A Look Inside Bel Furniture’s F Rating by the BBB
Every furniture store receives bad reviews here and there. These reviews are no surprise, and so, when you read our summaries of various furniture stores around the industry, it’s no surprise that we have a mix of positive and negative things to report. Just a part of doing business, some customers will leave your business satisfied, and others will feel like they got a raw deal. However, one thing you don’t see very often is an F rating from the Better Business Bureau. Bel Furniture recently received such a scoring and so, it seemed worth our time to take a look and share the story to the best of our ability with the rest of you guys.
The announcement came out around a week ago and immediately made waves on the Internet. A variety of Texas newspapers reported on it, with KSAT and the Wilson County News each doing their own pieces on it. In response, Bel Furniture contacted each organization and provided a breakdown of inaccuracies in the BBB report, and provided counterarguments to why they’ve been unjustly sentenced with this terrible rating. We don’t really stand on either side of the issue, and simply see it as something that’s worth conveying to our readers.
According to the BBB, the big issues at Bel Furniture involve false advertising, poor customer service, and delivery issues. These issues are fairly common at most furniture companies as we’ve reported before, so we wanted to see what made this case particularly unique. According to the BBB, Bel Furniture received 46 complaints regarding Bel Furniture and felt that 22 of the responses never were addressed or didn’t receive proper addressing. When they sought a response from Bel Furniture, the BBB reported that they never were given any kind of answer.
Bel Furniture received an F rating, but was it deserved?
Touching on the stories they mentioned, one man went to the store in order to buy furniture and receive a free television according to a store promotion that was going on. However, getting them to honor the advertisement for a free television required a difficult battle, but he ultimately was able to get it. The furniture and television ultimately took over a month to be delivered, and when he received the delivery, the television had a crack in it. Getting it replaced took over a month. Other issues that came up include delivering only portions of peoples orders, and items being delivered in poor condition.
Needless to say, Bel Furniture has been responding in full force to the egg on their face, and have made a fairly convincing argument back. The company reports providing detailed information on the customers who filed complaints, showing that these issues were handled properly. In addition, Bel Furniture highlights that given their tremendous growth and size, the amount of complaints they’ve received are negligible. Adding to this dispute, the company highlighted the fact that rivals in the area have received better ratings with significantly more complaints.
Bel Furniture has pointed out questionable behavior by the BBB in the past, including soliciting membership from Bel Furniture as they were giving them a bad rating. They also linked to various reports that highlight questionable actions by the BBB, including efforts to bolster competition.
On our end, I’ve built out a few theories of what happened. First, the Bel Furniture is bad angle. Bel Furniture has been growing rapidly over the last few years, and it is possible that the company has made some sacrifices in quality and overal customer service in order to achieve this growth. Maybe the BBB has seen this and the reports they looked into confirm their concerns. The other side is poor methodology by the BBB. The BBB reports that they contacted Bel Furniture about the complaints and never received a response. Perhaps their default action in this case is to give the company an F automatically, even though it might be very misleading compared to what the company is actually doing.
Ultimately, I don’t know which of these options is correct. Is the BBB bad or is Bel Furniture bad? In truth, probably neither of these is the case, and we’ll work hard to keep you guys informed and let you know as we find out more details. If you have any insight to provide on the case, please respond in the comments as we’d love to hear what you think!