The Better Business Bureau is a US based, non-governmental organization that networks local Better Business Bureau (BBB) organizations together and gathers and reports information on business reliability.  Founded in 1912, the organization alerts the public to frauds against consumers and businesses, provides information on ethical business practices, and act as mutually trusted intermediaries between consumers and businesses to resolve disputes.  In other words, they’re a trusted source many turn to when a businesses operational procedure(s) are called into question.

Linden Labs, creators of the virtual world ‘Second Life’ have recently been granted the distinction of being rated with an ‘F’ by the Better Business Bureau.  According to the BBB’s website:

“BBB assigns grades from A to F with pluses and minuses. A+ is the highest grade and F is the lowest. The grade represents BBB’s degree of confidence that the business is operating in a trustworthy manner and will make a good faith effort to resolve any customer concerns.”

Ouch.

According to the rating, the BBB cited the following reasons for its rating:

• Number of complaints filed against business.
• Failure to respond to complaints filed against business.
• Length of time business has taken to resolve complaint(s).

Of the complaints filed, the two largest issues were ‘Billing or Collection Issues’ (13) and ‘Customer Service Issues’ (12).  Given the inherent nature of how business is conducted on Second Life, whereby Linden Labs actively encourages users to create their own virtual goods based business with real-money transactions happening on the back end (secondary marketplace), the in-game economy is ripe for a virtual fraudster’s picking if adequate and preventative measures are not securely in place.  Virtual economies place developers and publishers in a highly complex ecosystem of millions of virtual (and real) transactions occurring on a daily basis.  If the economic backend is not fully mapped out, including room for unlimited scalability, anti-fraud measures, and the ability to identify and limit known ‘trouble makers’, a myriad of potential virtual world problems can balloon over night.

To be fair, let’s look at this rating with a grain of salt.  The BBB “F” rating was initially reported by (the infamous) Tizzers via twitter.  If you’re not familiar with Tizzers’ story, he’s the guy so knee deep on Linen Lab’s s#*^ list that at one point Linden Labs banned every avatar that had the first name of Tizzers.  As a home for your alter ego, the likelihood of some serious draaaahma  going down on (and sometimes off) Second Life is quite high (love triangle murder, anyone?).  That said, it is entirely possible that some disgruntled Second Life residents may be artificially inflating the numbers by filing baseless claims with the BBB for fun.  And let’s be fair, when was the last time you heard a satisfied customer as or more vocal than the dissatisfied customer?