jd415
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2010–2014
8:43 · 297K views · Nov 13, 2010
An ABC 20/20 investigation into whether the Better Business Bureau sells its ratings. It looks at BBB finances, executive pay and how grades relate to paid accreditation.
HN commenters cite it as evidence that the BBB is a pay-to-play shakedown whenever BBB ratings or accreditation come up.
7 comments from Hacker News
For anyone else interested in this topic (or doubtful about the claim) 20/20 did an cover story on this: this video
Hey, that's the BBB we are talking about here. this video Watch the whole video if you haven't seen it before.
I think college is like better business bureau. A scam. You can learn everything you want yourself for free, instead of going to a college and pay an enormous amount of money for it. Especially now with the Internet, most materials you find online are multiple times better quality than what you get at college. Most graduates need to receive considerable additional training when they join a company. Bottom line is: You don't go to college to learn; you go to college to get a paper certificate that you can show to others. It's the problem of signalling and unfortunately, there's no easy solution for it. Colleges profit from the information imbalance and lack of trust in the job market. Some people recommend that instead of your certificates, your past projects should make up your resume. But then you get a catch 22 because others won't risk starting a project with you, unless they can see that you're capable from your resume. The only way to break out of this is the people you're going to work with must already know your abilities beforehand. Hence, you can start a start-up with your close friends or on your own, or become a vice president by knowing the right people at a company. For everything else, you need a resume for which Colleges are the gate keepers. And they won't give away that power for free. So enjoy your debt. Signalling [LINK] Better Business Bureau Scam this video p.s. I can't say that the free market can sort college tuition fees out or colleges should be regulate
For anyone on the fence about the claims, 20/20 did an investigation[1] of the BBB and found exactly the same thing. They worked with companies with complaints against them and low ratings that were called by BBB representatives asking them to re-up their registrations. Without much coaxing the BBB agents clarified that the ratings could be "reinstated" or "take care of" if the signup process was completed. Once the businesses did that, in every case, the scores were re-adjusted to A or A+ for those companies. Conversely, companies that didn't re-up would have all their past complaints re-instated on their review page and scores drop to C/D/F levels. Not unlike the Yelp stuff we saw going on last week or the week before here on HN. [1] this video
The BBB is a hugely profitable enterprise with a huge payroll. I'm not sure they're even classified as a non-profit. The executives of the BBB make hundreds of thousands a year, according to 20/20: this video