The Better Business Bureau's Unusual Classification System

Accurate comparisons match like objects against each other. If the objects being compared are fundamentally different, the comparison’s findings are obviously  affected  and its credibility undermined.  

The Better Business Bureau’s current compliant classification system has just this problem. The  BBB's system  has extreme levls of  granularity  in some instances (they cover more than 3,800 complaint categories) , and in some cases scores entire industries against much smaller, specific sectors of other industries. This significantly impacts their findings. The BBB admits that  its complaint data isn’t intended to be  used for comparing one industry against another, and has even gone as far as notifying companies of  its system’s limitations in this regard. 

Let me explain why it's right in that regard, specifically looking at how wireless complaints are registered compared to other industries. The BBB separates complaint categories in such areas as auto-related services (95+ categories) and financial services (35+ categories), it chooses not to do the same with wireless. The BBB breaks the wireless-applicable complaints into just 5 categories (at the most). This means that the overwhelming majority of wireless–related complaints are lumped together, which significantly inflates wireless’ complaint figure. 

Using this system, the BBB data suggests that wireless is the most-complained-about industry – surely a dubious distinction – and one that simply isn’t deserved  and is an inaccurate perception.   

That said, even with the BBB’s unusual classification system, the number of complaints we’re talking about is relatively small. It’s about 1 complaint per 7,700 customers.  That’s a complaint rate of 0.0001.

Of course even one complaint is one too many, and wireless companies work tirelessly for their customers.  In fact, the BBB reports that wireless is highly successful at resolving most complaints, settling more than 9 of out every 10. 

The BBB complaint data is important to all businesses – and understandably so.  But one should be careful what conclusions are drawn from it based on its admitted incocnsitencies, and the system should be revamped to accurately classify and report all industries’ total complaints.