Several Bay Area Organizations Offer Help In Identifying Reasonably Priced, Reliable Services

by

Robert Figueroa

You're settled into your new apartment, you've enrolled the kids in their new school, and your spouse has found a new job. You've mastered the geography of the area and the road system, gotten acquainted with your colleagues and neighbors, and identified some favorite shopping and recreation spots. Still, a nagging sense that some important things remain undone keeps you from feeling entirely at home. Maybe it's because you have yet to find a trustworthy mechanic for your foreign car, or a good dentist that your spouse and kids will be comfortable with, or an honest repairman who will fix your washer without taking you to the cleaners.

Finding competent, reasonably priced service providers is a crucial step in the settling-in process faced so frequently by the ever-increasing number of Bay Area newcomers. It can also be a daunting one. How, exactly, do you go about it?

"The first thing I tell people is that they should write down exactly what they're looking for, what they need," says Delores Krause, head of Information and Referral at Alameda's Family Service Center. She recommends that people should shop at least as carefully for services as they would for any expensive product. "I tell them to do their homework, to be good shoppers, to comparison shop."

Krause also advises caution. Heavily advertised referral services, for instance, are often little more than cooperative marketing strategies disguised as consumer services. "I tell people to be aware that some of these services are just a 'buy-in,'" she says. "The dentist referral service--the dentists just buy into that."

Part of "doing your homework," say Krause and others who counsel consumers, involves canvassing your friends about their own consumer choices. Word-of-mouth recommendations remain one of the most common and proven means of choosing service providers. But be aware that others may have different needs and different standards than you have.

Another part of the puzzle involves conducting your own business and industry research. Consulting organizations such as the Better Business Bureau, for example, is one way to check on businesses you may have questions about. Local newspapers and television stations are increasingly devoting regular sections to consumer issues and complaints, as well. Libraries, of course, hold a wealth of consumer information and resources, including detailed advice on everything from what to look for in a roofing contractor to how to choose a lawyer. Some of the most useful how-to sources are the publications put out by the non-profit consumer organization Consumer's Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, a magazine primarily devoted to evaluating and rating consumer products and nation-wide service companies (such as hotel chains, or health and insurance companies).

Finding unbiased sources that evaluate and rate local service firms can be difficult, however, since evaluating the myriad service firms that coexist in any sizable community can be a formidable and expensive undertaking. Bay Area residents may have an advantage, however, over consumers elsewhere in this regard, thanks to two unique organizations. One is the non-profit Center for the Study of Services, which publishes the Bay Area Consumers' CHECKBOOK.

Published twice a year, CHECKBOOK is a magazine devoted, it says, "To helping Bay Area consumers find the high-quality, reasonably priced services we all deserve."

"It's been a wonderful source for a lot of things here in the Bay Area," says Family Service's Krause, who keeps copies in her office. Each issue rates several different kinds of local service firms, based on survey responses from subscribers, and on surveys of the firms themselves. The magazine has evaluated a wide variety of services over the years, from air conditioning contractors to watch repair shops. CHECKBOOK also includes detailed advice on how to select and deal with firms, as well as on how to solve some problems on your own so you can avoid having to use a service.

Like Consumer Reports, CHECKBOOK accepts no outside advertising. According to Dorothy Miller, who handles public relations for the magazine, this policy is meant to insure the integrity of the evaluation process. "We don't accept any monetary support from businesses, so we can be completely impartial in our ratings," she says.

But because it must rely entirely on the support of subscribers, and as a local publication without a national subscriber base, CHECKBOOK has some important limitations. Due to limited resources the magazine is published somewhat infrequently and irregularly, for instance. And as the magazine itself acknowledges, the ratings are sometimes based on relatively small samples. "Many firms were rated by rather small numbers of raters," it states in one caveat. Another concerns the question of dated information: "All of the data must be interpreted in view of timeliness." Many of the evaluations are many months and even several years old; businesses and even entire industries can change substantially over such periods. Nonetheless, argue CHECKBOOK's editors, "Knowing that a firm received good ratings several years ago is generally much better than knowing nothing at all."

Unfortunately, knowing nothing or next to nothing about a particular firm is often the predicament consumers face. Another Bay Area organization committed to informing consumer choices of service firms is an Alameda-based company called ValueStar. Founded in 1990 by entrepreneur Jim Stein, ValueStar rates firms in over 100 service areas--from alarm installers to tax consultants-- on the basis of customer satisfaction. The inspiration for ValueStar, says Stein, is his conviction that customer satisfaction is the only worthwhile barometer of a business's success. His aim is to "Make the world a better place for consumers," he says. "As a consumer, even if you don't know anything about house painting or dentistry, but you do know that the company you are talking to really does have very satisfied customers, you're probably going to be very happy with your selection."

ValueStar employs the non-profit Public Research Institute at San Francisco State University to conduct a scientific analysis of a company's level of customer satisfaction based on a random sample of about 100 past customers. Those firms whose ratings exceed the benchmark established by ValueStar for that industry are allowed to display the Consumer ValueStar symbol for one year, after which they must go through the rating process again.

The benchmark scores vary according to industry averages, but must always exceed 80% customer satisfaction, says ValueStar spokesperson Faith Kramer. "To pass, a business has to exceed its own industry standard, or 80 percent, whichever is higher," she explains. According to Public Research Institute estimates, around 50 percent of businesses in any industry cannot pass. The actual failure rate for applicants is about 35 to 40 percent, says Kramer, because many businesses with low customer satisfaction are aware of it and hence don't apply.

ValueStar charges applicants a non-refundable fee for the evaluation, and an additional fee to display the symbol after a business qualifies. Because it operates for profit, many consumer advocates are reluctant to endorse ValueStar. Consumer CHECKBOOK's Miller believes that taking money from firms undermines the independence and integrity of the evaluation process. "It's hard to be honest about somebody when they’re putting the food on your table."

But Kramer says the fees are simply "the cost of doing business." As evidence of the integrity of ValueStar's evaluation process, she points out that a substantial percentage of businesses do fail the evaluation. And some that pass one year fail to pass the next. "We do get firms whose ratings for one reason or another fall off."

Ultimately, of course, consumers will decide the value of the ValueStar emblem. Which is the case for all services and products, including services and publications that offer to help consumers make the right choices. In deciding their worth, take the same care and apply the same standards as you would with any important consumer decision.

And do your homework. For along with that old axiom that says, "Buyer, beware," should be added another: "Buyer, be informed."