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.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I don't feel like researching it now, but I'll keep this in mind for the future. Thanks for this response.