Can a skid steer be used to level a gravel road

[Steve B]

Gotta love it. You call them, and they say, "I'm sorry. We cannot comment on any specific business."

[Bruce L. Bergman (munged human]

The BBB is a scam run against both sides - the public AND the businessman. When the business you ask about isn't a Member there are inevitably "Uncleared complaints against them" - they need to pay for a membership to respond and clear the complaints.

And the higher membership fee they pay, the better an overall rating they get. And clearing the complaints is a joke - the company decides when they're done dealing with you and clears the complaint.

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[The Daring Dufas]

***** clip a bit of wasted bandwidth ********

I'd like to organize a "Better Customers Bureau" that would report on people who refuse to pay business for products and services. It would be a real help to small businesses and contractors who always come across brain damaged, dishonest or insane customers. I've run across some real wing doozies of customers over several decades in the service and installation business and one ploy is to ask them who they have dealt with before. I can call the other contractor to ask them if they had any problems with a customer. The BCB could be a lot of fun. ^_^

TDD

[dpb]

On 12/3/2011 7:07 PM, aemeijers wrote: ...

Mayhaps your local CofC is inactive or of minimal value; they certainly aren't as a general rule. Around here they are very active and do good work in development, etc., etc., etc., ...

[krw]

How about a credit check? That may not catch all the kooks but it's a good way to catch the deadbeats and the two are somewhat correlated.

[The Daring Dufas]

On 12/4/2011 10:50 AM, [e-mail] wrote:

That can be costly unless you do like a lot of rental companies who charge an application fee to pay for the credit check. As you may know, credit bureaus are notorious for being inaccurate. If I were to setup a BCB site, it would be accessible to all in a limited way for nonmembers to post a response in a moderated forum. For protection from crazy people, the site would be hosted offshore with the owner/operator hidden from weasel lawyers. No private personal information on customers would be allowed to be posted, just name and address for member businesses to check. Because of identity theft, no DOB, Social Security numbers for crooked customers would be posted even for members to check. All there would be would a listing saying "Mr. Jones on xx date refuse to pay for work done by me at this address. Before and after pictures could be posted by both parties with Mr. Jones posting to the moderated forum. It would take some thought and work to set it up but it could be a invaluable service to small business that could afford a small membership fee to have access to the database. I did some work for a real nut job some years back who complained constantly that something was wrong with the equipment. It turned out that all the problems were cause by one of his employees who was not properly operating the system. He refused to admit it was his employee all along and continued to pester me until I finally had to get my attorney to write him a cease and desist letter. I later got a call from another company he called to work on his gear and I explained what a nut job the guy was and the other contractor decided he couldn't help the guy. I believe everyone in the business found out about him and he became untouchable. A BCB would have helped protect a lot of companies from that nut job. ^_^

TDD

[krw]

True enough (just paid $50 for one). How costly are no-pays and kooks?

That's not the contractor/merchant's problem.

Without more information, it's hard to track people. As you point out, credit bureaus get away with murder. I doesn't seem impossible to clone that model. Maybe credit bureaus are missing a big opportunity (say $5 per kook check).

Sounds like the start of "Dufas' List". ;-)

[The Daring Dufas]

Dufas is actually a proper surname, the pejorative term is "doofus". ^_^

TDD

[Steve B]

Now, if someone wanted to start an ANTI-TOP POSTING BUREAU, where can I send money?

Steve

[The Daring Dufas]

Send a DATA bomb, perhaps that will work? ^_^

TDD

[Steve B]

I just got rid of him in the simplest way. Interested reading about the zip bomb. I had never heard of that before.

Steve