Learn more about a company with the Better Business Bureau!

If you doubt in your prospective employee or don’t want to send your hard-earned money to unknown charity, there is a simple and efficient way to verify them. Take advantage of the Better Business Bureau! It has kept records on the trustworthiness of businesses and charities for over 80 years.

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) collects information on more than 3 million private and public, profit and nonprofit, accredited and non-accredited, online and offline organizations and publish the data in reliability reports and Wise Giving guides.

Nowadays there are 128 Better Business Bureau offices in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. About 400,000 North American businesses are accredited by the BBB. They proudly display the BBB logo in their windows because it is proved that consumers tend to buy from a BBB-accredited business. 

The main task of the BBB is to provide information to people about businesses and charities in their regions. You can find out which companies have been accredited by BBB, which companies respond to consumers’ complaints in a fair and timely fashion and which companies tend to ignore or mistreat their customers.

The BBB refrains from recommending or endorsing any business, product or service. It just provides information, so the choice is yours. In this way, it is the opposite of a chamber of commerce, which aim is to promote local businesses.

If a consumer is not satisfied with how he was treated by a local business, he can go online or call his local BBB and file a complaint. It will be forwarded to the company within two business days. Historically, over 70% of complaints filed through the BBB are resolved.

If a company wants to be accredited by its local BBB, it needs to comply with a set of ethic standards, or in other words they should treat the customers in a fair and honest manner. However, keep in mind that if a business is not accredited, it doesn't mean that it was rejected by the BBB. Accreditation is voluntary, so business owners may refuse to apply. 

The BBB is a private non-profit organization. It is financially supported by member dues and corporate partnerships. Accredited companies pay annual dues which start from $200 a year depending on the size of the organization. 

Nowadays all Better Business Bureau’s reports are available online, so the most convenient way to find the information about a business or a charity in your area is to visit the website of your local BBB. If you don’t know its URL, you can find this information on BBB.org. Typically, you can search accredited and non-accredited businesses by name, location, phone number or website. 

Once you find the business or charity you need, you can get either a reliability report or a Wise Giving guide. Reliability reports provide information about businesses. They contain business profile, contact information, the status and length of the BBB accreditation, a BBB rating (they can vary), history of complains, etc. 

Wise Giving guide provides information about national charities. It indicates whether a charity is accredited by the BBB and detailed financial information. Wise Giving guide also compares each charity's behavior with the BBB's 20 Standards for Charity Accountability. If a charity doesn't comply with any of them, it will state which standards it doesn’t meet and why. 

According to researches, people check BBB reliability reports about 54 million times a year. Each year nearly a million of Americans and Canadians file complaints through their local BBBs to get help when they are mistreated. In fact, more American consumers are familiar with the BBB, a private organization, than with government regulatory agencies like the Federal Trade Commission.