Hacker News Reader

Comment by jawns | Hacker News Reader

You've just described the Better Business Bureau.

But guess what? There are plenty of underhanded businesses that could care less about a bad rating from the BBB, because the type of customer they're fleecing is not particularly savvy. Think elderly folks who are a little too trusting, or immigrants with a bit of a language barrier who aren't familiar with the BBB.

View on HN

Also, BBB is basically just pre-Internet Yelp. Their business model is to extort businesses for better ratings, not to actually provide useful ratings to end-users.

The BBB is an extortion racket and I cringe anytime they’re brought up as some trustworthy source.

Then people shouldn't buy there without having proper knowledge.

This type of "buyer beware" position describes the exact problem US auto dealerships already take advantage of, and advocating for more uses of this methodology doesn't address any of the actual problems, and makes the problems the industry are currently facing actively worse.

I agree with you in principle. However, I've had occasion to deal pretty often with elderly friends and family lately, and there's a clear problem there. Many of us lose a lot of our ability to think critically or recognize the latest scam flavor when we get into our 80s (or thereabouts). I've seen it repeatedly. People I know who are smart, who had careers as engineers, accountants, etc.

I just want to see the world burn.

This kind of stuff will break down trust in each other and we will all be cultivating cabbage to feed our own.

We're discussing this in the context of the government trying to make large companies share that proper knowledge.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com