Complaint Review: Better Business Bureau

The Better Business Bureau (BBB in Washington, D.C.) allowed me (the consumer) only half an hour to respond online to a business’s response to my written complaint.  BBB gave no warning beforehand of this time limit. BBB neither publicly posted nor acknowledged (in the “negative review” category) either of my submitted letters on the American Medical Expert (AME) company.  BBB also subsequently removed most of the public content of another consumer’s “negative review” of the AME business yet still publicly posted AME’s response to that consumer.  BBB stated “complaint details [were] unavailable” with that consumer’s complaint as well as with mine. I would be curious to know how BBB justifies its A+ business rating for the AME business.                                  

In handling another related case, the Washington, D.C. office seemed a little rude. The BBB said they couldn't help with my complaint against the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) because no financial transaction took place. The BBB website states, however, that the BBB addresses service complaints that focus on misrepresentation or violation of business policy.

When I sent my same review to a different BBB regarding this same AAD organization in its other business location of Chicago, BBB stated it couldn’t process my AAD complaint for completely different reasons than what the Washington D.C. BBB stated. The Chicago BBB gave such reasons as 1) I'm requesting some sort of "disclosure of practices." [I don't know what BBB even meant by that.] BBB also twice wrongly told me 2) that I was filing a complaint with them against a doctor's office, which they don't handle, so I wrote back each time stating that no, this complaint was against the AAD. The Chicago BBB also said 3) they couldn’t act as my lawyer or cop. I did not expect them to. They said other nonsensical things, such as 4) how I'm writing to them with a personal complaint, which they stated they can't handle. But they also said that I was 5) writing this complaint on behalf of other people, so they couldn’t deal with that, either. They said several other things that also didn’t make sense or didn’t apply.

In response to the Washington D.C. BBB's response to me on google: I did try repeatedly to contact AAD and got no response from the organization (as I already showed BBB), and I did already try filing the complaint with BBB but to no avail. The BBB provided examples of complaint cases they wouldn’t handle, cases that were not similar to mine.  I was asking the BBB to direct the AAD to act on its avowed principles to serve patients and honor social responsibility, rigorous inquiry, professionalism, and lifelong learning.

In response to the Chicago BBB message to me on google: I wasn't asking for BBB or AAD to determine if another dermatology office had been careless. I was asking BBB for help in getting the AAD to stand by its promises to consumers.