself cannot be trusted to administer licenses.

Do you actually believe that because a business has a license issued by government that this business is going to give you a better product? While it may show that the owner has passed some minimal level of competency, it will not prove that a business will always be competent.

Will a license show that the business owner is willing to work hard to achieve the desired product or service? Will it prove that the business owner is not subject to the same greed that plagues every single human being? Will it prove that the company's personnel will not cheat? The answer to all three questions is “NO!”

What a license does prove is that the business owner has paid the government for the right to make money. This means that the business owner's life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness is dependent on the whims of a bureaucrat. This is the very definition of a communistic and/or fascist regime. This is not the America our older generation has come to love and trust.

Again note that the BBB is not actually a government agency. They are simply a business like any other business. And like any other business, they are there to make money.

And how do they make their money? Many people are testifying that the BBB has learned to use Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton strong arm techniques: they have learned to effectively use extortion. Search the Internet and you will find many testimonies of people who have turned down the BBB's offer to become one of their members for a fee. Immediately afterwards the businesses these people owned were rated below average. (E.g. : www.theripoffreport.com, www.bbbroundup.com.)

How else do you explain the disparity in the ratings they give businesses? How else do you explain why a bank is given an 'A' rating as it goes belly up? Search the Internet and you will see many testimonies to this effect.

The only thing substantive that an 'A' rating from the BBB proves is that the business owner belongs to the 'good ol' boys club,' a member of the BBB.

For all of its shortcomings, when you deal with our American government, there are certain rights you can fall back on. But when you deal with the Better Business Bureau, there are none of the rights we have grown accustomed to as Americans. There is no concept of innocent until proven guilty. There is no possibility of pleading the fifth. There is no right to not incriminate oneself. There is no burden of proof placed on the prosecuting attorney. There is no jury. There is only the opinion of the BBB and their members, and from their opinions come their rating of local businesses.

When people think that the opinions of the BBB holds weight, the BBB begins to act just like a bureaucratic regulatory agency. And just like a bureaucratic regulatory agency, its opinions may not be based on truth, but instead is based on personal vendettas or personal grabs for power.

And where do they get their power? They have their power because people believe that they have power. And they play their part well, pretending to serve people. Their motto is to build trust. In time, we give them respect because we don't know any better, but the fact is that their power base is based on smoke and mirrors. In effect, the Better Business Bureau is the bully on the block that everyone needs to pay homage to in order to avoid being beat up.

Ronald Reagan best summarized the threat bureaucracies (and the BBB) pose to our freedoms.

“... it doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government hold the power of life and death over that business or property? Such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.”