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this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2026
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Mildly Interesting
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What I don't totally get is how a business can be punished by not being a member. In the recent past a local company closed shop and took my prepayments with them without a peep. On BBB they weren't a member and the website explicitly said that is why I could not submit a complaint against them. So some of the hatred of BBB may be based on incorrect info, namely that you cannot as a business opt out of BBB. This scummy company seemed to have no issue at all opting out. And there was no rating posted.
Things may have changed but you used to be able to make complaints about a business regardless of whether they were a member. The main problem is that those complaints wouldn't be public because the BBB wouldn't post a profile for non-member businesses.
That may have changed because of legal pressure. I don't know what their requirements for making a business a member are and I wonder if you could have registered the business and then made your complaint and walked away. If you can do that, that's even more problematic but I don't know that for sure. My parents and grandparents always swore by The BBB. But my experience with it is exactly that it's basically a mob protection racket.
I don't feel like researching it now, but I'll keep this in mind for the future. Thanks for this response.