Dish no longer BBB Member

[STL]

Direct has over 31,000 complaints. Makes Dish look kind of tame....

And yet DirecTV has a "B" rating...

Maybe DirecTV does more to resolve the complaints that DISH. Charlie sure hasn't done anything to resolved the issue with TurboHD that he created!

[DishSubLA]

the bbb is just a cover for extortion. what good does the bbb actually do for the merchant? its probably better to have no grade with the bbb then to have an F grade. why should dish pay a 3rd party to give people an extra way to complain?

Because if a business is small enough and is reputable and does good work, the numbers will look VERY good on the BBB site. However, any company as large as Dish (meaning # of customers) or Direct TV, or any other company that has millions upon millions of customers is going to have at least tens of thousands of complaint, many "unresolved" because the customer has just canceled service. Most people won't take into account that ten of thousands is an extremely low percentage of of the total customers. Tens of thousands is just too high a number that just looks bad.

Also, many bad companies become members of BBB just to make the claim to customers and put the sticker on their website or truck. Too many people just assume that a BBB member is very highly rated when, in fact, that company has a poor grade, but just not bad enough to be kicked out of the BBB.

But many smaller companies look really great on BBB and I have used the BBB site and it is an extremely helpful and accurate tool for consumers. I have to say that BBB hit it on the head with all the various contractors and other tradespeople and companies I've interviewed over the years, both the trouble ones and the highly rated ones.

[DishSubLA]

This is humorous, but I have to agree; complaining to the BBB has never gotten me anywhere when I'm had disputes with merchants. Very overrated.

That's because the BBB can't control a companies decisions to do the wrong thing. The BBB works best a tool of measurement, not an organization to get the results a consumer demands. For that, call your local TV news station. Many bad companies become members of BBB so that can make the claim to customers, and the customer somehow thinks that by just being a member, the company must be highly rated.

[Claude Greiner]

I quit the BBB last year, and told them to go stick it when they came to me looking for their annual $500 membership fee.

I signed up with them that if someone wanted to get DISH Network I would be one of their recommended dealers for all their referals, instead I paid $500 to be the DISH Network complaint center for South East Michigan for an entire year.

Every week after I joined I got letters from angry customers who had some sort of problem with their Dish. I would look them up, find out they where not my customer and then send the complaint back to them and tell them to forward it to Dish directly in Colorado.

It got to the point I called their office and told them to just forward all the complaints to Dish, and out of about 200 or so complaints none of them where from my customers...

They said it was not possible to do it, so when I continued to get the letters in the mail I didn't even bother to open them or write a letter back with an explanation. I just filed them away in my filing cabinet....

Then they started with the phone calls, wanting to know the status of so and so customer letter, then it was the certified letters... Its my company policy they I refuse to sign for certified mail, if you want to know I received something, send it to me regular mail with delivery confirmation. Anyways they got all their certified letters returned

So the next week, I get a visit from one of their reps and they come and say they are here to take away my BBB membership because im not servicing my customers. I don't say a word, go to my front door peel off the little BBB sticker and take down the sign they sent me and hand it back to the lady.

Then we started talking and I explained the situation to here, and I gave her back all the letters and we got the issue resolved and put the sticker back on my door and put the sign back up.

But never again, the BBB is powerless to resolve these disputes, and when you got so many disputes it aint even worth trying to fight them

[whatchel1]

I quit the BBB last year, and told them to go stick it when they came to me looking for their annual $500 membership fee.

When I had a sat biz back in C-band & early DBS days. I found out that they want the yearly fee just to be listed. I also found out they do nothing for their "client" I decided not to bother.

[sampatterson]

IMO, BBB has lost its value as the internet has grown.

[KAB]

I know someone who got laid off from our local BBB, along with three others. Becoming a thing of the past.

[Hall]

DISH is no saint but these numbers, based on their customer base, seem small in comparison.

For the record, with ~12 million customers and 13 thousand complaints, that "affects" a whopping 0.001% of their customer base. So for anyone who copies and pastes raw numbers from a website, it really needs to be in context !

[Pen15head]

my question is how many customers actually use the bbb to research a company prior to getting their service versus the amount of customers who only use the bbb to file a complaint.

as claude pointed out, your paying for a membership to a complaint dept that will right away want to side with the customer. they want you to go extra and beyond your original agreement with the customer to satisfy there every little whim.

perhaps there should be a BCB (better customer bureau). here businesses can compile a data base of pain in the butt customers. let them weed out the ones that will cost them more then they can profit off them.

[dfd]

For the record, with ~12 million customers and 13 thousand complaints, that "affects" a whopping 0.001% of their customer base. So for anyone who copies and pastes raw numbers from a website, it really needs to be in context !

100 * (13,000) / (12,000,000) = .11%