REGION Bureau president ensures Better Business practices

More than 10 percent of local businesses signed on as BBB members, nearly three times the national average.
By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Patricia Rose started out at the Better Business Bureau in 1985 with an impressive-sounding title and a minuscule paycheck.
"I probably took home $150 a week," she said with a smile, leaning back in an upholstered chair in her plush office in downtown Youngstown.
Now president of the BBB serving Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties and the newly elected governor of the BBB's Midwest Region, the Boardman native said she still enjoys picking up the phone to talk to consumers and business owners.
"From the very first day, I had a burning in my belly for the work we do here," she said. "I've always loved helping businesses solve their problems."
Original plans
Rose was planning to be a pharmacist when she graduated from Boardman High School in 1958, but she dropped out of college to get married after three years of study at Ohio Northern University and Youngstown State University.
She discovered a love for sales a few years later when she took a job marketing industrial chemicals all over Ohio. She liked the travel and the contact with people, but after nine years a temporary health problem forced her to find work closer to home.
Rose was working as a temporary worker for Manpower in 1984 when a job opening came up at the BBB and she decided to give it a try. The position became permanent a few months later, and she was hooked.
She said her start as the BBB director of mediation and arbitration helped her form long-standing business relationships with hundreds of local company owners and managers, a cornerstone of the agency's healthy membership roster.
Oversees growth
Under Rose's leadership the local BBB has grown to 2,100 member businesses, nearly doubling its roster in the past six years. Staff has increased as well, from a skeleton crew of four when she began to 15 full- and part-time workers today.
In fact, the BBB of the Mahoning Valley was ranked No. 1 out of 135 BBB chapters nationwide for its member market penetration. Rose said about 10.3 percent of businesses in the tri-county area are members, compared with the national average of 3.6 percent.
Personal service and fair treatment of consumer and business owner alike are key to the agency's growth, she said. A willingness to spend time and money for the latest technology was equally important.
Every staff member has computer access, and reports, complaints and educational material are all available online at the bureau's Web site. There's also a 24-hour automated phone service for checking company reports.
"Our seniors still like to call and talk to someone in person. Some even ask for me," she said.
"But people in their 40s and under like to check the database themselves. They might want to check 10 companies. They can do that online any time of the day or night."
More than 90 percent of the local BBB members are small and middle-sized businesses with 20 or fewer employees. The bureau relies solely on member dues for its operating budget.
Works both ways
Rose said she likes to think the bureau "keeps businesses on the straight and narrow," but it sometimes vindicates businesses as well.
"Companies appreciate the chance to try to satisfy their customers. They're willing to admit when a mistake has been made and to try to work out a solution that's satisfactory to both sides," she said.
"But the consumer isn't always right. We run into cases where the buyer is expecting too much or trying to get something for nothing."
She recalled a case involving a furniture store and a customer who complained that the store had sold her a substandard sofa.
The bureau representative, an arbitrator and the merchant visited the customer's home. Minutes later the customer's two teen-age sons bounded into the room and vaulted over the back of the sofa to land with a thud. "Obviously, the store owner was vindicated," she said.
But she remembers another case in which the merchant was plainly in the wrong. Her staff began getting calls from all over the country about a work-at-home scheme operating out of Boardman. She contacted the U.S. Postal Service to help investigate and authorities shut down the operation in less than a week.
The perpetrators had been shut down in another state and set up shop here, expecting to run their scam for a month or more before getting discovered.
"They were shocked at how quickly we shut them down," she said. "We're small enough that we still have our thumb on things. We recognize when something is abnormal, when we start getting a lot of calls about something unusual -- the kind of thing a larger BBB, one in a big city like Los Angeles or Chicago, might not be so quick to recognize."
vinarsky@vindy.com