Allen Bostrom – Universal Accounting

The other day, we announced to our employees that Senior Management has decided to withdraw membership from the Better Business Bureau of Utah and the BBBOnline program. We have been members since 1989, and have had their highest rating throughout those years.

This year, however, the national headquarters for the Better Business Bureau made a major mistake in establishing a new policy. Therefore, when it came time to renew our Company’s membership we notified them that we were declining their renewal offer.

As we explained to our employees, the reason for our departure had nothing to do with our continued intentions to operate in an ethical, fair way, with all of our students. This will always be of paramount importance to us. Instead, our reason for withdrawing ironically has to do with perception.

Until this year, the BBB has always reported on the history and willingness of a company to maintain a good relationship with it’s customers by resolving disputes quickly and effectively. We support this mission, and feel they serve an important role for consumers and businesses alike. In fact, we have been proud of our record with the BBB to the point that we have referred people to it’s site often.

Throughout the years, we have sought to resolve disputes (which are few and far between) that a student may have had quickly and without outside intervention. However, with tens of thousands of students, there have been a small number of occasions (presently fewer than 10) where the student has taken their gripe directly to the BBB without allowing us an opportunity to solve the problem first, or the student used the BBB complaint process unfairly.

In past years, this was fine because we responded quickly and showed a good faith effort to resolve the issue. This resulted in us maintaining a “Satisfactory” record with the BBB which is the highest rating they provide. However, effective earlier this year, the national board voted to provide the number of complaints that a company has had in addition to the rating. We felt this is information that can be deceiving, and misrepresentative of the Company’s desire to be fair and responsive to it’s patrons.

In reality, we’re proud that our complaints have been so few. I challenge anyone to find a training institution, with our student body size that can come even close to our record. In fact, we have students that are amazed that we have any complaints at all given our supportive staff, high quality training, and liberal return policy.

However, the general public doesn’t understand. To many who are considering purchasing our course work, they see the presence of any complaints as a ‘red flag’, and dismiss us as a training alternative. Although that’s an unrealistic expectation by the student considering a student body the size of our size, it is their reaction nonetheless.

We therefore have petitioned the Better Business Bureau to either reverse their decision, or provide a type of scoring system that takes into consideration the number of complaints compared to the number of customers. We trust in time that this will be included. Until that time, we will continue to make our student’s satisfaction one of our most prized values.

Allen Bostrom
Universal Accounting Center