The Better Business Bureau of Greater Cleveland has reached the ripe old age of 100, and its look back at a century of scam-busting shows that some things endure.
In its early days, the BBB flushed out a "canary scam" in which a company sold dud songbirds to more than 500 Lima residents. The seller guaranteed the birds would be males (they sing) but the BBB discovered the public had been duped into buying female birds (they don't).
Today, puppy-sales scams are the favored way to shake down pet lovers for money.
During the Depression, the BBB outed work-at-home scams that preyed on those desperate for income. Back then, people were duped into buying materials to assemble toys and lamps that they later found they could not sell. Today, such scammers sell worthless medical billing software or entice victims with phony mystery shopping jobs.
History buffs and the scam-curious can enjoy a virtual stroll down memory lane at clevelandbbb100.org.
BBB staffers culled news clips and vintage national BBB ads from the '50s for the site.
The group we know as the Cleveland BBB was founded as the "vigilance committee" of the local advertising club. Its mission was "to combat the evils of dishonest advertising" – a mission the BBB continues today through its advertising reviews.
I'd thought "curbstoner," a term used to describe a someone who sells used cars without a lot or license, was relatively new, until I saw a 1944 warning about the practice on the BBB's anniversary site.
The BBB dug up tales of a charity scam that hit up crews who docked at Cleveland's port for donations to a phony fund help World War II war orphans. It also found stories about a creepy fraud where a door-to-door peddler sold families a "polio vaccine" that he claimed was cheaper than one they could get from a doctor.
Of course, no Cleveland history could be complete without mention of the famed G-man Elliot Ness. In 1939, a national police magazine's overzealous salesmen intimidated Northeast Ohio businesses into buying ads by implying they might not otherwise get police protection when they needed it. The BBB turned to Ness, then the city's safety director, who stepped in to stop the deceptive sales.
The BBB left the sheltering wing of the local advertising club in the 1920s and became a stand-alone organization. Today it offers its free company ratings online.
President David Weiss says the organization is busily expanding those reviews to include details of consumer complaints and verbatim company responses so that potential customers can get a feel for the company's handling of problems.
Although the BBB today issues alerts about everything from door-to-door scams to website scams, its advice to check out companies before you do business with them is just as valid today as it was decades ago.