Better Business Bureau ratings depend on whether the company pays a membership fee to them!

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) is a nonprofit organization focused on advancing trust in the marketplace. Made up of many smaller organizations, the BBB collects and publishes free business reliability reviews on over 4 million organizations. They receive over 100 million requests for these reviews from consumers each year. They also handles nearly 1 million disputes against businesses by consumers.

While the very point of the BBB is to remain neutral in their reviews and in handling these disputes, there have been complaints about bias. In 2010, 20/20 investigated and made two fake companies. Each received an A+ rating once they had paid the BBB membership fee. They also found that some business owners were told that the only way to improve their rating was to pay a fee.

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