When you are considering using a debt relief company to help you get out of debt, chances are you will check their ratings with the Better Business Bureau. How do you know what to look for? What you may not know is that in some states, the Better Business Bureau seems to discriminate against all companies providing debt relief services – including consolidation, debt negotiation, debt management programs and debt settlement. For example, if you research any debt relief company operating in the state of California, you will find every single company has a bad BBB rating.

It's difficult to know what goes into the actual calculation of a Better Business Bureau rating – but if all companies in the same industry within a certain state has a failing rating, it seems very likely that there is a bit of a bias against these companies and that they don't stand a chance at having a good BBB rating.

The Better Business Bureau has offices that run independently of one another throughout the country. People are given the rights to run the BBB in their location by the central BBB offices. This separation of the Better Business Bureau operations means that debt relief companies may have different ratings at different BBB's, even if their actual business operations and reputations are similar.

Some BBB's give letter grades to companies while others simply state “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory”. A better way to determine information about a debt relief company and their BBB ratings is to look at the number of complaints registered against the debt relief company versus the number of clients the company has.

If a debt settlement company has 5,000 clients and only a handful of complaints within the last 36 months, you're probably looking at a good organization. There are no guarantees in debt settlement, so it's probable that a good percentage of complaints lodged against a debt settlement company are from individuals who wanted to settle debts with their creditors with the help of a debt settlement company, only to find out their creditors refused to settle. Angry people may complain that it was the fault of the debt settlement company when in fact, it was out of their control. Having a few complaints is expected. On the other hand, if the company only has 500 clients and 125 complaints in the last three years – you might want to keep looking for a better ratio of clients to complaints!

When comparing debt relief companies, you should still seek out the information found in the Better Business Bureau ratings, but you'll want to take it with a grain of salt. If the number of complaints seems excessive – particularly in relation to the number of clients they service – you should look elsewhere or speak to a company representative to explain why there are so many complaints and how they address such complaints.