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Accreditation Benefits and Services

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Your Company BBB Identification

As an accredited business, your company will receive a distinctive, customized BBB Accreditation plaque as well as a new window decal each year for display to show your customers, employees, vendors and competitors that you support and adhere to ethical business practices. Surveys have shown that people do buy because of reputation and that 4 out of 5 customers have more confidence in doing business with BBB Acredited Businesses.

Accredited Business Reliability Reports

Prospective customers ask for BBB reports on companies and charities thousands of times each month, to assist in their buying and giving decisions. Every caller who checks your reputation is told your firm is accredited by the BBB. That means they support the Bureaus services to the general public and their business practices meet our standards of accreditation. Often the caller is comparison shopping and wants more than one report, giving you a substantial edge over your non-accredited competition!

Accredited Business Referral Lists

Consumers ask the Bureau for names of honest firms every day. While the BBB cannot endorse or recommend a specific company or service, we do offer Accredited Business Referral Lists by industry. We advise that these lists contain local firms who have met our standards for accreditation, and as such, may provide the caller with an excellent starting point in their search for a reputable firm.

Exclusive Value-Added Benefits

Need competitively priced health insurance coverage for your team? Check out our Health Insurance Association Plan exclusively for BBB Accredited Businesses, where small businesses are saving hundreds and thousands of dollars a year while maintaining a quality level of care and service.

Employee Benefits

Request a special in-house presentation for your employees detailing how they can help your business avoid costly scams, as well as how they can avoid consumer fraud in general. Additionally, valuable information on a variety of consumer topics is available camera ready or by e-mail for use in employee newsletters and communications. Some Accredited Businesses take advantage of the employee poster and others use the low-cost consumer pamphlets for use as payroll stuffers. When they have problems and can turn to the BBB for help, they dont spend valuable company time worrying and making personal calls. Effective use of BBB information and services can and does improve employee productivity.

"Accredited Business Only" Hotline Number

Your Bureau maintains a private, dedicated telephone line exclusively for use by BBB Accredited Businesses and their employees. The hotline offers extended weekday hours and speedy, direct access to Bureau offices and staff specialists to assist you in meeting your personal and business needs.

Advertising Review

The BBB Truth in Advertising Program promotes business guidelines for ethical advertising. We work with business, agencies and the media to ensure that ads are not misleading or deceptive, offering advance review of ad copy, and routine monitoring of print, broadcast and outdoor advertising. We also encourage accredited businesses to report false or questionable claims by competitors to the BBB. When necessary, we will challenge a firm's advertising, asking them to substantiate, modify or discontinue questionable copy.

Solicitations Review

Everyone in business gets constant requests for donations. The Bureaus Solicitation Advisory Program provides a simple, convenient method to screen these requests, separating the worthy causes from the fraudulent ones. The quick reference list of those local charities meeting the BBB standards for solicitation is updated regularly, and detailed reliability reports are available for in-depth review. This program alone can save many times the cost of BBB Accreditation.

Business Protection

Helpful information and consultation is available to help you implement loss prevention programs to reduce your exposure to shoplifting, employee pilferage, cashier crimes, investment fraud, credit card and check fraud, embezzlement, insurance fraud, phony invoices, office supply schemes, and more. Single copies of Business Advisory Series pamphlets are free to accredited businessess and the How to Protect Your Business Handbook is available at a substantial discount. Let us help you protect and ethicize your business!

Accredited Business Newsletter

Our monthly newsletter, Taking Care of Business, is packed with business information. It provides updates on Bureau programs designed to help accredited businesses enhance their marketplace image and credibility; it contains scam alerts to protect both accredited firms and their employees from business and investment fraud; and it features listings and highlights on local business success stories.

Professional Networking

All accredited businesses are invited to attend and participate in BBB Business Builders. These events are sponsored and hosted by accredited businesses and are designed to introduce, inform and entertain BBB Accredited Business executives. Additional opportunities for professional networking are available through committee involvement, accredited business seminars, accredited business meetings and other special events and projects.

Global Information

With over 130 BBB offices throughout the United States and another 15 in Canada, the Bureau system contains hundreds of thousands of reliability reports on businesses around the world. Bureau Accredited Businesses receive priority assistance in accessing this wealth of information. By identifying yourself as an accredited firm, our staff will make the calls for you and where possible, secure a written report for you within hours.

Consumer Information Brochures & General Advice Reports

Valuable information on how to buy over 100 different kinds of goods and services are available from the BBB. Let these tips brochures and reports help guide you in your buying decision single copies are free to accredited businesses. Or, you can stamp your company name on the brochures and hand them out to your customers bulk quantities are available at a substantial discount.

Individual Research and Personal Services

If you have a special business problem or question, call your "Accredited Business Only" Hotline. Curious what the ethical guidelines or state/federal laws say about refunds, cancellations, and fair business practices? Need some help to unravel red tapeor reach out to a special customer? We can meet with you individually to discuss your needs and draw on our own extensive resources, as well as those of dozens of affiliated agencies and organizations to help address your concerns.

Accredited Business Recognition in Various Publications

A roster of BBB Accredited Businesses in good standing is printed regularly. The alphabetical and categorical listing of accredited businesses is made available to businesses and consumers throughout the year. Accredited Businesses are also highlighted periodically in the BBB newsletter and in special public service campaigns. All efforts are made to encourage the buying public to do business with a BBB Accredited Business!

Educational Programs

Our public awareness programs include speeches, workshops, meetings, radio, television, newspaper and magazine features throughout our entire 64-county service area. These activities, conducted on behalf of our accredited businesses, are designed to educate consumers and businesses how to differentiate between sound business practices and fraudulent schemes. These efforts help to increase the confidence in business as a whole, and in BBB Accredited Businesses specifically.

Ethics Outreach Programs

From the development of a Business and Consumer Code of ETHICS guiding each in their responsibilities toward maintaining an ethical marketplace, to the implementation of an Elementary Ethics Program teaching fourth graders the importance of ethical decision making, your BBB works hard to promote the highest ethical relationship between business and their customers.

Community Protection and Responsibility

As a leader of the community, you and your business have a vital stake in the direction it takes in the future. For it to grow and prosper, our people must have confidence in our business institutions; what is good for the community is good for business! Your BBB is a unique organization in that it is supported by the business community for the good of the marketplace. Ethical business wants its customers to have a place they can turn for accurate, impartial, and trusted information and assistance . . . they turn to the BBB.

Voluntary Self-Regulation / Less Government Interference

History has proven that self-regulation is the only alternative to government regulation, and the Better Business Bureau is the only business organization committed to working through the self-regulatory process. The BBB works proactively with businesses to correct abuses and concerns through self-regulation, thereby halting the necessity of government intervention. Many government agencies have frequently admitted that without the work of the BBB, they would require much larger staffs, bigger budgets, and more laws, all funded through increased tax dollars. As a business leader, which would you prefer?

You are part of an elite group
BBB Accreditation is by invitation only.