subject: Credit Repair Companies And The Bbb [print this page] The Better Business Bureau can be a good resource for checking out companies, getting a feel for how reputable they are, and seeing how they handle customer complaints. So, naturally, many people check with the BBB when researching credit repair companies, especially since there is so much talk about credit repair scams. But, it is when researching credit repair companies that the BBB can really let consumers down.
A couple of years ago, many of the local BBBs adopted a policy of automatically assigning an F rating to any company they classify as a credit repair company. Depending on where they were located, this meant that overnight, some credit repair companies that had an A rating and in some cases were even BBB Accredited saw their rating drop to an F. Regardless of the number of people their companies had helped, the number of complaints these companies had received, and how the complaints were handled, suddenly these credit repair companies looked like scams to anyone who checked out their BBB report.
For this reason, if you see a credit repair company with an F rating with the BBB, it does not always mean they are a bad company. You want to dig a little deeper to find out why the company was assigned that rating. When assigning an F rating, the BBB will usually provide reasons for the rating such as failure to respond to complaints or failure to resolve specific problems, both of which are understandable reasons for assigning an F rating. In the case of a credit repair company that has been assigned an F rating solely because they are in the credit repair industry, however, there will only be one reason and it will say something like "BBB concerns with the industry in which this business operates".
If you find a company that doesn't have any unresolved complaints and is still given an F rating because of the industry it operates in, then keep in mind that the company would probably have an F rating no matter how good of a credit repair company they are. And if you want to confirm that the company has an F rating because it is a credit repair company, check out any other credit repair companies within that same BBB's jurisdiction. If they all have F ratings, you can be reasonably sure that the BBB is responsible for the poor ratings, and not the behavior of the companies.
Of course if you find a credit repair company with a good BBB rating, that is always a good sign. Not all BBBs automatically fail all credit repair companies and some still offer the BBB Accredited status. But just keep in mind when comparing credit repair companies that a company with a good BBB rating is not necessarily better than one with a poor rating. It may be a case where the difference in ratings are a function of the different BBB ranking guidelines and not a true comparison of the individual credit repair companies.
