The Ripoff Report, a.k.a. Bad Business Bureau, allows members of the public to submit their complaints. They also have the following stated policy:
Our policy is to never remove reports, rebuttals or updates.
However, Ripoff Report offers businesses that have negative reports filed about them the opportunity to participate in their Corporate Advocacy Program. If the business pays the fee to participate in this program, then the pages about that business will have an explanation inserted about the business's participation in the program. An exapmle of such is reproduced, in part, below:
Customers of [Business name] can feel safe, confident & secure when doing business with [Business name]. [Business name] 100% commitment to member satisfaction [and to fulfilling such claims as the business makes] . Commitment to Rip-off Report Corporate Advocacy Business Remediation & Customer Satisfaction Program, ..A program that benefits the consumer, assures them of complete satisfaction and confidence.UPDATE: Rip-off Report Investigation - [Business name] recognized by Rip-off Report Corporate Advocacy Business Remediation & Customer Program as a safe business service - [Business name] pledges to always resolve any issues. Clients can feel safe doing business with [Business name].
Arguably, this would be perfectly fine, if the offending businesses had actually changed their business practices to address the complaints that had been raised. But there seems to be little evidence that this has happened. Not only does Ripoff Report make difficult to find the complaints that have been posted, they mislead the public to believe these companies are using the most upstanding business practices imaginable, when in all likelihood, the reasons for the original complaints still exist.
There's a lot of sites that complain about Ripoff Report, but the majority of them appear to be cases of "sour grapes" ... essentially unhappy that complaints have been posted about their business and that Ripoff Report won't remove them, but will help to reduce the impact if they participate in the Ripoff Report's own "Business Advocacy Program". Here's one that's complaining about the fact that Ripoff Report will do this: http://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/sci.math/2009-05/msg02293.html
The Ripoff Report site is highly critical of the Better Business Bureau, claiming, in essence, that a business can get a good rating by the BBB only if it pays to be a BBB member. So now it seems that Ripoff Report is doing about the same thing.
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Revision r1.2 - 16 May 2010 - 07:40 by EliMantel
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