Cortera: Turning The Business Credit Rating Industry Upside Down

Something similar I have been thinking about for a while; credit rating for businesses by consumers. Right now, we have ratings, which are basically meaningless -- companies are not punished for being poorly rated. (Look at AT&T, everyone hates them, yet they keep paying their iPhone bills.)

I want to get a critical mass of consumers so that poorly-behaving businesses can be punished. If bank foo makes it a habit of not answering customer support emails, then the base of consumers moves their accounts elsewhere. (Bank foo does this to us; if your personal credit rating is below a certain value, they won't offer their services to you.)

Sadly, I don't think this will ever work. Companies pay people millions to get rid of bad customers, but consumers are happy to be jerked around if it's less effort than not being jerked around. Too bad.

I just ran a check on a publicly traded company that has about 300 employees and several millions in annual sales. The company information Cortera showed was plain wrong - under 5 employees, under 500k sales. It did however want $3 for further information.

If they can't get the basic information right, how reliable is their crowd-sourced data ?