The rating is based on a complex formula comprised of many different factors such as the type of
business, length of time in business, licensing compliance, complaint history, and our overall
experience with a company's industry in general. The scoring system takes into account the importance
we feel each factor is to the company’s reliability.
The general factors that impact your rating are:
- Background Information - this factor considers whether or not important details of business ownership and operation have been provided to us by the company.
- Length of Time in Business - this factor reflects a business's ability to successfully operate through economic business cycles and is an indicator of a business's probability of success and therefore its reliability.
- Complaint History - this factor takes into account the volume, history, and type of complaints as well as our evaluation of the relative seriousness of these complaints.
- Type of Business - certain industries, especially those we deem problematic, are inherently susceptible to greater numbers of consumer complaints. BCA assigns a value to all businesses based on our long history dealing with thousands of different industries.
- Licensing Information - this factor verifies compliance with competency licensing requirements. It does not include non-competency type licensing that are simply a form of taxation, such as city business licenses.
- Government Actions - this factor weighs the seriousness of regulatory actions that are relevant to a business’s reliability.
- Advertising Review - this factor addresses concerns with a company's advertising practices and the company’s efforts to mitigate these concerns.
Our ratings do not take into account:
- The number of times a report has been accessed.
- A business owner’s gender, race, religion, whether the business owns or leases its location, or the geographic location of a business.
- Complaints that BCA does not process because they're outside of our purview.
Our rating of a company and our BCA Report on a company reflect our conclusions and opinion about the company
based upon information in our files and our experience with the company. Neither the rating nor the report is
a guarantee of reliability. Readers should not rely solely upon a company’s rating, but should read and consider
the entire report, including consumer reviews and complaint and response details before deciding whether or not
to do business with the company. The highest rating assigned to a company is AAA; the lowest is F. Between those
two ratings are nine others in order from highest to lowest rating.
The ratings are defined as follows:
An exemplary rating. This means that nothing in our files causes us to have any doubt about the company’s reliability.
An extremely high rating. The condition that lowers this grade from AAA is not what we believe to be a significant one.
An excellent rating. A company with this rating may not rate higher because of a greater number of rate-lowering factors,
but we do not consider them to be factors that would likely adversely affect consumer transactions.
A very high rating. A company with this rating would not have a significant number of complaints or other considerations that could pose a problem to consumers.
A high rating. The company would generally have demonstrated good business-consumer relations, and we would expect any consumer complaints not to be of a serious nature and to be satisfactorily handled by the company.
A good rating that still implies reputability. The rating may relate to length of time in business, a past problem that’s been corrected, or something else that does not cause problems for consumers. We believe a company with this rating would generally conduct business and respond to any complaints satisfactorily.
A good rating. We would expect nothing less than a satisfactory business transaction, but read our full report to determine if you have any questions or concerns.
Average rating. We would expect consumer transactions to be satisfactory. Since each transaction is individual, read our full report to determine if you have questions or concerns.
Acceptable rating. We know of no reason not to do business with this company. If the level of this rating relates to anything specific that we know might be of concern to consumers, it is stated in this report. Read our full report to determine if you have questions or concerns.
We have enough concerns about this company (for example, their offer, customer complaints, advertising, etc.) that we recommend caution in doing business with it.
We strongly question the company’s reliability for reasons such as that they have failed to respond to complaints, their advertising is grossly misleading, they are not in compliance with the law’s licensing or registration requirements, their complaints contain especially serious allegations, or the company’s industry is known for its fraudulent business practices.
This is displayed when we are conducting system maintenance, when a file is under review or if for any reason the company is not rated.