Buyer Beware BBB Rates Cpap.com with an F

kteague wrote:I doubt the general public is aware that a BBB rating does not mean what it once did. I only became aware of it by reading here. I've since found out that Yelp reviews are unreliable too. If I were in a situation where I felt wronged (whether it is reality or perception) and then read about the F rating without knowing the BBB's fall from grace or our host's position, it would seem like confirmation that my bad experience involved wrongdoing on the other party's part. Yes, the OP came in loaded for bear, but the fact remains they are a cpap user in trouble. I doubt they'd be very open to asking for help now.

I couldn't agree more!!!

49er wrote: It never occurred to me that anyone on this board would all of sudden think that a bad BBB rating meant that CPAP.com was a worthless piece of cr-p.
49er

You need to think outside of the small group that seems to spend a significant portion of their lives in the forum.

The forum has had 70,000 people register and likely millions have read at least one post here without registering.

Then there are search engines, such as Google. Google, this morning, is returning page one of this thread to everyone who enters the search term "bbb rates cpap.com". Without even clicking on the link, the user sees, " BBB rates CPAP.com with an "F" (the worst rating) for a reason. I purchased all my equipment from there, and things were fine until they weren't ..."

You may want to rethink your quickly formed opinion.

It becomes a lesson well learnt, from the tone of all who have defended CPAP.com, that any help needed must in all circumstance eliminate any alluding to CPAP.com being wrong in any sense. Would you guys (the defenders) feel the same way about any criticism levied at another supplier. Would you feel the same if the “attack” by the sufferer was only alluding to the suppliers’ lack of compassion? There has been a lot of attacks on sleep labs, doctors, techs, etc… I hope these are still fair game! Can we continue to attack each other? After all that’s where the most of the fun is! Isn’t it?

FWIW which I know isn't much.
I had no idea about the BBB requiring that businesses "contribute" to get any rating above F until Johnny posted it a while back in response to another similar post from an unhappy customer ( mask issue I think it might have been that was discovered 6 months after purchase).
I had always thought they were a real "watchdog" and not something that money could buy a favorable rating.
So despite my "experience" in life... I didn't know how the BBB operates. I am living proof of people's naivety.

in all circumstance eliminate any alluding to CPAP.com being wrong in any sense

Overstating the situation by referring to an extreme that you alone conjured up does not bolster your position.

Pugsy wrote:FWIW which I know isn't much.
I had no idea about the BBB requiring that businesses "contribute" to get any rating above F until Johnny posted it a while back in response to another similar post from an unhappy customer ( mask issue I think it might have been that was discovered 6 months after purchase).
I had always thought they were a real "watchdog" and not something that money could buy a favorable rating.
So despite my "experience" in life... I didn't know how the BBB operates. I am living proof of people's naivety.

Well I had no idea until today, thanks to this post! The OP obviously didn't know this either and is very upset about it. Why must we attack him? Why not kindly explain it to him and then ask him for more details on his problem so that hopefully someone here can help him solve it?

I really thought the purpose of this forum was to HELP people, not attack them.

Walking away now, shaking my head...

Sharrykb wrote:

Pugsy wrote:FWIW which I know isn't much.
I had no idea about the BBB requiring that businesses "contribute" to get any rating above F until Johnny posted it a while back in response to another similar post from an unhappy customer ( mask issue I think it might have been that was discovered 6 months after purchase).
I had always thought they were a real "watchdog" and not something that money could buy a favorable rating.
So despite my "experience" in life... I didn't know how the BBB operates. I am living proof of people's naivety.

Well I had no idea until today, thanks to this post! The OP obviously didn't know this either and is very upset about it. Why must we attack him? Why not kindly explain it to him and then ask him for more details on his problem so that hopefully someone here can help him solve it?

I really thought the purpose of this forum was to HELP people, not attack them.

Walking away now, shaking my head...

Well said Sharrykb.

49er

Sharrykb wrote: Well I had no idea until today, thanks to this post! The OP obviously didn't know this either and is very upset about it. Why must we attack him? Why not kindly explain it to him and then ask him for more details on his problem so that hopefully someone here can help him solve it?

I didn't offer to help because I didn't get the feeling he wanted help. I got the sense he only wanted to vent his anger and when people are venting they don't listen to reason very well.
So I "vented" a little bit myself.
Maybe I could/should have worded my response a little softer but I didn't. My patience level was non existent yesterday due to being woke up with a nasty stomach bug. Short night in terms of sleep myself and all the joys that go along with a nasty little stomach bug for the bulk of yesterday.

Finally....we don't even know for sure that this guy was for real. He could have been someone from another online CPAP supply company wanting to bash cpap.com. Now, I don't think that was the case but it isn't an impossibility.

Pugsy wrote:

Sharrykb wrote: Well I had no idea until today, thanks to this post! The OP obviously didn't know this either and is very upset about it. Why must we attack him? Why not kindly explain it to him and then ask him for more details on his problem so that hopefully someone here can help him solve it?

I didn't offer to help because I didn't get the feeling he wanted help. I got the sense he only wanted to vent his anger and when people are venting they don't listen to reason very well.
So I "vented" a little bit myself.
Maybe I could/should have worded my response a little softer but I didn't. My patience level was non existent yesterday due to being woke up with a nasty stomach bug. Short night in terms of sleep myself and all the joys that go along with a nasty little stomach bug for the bulk of yesterday.

Finally....we don't even know for sure that this guy was for real. He could have been someone from another online CPAP supply company wanting to bash cpap.com. Now, I don't think that was the case but it isn't an impossibility.

Sorry Pugsy! That scolding was NOT directed at you at all!!! I guess I shouldn't have quoted you but I started out meaning to post my agreement with what you had said. Obviously there are lots of intelligent people (yourself included) that didn't know about the BBB issues. Then I went on to question why we attack posters and I'm sorry if you thought that was aimed at you because it was NOT!

Maybe it is the fact that I am relatively new to this forum that causes me to notice and be extra sensitive when I see posters getting attacked like has happened several times in recent history. I am so thankful that I haven't been treated like that and I sure hope I never am...

Sharrykb wrote: Sorry Pugsy! That scolding was NOT directed at you at all!!!

No problem. I knew you weren't scolding me just like I wasn't scolding you....I was merely explaining why I was a bit harsher in my response than usual...more for everyone else who knows me to understand and not just directed at you.
I almost passed on responding at all to the original post as that's what I usually do when people are just venting. In retrospect I probably should have passed but I didn't. I feel like I am entitled to rant/vent just like the next person and sometimes I just do it. I am human after all....warts and all.

"Robert Joseph" Posts: 1 Joined: Mon Jun 16, 2014 2:14 pm

while there are some here that are quite kindly standing up for "robert joseph" and doing their best to excuse abominable behavior, I'm willing to bet that the whole incident is nothing more than a drive by hating, trying to pollute forums with 'negative reviews', ala yelp, to damage the business for their his/her own reasons. the point that this forum is indexed in search engines is a good point, this action goes beyond just our little group of yappy participants

it may be a competitor, (hopefully, not, there's plenty of us to go around).

should we ever see anything rational, or indeed anything else at all, out of ''robert joseph" I'm quite willing to stand corrected.

I'm no corporate apologist, and I've got no loyalty to cpap.com (I don't think I've ever bought from them, yet, I've gotten my stuff from other places online.

but, what I do *try* to have is a sense of fairness, and the drive by hating, as I term it, was wholly unfair. and, yes, if it looked like cpap.com was screwing over "robert joseph" I'd be just as quick to talk him up and deride their behavior.

Pesser wrote:You guys are very cruel. Is there no compassion for the buyer? How is it that everyone knows it’s the buyer’s fault! CPAP.com is never wrong? So the buyer has to know what he is doing...OK. Read his post....he has been doing business with CPAP.com before. Something is wrong. Something is not being said. What is it?

No, no compassion for someone anonymously posting about their "horrible" experience with our site sponsor. It seems they came here to throw CPAP.com under the bus because they didn't get what they wanted for free.

Sure the original poster said they used CPAP.com to buy all their equipment, but he doesn't say how long he's been treated or how knowledgeable they are with the machine they have. They didn't expand on their treatment pressure or leak data. Just that CPAP.com wants money to look at something that might not be broken; that may or may not be under warranty. He also feels that a rental machine should be free during the time when he sends the first machine back to be looked at.

Sorry if I don't fully believe those that make one post about their horrible experience.

Sharrykb wrote:
Well I had no idea until today, thanks to this post! The OP obviously didn't know this either and is very upset about it. Why must we attack him? Why not kindly explain it to him and then ask him for more details on his problem so that hopefully someone here can help him solve it?

I really thought the purpose of this forum was to HELP people, not attack them.

Walking away now, shaking my head...

Contradicting someone or disagreeing with someone is not an attack. Bad mouthing a company based on ones own incompetence certainly is an attack.

Pugsy wrote:

Sharrykb wrote: Sorry Pugsy! That scolding was NOT directed at you at all!!!

No problem. I knew you weren't scolding me just like I wasn't scolding you....I was merely explaining why I was a bit harsher in my response than usual...more for everyone else who knows me to understand and not just directed at you.
I almost passed on responding at all to the original post as that's what I usually do when people are just venting. In retrospect I probably should have passed but I didn't. I feel like I am entitled to rant/vent just like the next person and sometimes I just do it. I am human after all....warts and all.

From what I have observed, Pugsy, you have the ability to vent and/or state your opinion without it coming across as an attack on someone else.

BlackSpinner wrote:

Sharrykb wrote:
Well I had no idea until today, thanks to this post! The OP obviously didn't know this either and is very upset about it. Why must we attack him? Why not kindly explain it to him and then ask him for more details on his problem so that hopefully someone here can help him solve it?

I really thought the purpose of this forum was to HELP people, not attack them.

Walking away now, shaking my head...

Contradicting someone or disagreeing with someone is not an attack. Bad mouthing a company based on ones own incompetence certainly is an attack.

Yes, there are some posts that are merely contradicting or disagreeing but some ARE attacks. If you need help figuring out which posts I am referring to, feel free to PM me.

I agree that bad mouthing a company is not always the wisest course of action. But based on what the original poster knew at the time, I can understand why he may have felt justified in posting what he did. He had what he believes to be a bad experience and then he discovered the BBB rating. He DIDN'T know that the BBB is no longer to be trusted. So of course anyone on here with additional information on the subject is going to share that with him. But there's a way of doing it without attacking the person.

Yes, I get that some people like to come on here and post untruths in an effort to stir up trouble. But why must we ASSUME that to be the case with everyone who comes on here and posts something that we don't happen to agree with? I wonder how many people have left this forum without getting the help they so desperately need because of how they were treated on this forum.