Allen Bostrom – Universal Accounting

Every business is going to receive a complaint from time to time.  Even Disneyland®, The Happiest Place on Earth, receives complaints.  So, receiving criticism does not make a company bad or a scam.  Instead, it’s how the business responds to the grievance that makes the difference.

It’s Universal’s policy to respond quickly, usually within 24 hours, to any customer grievance and attempt to work out a resolution that will be fair to both parties.  At last count, Universal had received 24 complaints in the past three years.  Although any complaint is too many in the eyes of the customer, given that we have over 10,000 customers worldwide there’s bound to be a few mistakes made here and there.   To my knowledge every one of the customers filing those complaints was responded to quickly.

Unfortunately in working with people, occasionally it’s impossible to reach a compromise that satisfies both parties.  For instance, imagine that you were a tax preparer and you created a tax return showing substantial taxes due even though you knew your client was expecting a refund.  In spite of your careful review, there was no legal way for you to arrive at a refund for your client.  Certainly you never guaranteed a refund, yet the client refuses to pay you because it showed an unexpected result and the client can no longer afford to pay you your fees.  When you try to collect the fee, the client files a complaint that your work was unsatisfactory in an effort to try to block your collections effort.

This example is not far-fetched.  In fact, most of the complaints filed against Universal over our 30-year history have been from people who were financing their purchases, then failed to make their payments as contracted, and were seeking to be released from the balance of their contracts.

So that raises the question, what do you look at when determining whether a business is respectful or disrespectful of its customers. Here are three basic things to consider:

• How long has the business been open?
• Does the business have a legitimate license?
• What is the business’s past record with the Better Business Bureau?

To help you in making this determination, the Better Business Bureau has created a 17-element grading system that considers the number of complaints, the consistency of the company resolving those complaints, the business size, and number of customers among other things.  You’ll see that they have assigned Universal an “A” letter grade.  Please feel free to look us up by clicking here: Universal_BBB_rating.

Allen Bostrom
Universal Accounting Center