Dating Site Better Business Bureau Report - March 2008, Part 1

I've decided to do a little more research of my own on the Better Business Bureau in regards to dating sites. This was after seeing an article about rising complaints (see Increased Complaints Registered Against Dating Services).

First a bit more on how the BBB works. To do a BBB search on a company visit their home page. The best way I found to find dating sites was to type in the domain name without the www prefix. Just a note here, most free or small dating sites are not found on the BBB. Once you have initiated a search, a list of companies may then come up. Some have nothing to do with what you are looking for while others may deal with separate branches or offices of the company. As an example, do a search on "yahoo.com" and you will get 22 results. Another thing to remember (which I didn't realize at first) is a company doesn't have to be a member to have a report on them. Actual BBB members are denoted with an icon and usually contain a lot more information than companies that are not members. When you click on the name of the company it will bring you to the report page of the company on the local Better Business Bureau website. These local BBB websites are not all the same and some have a lot more information available than others. All the information I am giving below seems to be how most of the BBB websites display their information. Some BBB sites like the one serving Los Angeles displays the information differently. They grade the company and actually shows some or all of the customers complaints. This seems to be an update to the service and may be how other BBB sites will soon follow.

The BBB report page usually contains the name and address of the company as well as the main contacts. It also states if the company is a member and for how long. Further down the page is the customer complaint information. There are numerous categories. Some of these include Contract Issues, Billing Issues, Sales Practice Issues, Service Issues, Refund or Exchange Issues and Guarantee or Warranty Issues. Within each category there are Resolved, Unresolved and Administratively Closed Issues.

Resolved, Unresolved and Administratively Closed issues are where the numbers are shown. With Resolved issues, it can show the following types (this may not be all of them, just the ones I found when looking at dating sites):

1. The number of resolved complaint issues that the consumer acknowledged acceptance to the BBB.
2. The company offered a partial (less than 100%) settlement in which the consumer accepted.
3. The number of complaints the company addressed but the consumer failed to acknowledge acceptance to the BBB.
4. The company offered a partial settlement but the consumer failed to acknowledge acceptance to the BBB.
5. The company resolved the issue but not within the BBB's acceptable timeframe.

With Unresolved issues, the following type has been identified:

1. The company failed to resolve the complaint issues through the BBB voluntary and self-regulatory process.

With Administratively Closed issues, I found 4 types:

1. The BBB determined the company made a reasonable offer to resolve the issues, but the consumer did not accept the offer.
2. The BBB determined that despite the company's reasonable effort to address complaint issues, the consumer remained dissatisfied.
3. BBB determined the company provided proper verification that indicated there was no obligation to resolve the issues of the complaint.
4. The parties could not provide sufficient information to support their positions nor were they agreeable to make reasonable efforts toward resolving the issues of the dispute.

Most companies have complaints against them. The key here though, is how many complaints are resolved to either the customer or the BBB acceptance. You also have to take into account the size of the company and when the complaints where issued. Instead of showing all the categories I will just show a total for all Resolved, Unresolved and Administratively Closed issues. You can visit the report directly for more details. The point numbers above correspond to the numbered columns in the tables below for Resolved, Unresolved and Administratively Closed complaints.

The complaints listed below are from the last 36 months and tallied for these reports from between March 12th to March 18th, 2008. The first chart lists a summary of the two companies Better Business Bureau reports. These companies are not related to dating services and are just listed for comparison sake to see what other industry complaint numbers may look like.

BBB Complaints - Unrelated Comparison Companies

Company	Joined	Complaints Closed		BBB Report	# of Types of Issues	Resolved					Not Resolved	Administratively Closed
		Last 36 months	Last 12 months			1	2	3	4	5	1	1	2	3	4
Microsoft	1987	2217	389	Report	12	629	83	860	379	0	0	51	218	6	0
Apple	1990	1375	473	Report	12	332	0	738	6	0	0	94	165	28	0

The next chart will list some of the major dating services. You will not see Yahoo! Personals in these charts. I did do a search for Yahoo! Personals but was unable to find a separate report for them. I have a feeling any complaints levied against Yahoo! Personals would be applied to Yahoos main BBB report.

BBB Complaints - Dating Services

Company	Joined	Complaints Closed		BBB Report	# of Types of Issues	Resolved					Not Resolved	Administratively Closed
		Last 36 months	Last 12 months			1	2	3	4	5	1	1	2	3	4
Match.com	1999	732	277	Report	11	304	0	421	1	0	0	5	0	0	0
PerfectMatch	No	165	36	Report	9	81	1	53	3	9	2	6	7	2	1
Lavalife	No	9	8	Report	6	0	0	4	0	0	1	2	2	0	0
FriendFinder Network	No	107	44	Report	10	25	0	45	0	0	11	0	11	0	0

The next chart includes some more of the major dating services but in a different format. I tried to incorporate these services in the chart above but the BBB reports are of a different style. In some ways these reports contain a lot more information. But, one of the main drawbacks (in my opinion) is the modified categories of complaints. While the new categories of complaints in these reports give a good overview it doesn't categorize the type of compliant. As example if the complaint dealt with a product, customer service or guarantee.

Here are the Types of Responses with the newer BBB websites:

1. Making a full refund, as the consumer requested.
2. Making a partial refund.
3. Agreeing to perform according to their contract.
4. Refusing to make an adjustment.
5. Refuse to adjust, relying on terms of agreement.
6. Unanswered.
7. Unassigned.

BBB Complaints - Dating Services

Company	Joined	BBB Report	Rating	Complaints closed last 36 months	Type of Response
					1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Date.com	2005	Report	B-	39	0	5	31	1	1	0	1
eHarmony	2001	Report	A	966	411	74	346	8	126	0	1
Spark Networks	No	Report	F	68	22	3	24	0	4	15	0

As you will notice the newer reports contain a Rating. A companies rating is dependant on several factors. Some of those are length of time in business, compliance to the BBB requirements, history of complaints and on how the complaints where handled. There are a 11 grades with AAA being the best and F being the worst. Go here for more details on the BBB rating criteria.

So what can we take from all this? Having less complaints doesn't necessary mean it is a smaller company. It could mean the sites own customer service is very good and have solved all the customers complaints. Of course, most of the sites that have lesser complaints are smaller and also don't actually belong to the BBB. This means there is no BBB logo on the site which makes it harder for the average user to complain to the BBB about the company. Even more important is they most likely don't know that you still can complain to the BBB even if the company doesn't belong.

Since this BBB dating article is much larger than I originally planned I am going to break it into 2 parts. In part 2 of this report, I will discuss in more details my analysis and thoughts behind some of the dating sites BBB reports.

Warning small disclaimer here, since this story was written over several weeks and my math skills may be a little lacking, some of the numbers may be off (I did double check!). Please use the report link of the company in the chart for the most current Better Business Bureau report.