About BBB

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1912. Its goal is to foster a fair and effective marketplace where buyers and sellers can trust one another. It is made up of more than 106 independent local organizations across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and is coordinated by the International Association of Better Business Bureaus (IABBB), which is based in Arlington, Virginia[1]. The BBB is not affiliated with any government agency; it is an industry self-regulatory organization. To avoid bias, the BBB does not recommend or endorse any specific business, product, or service[2]. The BBB collects and reports information about business reliability, warns the public about fraud involving consumers and businesses, provides information on market practices, and serves as a trust-building intermediary between consumers and businesses to help resolve disputes. [Source: Wiki]

You can use a BBB complaint to help resolve disputes with merchants, especially when the business is not responding proactively. For lesser-known merchants, BBB complaints can also help you judge whether a business is reliable and reduce the hassle of placing an order only to have the seller disappear. Although I have not personally filed a BBB complaint, based on friends’ experiences and many cases I’ve seen online, BBB is still very reliable. Once it gets involved, businesses usually become much more responsive, and sometimes the outcome may even favor the consumer.

Most importantly, BBB is completely free to use. You just need to create an account on the website. So I strongly recommend using this tool when you have a dispute to protect your legitimate rights and interests. The website is also easy to remember:

If you are in mainland China, it looks like you may need a VPN to use it. If you run into a dispute with a merchant while shopping internationally and cannot communicate effectively, you can also try resolving it through BBB. If your English is not strong, you can simply use translation software to translate your complaint into English.

How to Use BBB to File a Complaint Against a Business

Find the business

Open the BBB homepage and search for the business directly to check its reputation and complaint history. One thing to keep in mind: if you want to file a complaint through BBB, it is usually better to choose the company’s headquarters listing.

For example, if you search for Amazon, you might first see a California address pop up, possibly for some service center.

But after clicking in, it may automatically redirect you to the Seattle headquarters information. If it does not, I recommend manually searching for the headquarters.

Submit your information

Click File a Complaint to get started. Using Amazon as an example, you must meet certain conditions before you can file. For example, you cannot complain simply because you regret a purchase or think you paid too much. Complaints involving discrimination, matters already submitted to court, employee complaints, and similar issues are also excluded. In short, this process is for consumer issues arising from transactions with the business.

You can then begin the formal complaint process. The first step is to fill in your address and basic information.

Next, enter the specific details of your complaint, such as when the dispute occurred, the transaction date, amount, service involved, order number, and the reason for the dispute. You can also upload screenshots of your order and your conversations with customer service. I recommend putting more sensitive information in the upload section. However, if you mention an order number in the written complaint, the system will automatically hide it when the complaint is displayed later, so there is no need to worry too much.

It is worth taking a moment to choose your desired resolution carefully, since that helps the business address your complaint more directly.

Then review all the information and submit it. After submission, you will receive a case number. You can then wait for BBB to forward the complaint to the business so it can respond. At that point, someone from the company with relatively high authority will often contact you, because they also want to resolve the dispute as quickly as possible.

What If BBB Does Not Work?

To repeat: BBB is only a nongovernmental organization and does not have the power to force a business to resolve your issue. So it is entirely possible that the business may not fix the problem or may not contact you at all. This often happens with old troublemakers like PayPal, as well as very small merchants that do not care about their BBB rating. Although BBB says it may lower their rating, the business may simply not care.

In that case, you can move to the next option: a dispute, meaning you ask your credit card issuer, the party that ultimately paid the merchant, to step in. They will first freeze the payment and then contact the merchant. If the merchant never responds, congratulations—you win automatically. Once you get your money back, the dispute itself becomes much less important.

Of course, the next step could also be small claims court, depending on how complicated the dispute is.

Other Features

Besides filing complaints, you can also check business information and reviews. On a business’s page, you can view reviews from other users. People who go out of their way to leave a review are often dissatisfied, so ratings there tend to be low. For example, many of Amazon’s reviews are mainly about shipping-related issues. You can also submit your own review.

You can also view complaints submitted by others and see how those cases were handled. For example, the screenshot below shows a case involving a hacked Amazon account. It appears Amazon did not actively resolve the issue at first, but after the complaint was filed, Amazon proactively contacted the customer and solved the problem.

In addition, you can also check the business’s detailed information and contact details.