BBB’s Crain builds trust between businesses and consumers

When it comes to business, Leonard Crain readily knows both sides of the coin. He has worked in roofing, carpentry and the automotive fields during his professional career, while he also has owned a restaurant and grocery store.

“So I’m sort of a jack of all trades and master of none,” joked the Columbus native. “Because of that it allows me to know from where the business owner is coming. But I also know where the consumer’s coming from.”

For the past 17 years, Crain’s trade, in essence, has been working to maintain honesty and integrity in the world of commerce between those who spend money on services and those who provide them. He’s president and chief executive officer of the Better Business Bureau in Columbus, which serves 42 counties in a sprawling region that ventures deep into Georgia and in portions of Alabama.

The BBB office is located at 500 12th St. in downtown Columbus, with it offering walk-in service to those who might have an issue or complaint involving a business or organization. But in this digital world today, much of the work is handled through the bureau’s website, which draws about 22,000 visits monthly, some of that traffic from around the world.

The Ledger-Enquirer sat down recently with Crain, 65, to discuss his job and how he and his staff work hard to protect consumers and businesses from the many scams around, while also resolving disputes between those who might be at odds after a purchase. This interview is edited for length and clarity.

Q. How did you remain this long at the Better Business Bureau?

A. It just happened. (laughs) I truly do enjoy the mission of the BBB. It’s a good mission … We serve 42 counties in Georgia and Alabama. We go from LaGrange out to about Thomaston, and sort of split the state and go all of the way to the Florida line in Georgia (including Albany and Americus). And then in Alabama, we cover West Point and Lanett, Auburn and Opelika and down to Eufaula. Google Analytics allows us to see where our activity is coming from on the Internet, so we can tell if we’ve got complaints coming in from Thomasville, Moultrie, Eufaula, wherever. It tells us we’ve got a presence there and have activity and are actually providing a service. And there’s no charge for any service that we provide.

Q. How many businesses are you dealing with in that large coverage area?

A. We’ve had Census figures that show anywhere from 21,000 to about 25,000. It’s really a large area, but not a lot of businesses in that area. As far as the southwestern part of Georgia, there’s not a lot of population there.

Q. What is your core job at the BBB?

A. Our basic mission is to promote honesty and integrity and character in the marketplace. The American free-market system won’t thrive without that. You won’t do business with people you don’t trust. So what we do is elevate that level of trust in the business community. We can take a business and validate their credibility and tell the public what we know about them. The things that come to us from the public in regards to complaints, we can also inform the public about that.

Q. Do you mediate complaints?

A. We do. We have our dispute resolution programs that are designed, first of all, to return the customer back to the business to see if they can resolve it there. If they can’t resolve it there, then they come to us and we’ll take them through a number of steps. Again, there’s no charge for that. If it escalates and we are unable to re-establish a position of trust, then we’ll pull out the big guns on mediation and arbitration. We’ll actually have them come to a table and sit down with a mediator or arbitrator and get to a point of resolution with their problems.

Q. Companies usually participate in that process, members or not?

A. Really, it’s preferable for a company to want to come to our process because there’s no attorneys involved. A lot of times attorneys will suggest that their clients use our process because the monetary threshold is not enough for them to say, “Hey, this is something that I ought to handle for you.” … About 98 percent of the contests that come to us, we’re able to resolve them without escalating and them having to go to the legal process.

Q. Do you ever recommend legal remedies such as going to court?

A. Very few times. The business would have to be doing something that we feel may be criminal in nature and, if so, we’ll refer it right out either to the DA or the sheriff’s office or police. And that happens when the scam reporting comes in, and the public comes to us and says we got ripped off by this or that company or organization. We’ll take that information in and, if it establishes a pattern, we’ll create the reports. Hopefully, we’re able to prevent others from being scammed. We begin to build a story when the public comes to us.

Q. It’s an investigation of sorts?

A. It is. We’ll turn that around and put it right back into our website reporting system. When the public comes and views that information at our website, it helps prevent them from becoming victims in the scams.

Q. Just like on Tripadvisor, most businesses don’t want negative reviews posted online. This gives them a chance to work things out and give their side of things?

A. It does. There’s always two sides to every dispute. Within the last year, we’ve also begun to take reviews. A lot of the public directory sites allow customers to post reviews on companies. But they allow them to do that anonymously. We don’t allow anybody to say anything about a company anonymously. We’ll ask the company if it’s a customer of theirs (posting a complaint) and we’ll verify the email address and that kind of thing. Much of the time, you (as a consumer) may feel that you’ve had a bad experience, but you embellish that on the Internet and, actually, you’re giving the company a bad name when they may not even deserve that negative review. It could cost them their livelihood.

Q. Are there more common complaints than others that you receive?

A. Home contractors ... they can really take a beating in the marketplace, because when you buy a house, that’s a major investment. There’s a lot of anxiety surrounding the purchase of a home, and there’s a small grocery list of things that can go wrong. If those things are not being taken care of in a timely manner, then you become agitated with it and all of a sudden the relationship between the contractor and homeowner becomes challenged. If the consumer is actually being unreasonable, we can say it’s our feeling that you’re being unreasonable … But with the homebuilding contractors, that’s a lot of activity for the BBB.

Q. Automotive would seem to be another area of frequent complaint activity.

A. Automotive is a big activity for us, and auto repair. If you purchase a new automobile today, that’s a major investment. You can become pretty anxious if it’s not performing as advertised, or if the deal didn’t go like you felt it should. All of the dealers in our region, they’re pretty responsive to anything that comes their way. Some of the used-car dealers tell us to take a hike. They don’t want to talk to us … But we don’t let the dealer out of the loop too quickly. We say look, we’ve got some extenuating circumstances here and we think you ought to agree with that. We’ve had a lot of success with customer goodwill policies.

Q. What do you call staffers who field complaints and try to help resolve them?

A. Dispute resolution specialists ... As anybody does, we’ve had employees come and go. But every employee that we’ve had has a sincere desire to want to help folks. Of course, we’re a nonprofit organization and our wages are somewhat marketable, but if you hang around the Better Business Bureau, you really want to promote the mission. Our ladies are just really good people, and they’re good listeners. They’ll hear you out, whether you’re a business owner or consumer.

Q. As a military community, are there special needs here?

A. We have a program that’s called BBB Military Line. I serve on the Armed Forces Disciplinary Control Board, which has the ability and federal authority to put a business off limits … Their job is to make sure they protect the soldiers, because if they’re not financially ready to deploy, then they’ve got some challenges.

Q. Lending is a major issue for them?

A. It is, that and used car sales and financial problems. Army Community Services is on our board, and we coordinate to make sure we’re doing everything that we can to help active duty and even retired … We’ve had soldiers deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq who send emails back to us or file a complaint for their spouse at home here. So we realize right away that we want to get that circumstance handled as quick as we can. We also have a program called Military Marketplace Code of Ethics, and we ask local businesses to adhere to that — sign that contract — stating that you won’t rip a soldier off. We have about 500 businesses locally that are signed on to that program. So (soldiers) are one of our constituencies that we pay a lot of attention to, that and senior citizens.

Q. Payday lending has had a major emphasis in recent years. Have they cleaned up their act at all?

A. The BBB, as an organization, will not allow a payday lender to be a part of our program and become accredited. They’re business model is set to (charge exorbitant rates).

Q. What about online and phone scams, hackers and identity theft?

A. One of the things we know is the con man is not just down the street anymore. You see that activity, just on our website. We get about 22,000 visits to our website a month. It averages around 800 a day. That’s a pretty good bit of activity just for our little BBB. It tells me that we’re actually providing the service that folks do use. They need to use it more, because it is easy.

Q. What warning do you have about online scams and other such threats?

A. Those offers are always too good to be true. Just go right on past them and don’t click on any links that come into your email inbox. Always keep your antivirus up to date and anything that looks like it’s too good to be true, just delete it. Don’t be enticed. There’s a lot of that happening, even with Facebook. There are clickbait deals that will take you off of Facebook and into another area. And it will download the malware that will take control of your computer. If you give out any information whatsoever, (scammers) can wind up with your bank accounts, your credit cards. Not only will it be identity theft, you’re going to be out some money. It’s a nightmare to try to get all of it repaired … And also, if you get a phone call, don’t be afraid to be rude.

Q. You mentioned senior citizens being targeted. Any examples?

A. Especially when grandma gets ripped off, there’s some real tearful circumstances where she, or he, has sent $20,000 to a guy in Jamaica. We had a lady (in the community) three or four years ago send $38,000 to a group that was stealing from her before she came to us. She was elderly. At one point they told her they were on I-85 and were getting ready to get on I-185 and were in a Brinks truck bringing money to her. They wanted her to meet them on the third floor of the Columbus airport. There’s no third floor at the airport. Then, after that, they had enough gall to call her back and say: ‘We know you’ve been ripped off, we’re attorneys and we’re going to help you get your money back.’ But they would say you need to send us some money. There are some clever scams out there, especially the lottery scams, for senior citizens.

Q. How many businesses are members of your BBB operation?

A. Right now we have right at 1,000. That’s out of that 21,000 total businesses (in the coverage area). So we actually have a pretty big market to penetrate. There’s room for growth.

Q. Is there a fee?

A. Most of our businesses that run from one to 10 employees, it’s about $300 a year. It can reach $1,800 depending on some of the larger organizations.

Q. One more example of how you assist a business?

A. I can talk to a business owner because I know where he’s coming from. A lot of times we hear things like: ‘Look, I’ve been in business for 41 years. I’ve never had a complaint.’ I go, look, it’s not that you have a complaint, it’s how you handle it. Plus, we’re not the only ones reporting that now. If you come to the Better Business Bureau website, the content of that complaint is actually posted on the company’s report. So it’s the back and forth ... I had one the day before yesterday at lunch with a business owner. I said: ‘Look, what you need to do is first of all, don’t use any obscenities, keep it professional because when your potential customers come and read those reviews you want to be sure you are kind to your customers. You say, ‘We did have a problem. We fixed that problem. We’re sorry we had that problem.’ Or say, ‘No, we didn’t do anything wrong. We’re sorry you’re having that problem anyway, but we’ll help you fix that.

Q. What do you enjoy most about your job?

A. I enjoy working with business owners and their customers and the dispute resolution aspect of it, and helping them regain a position of trust after they’ve sort of parted ways ... I feel like I’m good at it, I know I am because I’ve been on both sides of that area.

This story was originally published May 21, 2016 at 8:54 PM with the headline "BBB’s Crain builds trust between businesses and consumers."