HOUSE OF LABOUR: Businessmen and Consumers in The Bahamas are in desperate need of a Better Business Bureau (BBB) to promote ethical marketplace practices between consumers and business houses.
Surely, this was attempted in the past with some degree of success. However, for whatever reasons it is not into effect today, there is no reason not to try again. The purpose of a Bahamian Better Business Bureau would be to promote and foster the highest ethical relationship between businesses and the public through voluntary self-regulation, promote consumers and business education and foster services and excellence in the marketplace.
Bahamian businessmen at the first mention of a Better Business Bureau fear that it is just another organisation to further pressure the business community. The primary purpose of a BBB is to provide services and programmes to assist consumers and businesses. The focus would be to encourage honest advertising and selling practices, and alternative dispute resolution.
This should not be feared by anybody. Any organisation committed to the principles that fair business practices are good for both the buyer and sellers should be welcomed.
From a consumer perspective, a Better Business Bureau would collect and report information to help prospective buyers and make informed choices. Further, a BBB would encourage programmes to help business firms to regulate their own advertising and selling practices. It would also serve as a neutral third party to help settle marketplace disputes.
Consumers would also have in the BBB a place where they can get information about a company. What a Bureau would do is assist consumers and business to resolve issues voluntarily. It would not have policing powers; it would not force a business to do what the consumer wants. It could only give advice. It would not act as a reference or make recommendation or endorsements. From research gathered, the benefits to the businessperson would be many.
For instance the business leaders who would become most deeply involved with a BBB, and most keenly appreciate the importance and worth of a BBB, are apt to be those with a keen appreciation of individual human dignity and freedom and the remarkable economy, which this country and other nations have built.
Often their thinking goes something like this:
“Our economic system must be protected because it allows maximum freedom in the economy. It is a system based on the conviction that the production and distribution of goods and services is most efficient when people are free to work together voluntarily; disciplined by the power of the customer, the force of competition, the strength of self regulation and self control and, of course, the necessary minimum of government regulation.”
The only way we can keep this economic freedom is for the business community to do such a good job of self-regulation, especially in the area of advertising and selling, that it will not be necessary to increase government regulation and control at any level. And the only organisation devoted solely to the task of encouraging and guiding self-regulation of businesses would be a BBB.
Although advertising and selling standards are appreciably higher today than they were in 1912 when BBB’s began, internationally and even though consumers are better educated and informed, there is more need for the Bureaus today than ever before because of greater complexities in the marketplace. As it is now, there are great pressures by government agencies concerned with “consumer education and protection”, as the chief instrument for self-regulation of the entire business community, it is to the BBB that a major part of this task will fall.
Every year, through action of a Bureau, many thousands of dollars, which otherwise might have been siphoned off into the coffers of illegitimate operators will remain available to buy goods and services from the honest companies in our community.
A bureau will do much to make local advertising and selling more honest and genuinely helpful, because it will do much for the individual, on the telephone and by mail to assure critical, doubting customers of business honesty in our community. It will greatly increase consumer confidence in local companies and other advertising and selling efforts. This will tend to make all advertising and selling more effective.
The deep personal rewards felt by all businesspeople who help organise and run a Better Business Bureau should never be underestimated. Any executive who helps bring a new bureau into being will enjoy the great satisfaction of having improved local business standards and having rendered a genuine service to the people of the community, including his/her own employees.
At the same time, s/he knows that s/he has done her/his part to maintain an essentially free, self-regulating economy. Thus a major reason why business and industry in our community should support the BBB is that: it can further demonstrate the capacity of business to regulate itself and in so doing helps to preserve our economy.
There are more immediate and obvious reasons why business in our community should support a BBB. A BBB will lift the standards for advertising and selling in our community, help establish consumer confidence in local business, and provide massive consumer education materials and assistance. Such help will result in increased sales and lower advertising and selling cost.
More specifically, the formation of a BBB will not only help to inform and protect the consumer, but will help every responsible business in our locality to operate more profitably.
For instance, the average consumer needs better representation and support from his’ human resources department. There are many examples of companies and individuals who wish to make presentations to staff members, but there are no considerations given by the employers to the companies no matter how reputable the companies.
In the marketplace, there are certain requests that will be made that go with the territory. Let’s say one company wants to do business with another company’s staff that requires salary deductions for insurance or a medical plan or a dental plan that would ensure healthy and contended employers. What kind of an intervention could a BBB do in this case?
The Bureau could certainly bring the parties together after receiving the initial complaint from the first company, pointing out that eighty-five percent of the Bahamian employees who work for most Bahamian companies produce great profits and it is in the interest of all concerned that companies cooperate to ensure health coverage for all employers.
Situations like these are tailor made for any business leader or BBB concerned about conflict resolution in the market place.
In conclusion then a BBB will be:
1. The most widely recognised and highly visible supporter of ethical practices
2. The most recognised and highly visible provider of alternative dispute-resolution services
3. Customer driven, with uniformly high standards of performance for core national entrepreneurial programmes in the marketplace.
4. The organisation with a significant percentage of large and small business firms as certified members,
5. Fully integrated accessible national information and services systems, utilizing leading edge technology and committed people to respond fully and quickly to all inquiries and resolve all complaints.
From the information presented there should emerge a better understanding of the need and the role a BBB can play in making the market place more consumer friendly and business houses more proactive. And hopefully, sometime soon some brave concerned group of Bahamians will accept the challenge of operating a Bahamian Better Business Bureau.
By Charles Fawkes – President of the National Consumer Association and organiser for the Commonwealth Group of Unions, Inside Labour columnist for the Bahama Journal, Editor of the Headline News, The Consumerguard and the Worker’s Vanguard. His e-mail address is fawkesmore@mail1.coralwave.com or foxmoore@hotmail.com. He can be contacted at his office in the House of Labour at 326-6620.
Source: The Nassau Guardian
