I was so impressed Tuesday by the quality of company sharing the stage with me at our 11th annual Torch Awards.  Thank you, George Chamberlain, for emceeing our event EVERY year.  For those of you who missed it, I was limping and had some very funky sandals on, but it was the first day out of my boot cast, and that allowed me to share my broken foot experience this year and how it correlates with the BBB.

Okay, so now I have you curious.  You see, both my husband and I got to wear that lovely boot this year and putz around on crutches.  Mine was elective foot surgery, and I wore that boot for ten weeks.  There were some advantages.  I got to take the short security line at the airport.  I got to pre-board.  I got to enter the rides at the exits at Disney World.  And I got to meet a lot of strangers who would introduce themselves to me everywhere I went, and tell me THEIR story about when they wore THEIR boot and what caused THEIR pain and how long it took for THEM to get over it.

Well, it's very similar to working at the BBB.  We get more than 2500 complaints a month.  People sharing the pain they've experienced working with a company.  But in this event, the outcome is usually very good.  The vast majority of the time, the company is responsive and resolved the complaint with the consumer in a timely manner.  More importantly, it helps us to support PAIN PREVENTION.  That really is our mission.  We would prefer that folks not do business with bad companies and avoid some of these bad experiences altogether.  That's why we are constantly putting the message out in the community: Start With Trust.

And it's working.

Your BBB will serve up more than 3 million reliability reports this year.  That's more than 3 million times that one of our reliability reports is getting checked out.  Consumers want to know the track record of a company before they do business with them.  They are losing trust and confidence in the businesses that they do business with every day.  And so they are coming to a third party that they trust, the BBB, to help them decide who they can trust with their money.

The equity in the BBB brand, that "trust factor," is more relevant in the marketplace than ever.  And doing business with a BBB Accredited Business is more important than ever to consumers.  People want to do business with companies that will take care of them, that they trust.  It's our job #1 to connect consumers to trustworthy businesses.

And it's working.