Toner News Mobile › Forums › Latest Industry News › *NEWS*KODAK QUITS BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU
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AnonymousInactiveKodak Quits Better Business Bureau
ROCHESTER,
New York (March 07) – Eastman Kodak resigned its membership in the
Council of Better Business Bureaus after a prolonged dispute over its
handling of customer complaints about defective digital cameras,
product warranties or other issues, the consumer advocacy group said
Monday.The Better Business Bureau received complaints from
consumers who reported problems related to repairs of Kodak digital
cameras as well as difficulty in communicating with the company’s
customer service department.The council, the umbrella organization for
the Better Business Bureau system begun in 1912, counted Kodak Co.
among its founding members in 1971. With 2.7 million registered
business members in the United States and Canada, Better Business
Bureau Inc. handled 1.2 million complaints about goods and services in
2006 and helped resolve more than two-thirds of them.It said Kodak has
long refused to accept or respond to consumer complaints submitted by
the Upstate New York Better Business Bureau, prompting expulsion
proceedings in December by the council’s board.”Every member of the BBB
system is required to make a good-faith effort to resolve consumer
complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau,” said Steve Cole, the
council’s chief executive. “To do otherwise is to abdicate their
commitment to helping advance trust in the consumer marketplace, the
key focus of the BBB.Kodak was advised it could contest the termination
but chose instead to resign its national membership in early March. The
photography company allowed its membership in the Buffalo-based branch
to lapse about five years ago.”We ultimately decided to resign our
membership because we were extremely unhappy with the customer service
we received from the local office of the BBB,” Kodak said in a
statement, describing the branch’s Web site postings about the company
as “consistently inaccurate.””The presence of a third-party
organization between Kodak and our customers is bureaucratic and
unproductive,” it added. “In fact, Kodak’s customer service and
customer privacy teams concluded that 99 percent of all complaints
forwarded by the BBB had already been handled directly with the
customer.”Our commitment to our customers is unwavering. That will not
change. What has changed is that, for us, the BBB’s customer complaint
process has become redundant.”The upstate New York chapter drew 183
complaints about Kodak over the last three years, fewer than in
previous years and a small number for a company of its size, said the
chapter’s president, David Polino.They included complaints from
consumers who reported problems related to repairs of Kodak digital
cameras as well as difficulty in communicating with the company’s
customer service department.Consumers reported that their
cameras broke and they were charged for repairs even though the failure
was not the result of any damage or abuse, the group said. Some
consumers said their cameras failed again after the product was
returned to them.Kodak, the world’s top maker of photographic film, is
navigating a bumpy voyage into a new world of digital imaging. By
year-end, its work force will slip below 30,000, less than half what it
was just three years ago.”We’ve had companies kind of come and go,”
said the council’s spokesman, Stephen Cox. “But in terms of those
founding members, Kodak is the first to have expulsion proceedings
initiated.” -
AuthorMarch 27, 2007 at 10:34 AM
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