Portland marketer tops BBB's complaint list
A Portland-based marketing company has topped the list of most-complained-about companies compiled by the regional chapter of the Better Business Bureau, a title the company says is unfair.
3V Marketing had 571 complaints lodged against it within the past three years, of which 342 concerned credit, billing or collection issues, according to a release from the BBB. The company resolved 565 complaints, but still earned an "F" from the business watchdog organization.
Eric Crouse, an owner of the 4-year-old firm, said the "F" rating from the BBB is misleading in terms of the company's performance managing campaigns for online health and medical products.
"While clearly we don't want to be at the top of the list, this is not an indication of how we do business," Crouse told Mainebiz. "Our clients are very happy with us, as are our vendors and the people whose jobs we've created."
3V Marketing is a campaign manager for various health and medical products that are available online under the brand names of Acai Advanced, an herbal supplement; Certified Reservatrol, a dietary supplement; Sera Concepts, an anti-aging skin care line; and Live Lean for Life, a lifestyle management content-based website. It outsources all the call center and order fulfillment work, says Crouse, creating 160 jobs in the last year.
Crouse said the company handles about 500,000 transactions a year, making the volume of complaints small against the scale of the orders. He said the bulk of complaints stem from negative options - the free trials that become billable if a customer doesn't cancel within the prescribed time period.
"There's no way for a company to get an 'A' rating from the BBB if a company is involved in negative option trials," he says. "But we resolved the vast majority of those complaints."
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