How Roofing Companies Get BBB Ratings: What the Grading Actually Measures

Quick answer: The Better Business Bureau grades businesses on an A+ through F scale using its published “Standards for Trust,” weighing factors including complaint volume, how a business responds to and resolves complaints, transparency about business practices, licensing, and any government actions against the business — customer reviews are explicitly excluded from the rating calculation. Critically, BBB accreditation (a paid, voluntary membership) is separate from the rating itself: BBB’s own FAQ states accreditation dues “do not buy a rating,” and a non-accredited business can hold an A+ rating without paying anything, while an accredited business can still receive a poor grade if its complaint record warrants one.

What the BBB Rating Scale Actually Measures

BBB’s published “Overview of Ratings” and FAQ pages describe the rating as being determined by a business’s complaint history, how it responds to complaints, how transparent it is about its practices, and any licensing or government action on file against it. An earlier, more detailed BBB methodology document broke this down into roughly a dozen scored elements on a 100-point scale, including complaint volume (weighted more heavily for age — a recent complaint counts more than an old, resolved one), unanswered complaints, unresolved complaints, complaint-response delays, business type, time in business, transparency of business practices, failure to honor mediation or arbitration agreements, licensing status, and any government actions or advertising review issues on file. It’s worth being direct that BBB no longer publishes the exact current point-value breakdown for each factor on its live site, so while the underlying factor categories are confirmed directly from BBB’s own materials, treat any specific numeric point allocations as historical rather than a guaranteed current formula.

How Complaint Volume, Resolution, and Time in Business Factor In

Within BBB’s documented methodology, complaints that go entirely unanswered by a business carry the heaviest documented penalty, followed by complaints a business responds to but doesn’t actually resolve to the customer’s satisfaction — meaning a business that engages with and resolves customer complaints, even if it receives a meaningful volume of them, is treated considerably more favorably than a business that simply ignores complaints filed against it. Raw complaint volume itself factors in as a separate, smaller component, and complaint age matters: an older, already-resolved complaint weighs less heavily than a recent, unresolved one. Time in business is also a scored factor — a longer-established, verifiable business history contributes positively to the rating, and where BBB can’t independently verify a business’s actual founding date, it defaults to using the date that business’s BBB file was first opened.

BBB Accreditation vs. the Rating Itself: A Critical, Often-Misunderstood Distinction

This is the single most important distinction for a homeowner evaluating any company’s BBB profile to understand clearly: BBB accreditation is a separate, voluntary paid membership program requiring a business to commit to BBB’s Standards for Trust, and BBB’s own FAQ is explicit that “accreditation is voluntary and separate from the rating” and that “accreditation dues do not buy a rating, and they do not remove a complaint.” In practice, this means a business can hold a strong A+ rating without ever paying BBB anything, while an accredited, dues-paying business can still receive a poor grade if its actual complaint record and business practices warrant one. BBB doesn’t publicly post a fixed accreditation fee schedule; third-party small-business resources have estimated dues scaling with a company’s size (one such estimate cited roughly $965 per year for a business with around 10 employees as of early 2025), though this figure comes from a third-party source rather than BBB’s own published pricing, and any business considering accreditation should confirm current dues directly with its local BBB.

Common Misconceptions Worth Addressing Directly

Two misconceptions come up especially often. First, some consumers assume a non-accredited business with a good rating is somehow less trustworthy than an accredited one — but since accreditation and rating are explicitly separate per BBB’s own stated policy, a non-accredited A+ business hasn’t done anything wrong by choosing not to pay for membership. Second, many consumers assume the BBB letter grade reflects the same thing as a star-based customer review average (like a Google or Yelp rating) — it doesn’t. BBB’s own materials confirm that customer reviews are excluded from the letter-grade calculation entirely; the grade is built from BBB’s own complaint-handling data and the other factors described above, not from a star-rating aggregation of customer sentiment.

Where the Rating System Has Faced Real Criticism

It’s worth being honest that BBB’s rating system has faced credible outside scrutiny over the years. A widely reported 2010 case, later covered by Slate and other outlets, found that a deliberately fabricated sham business was able to earn an A- rating from a local BBB chapter shortly after paying an accreditation fee — a finding that prompted BBB to publicly commit to internal reforms. CNN Business separately reported in 2015 that some companies facing active federal or state regulatory enforcement actions still held strong BBB letter grades at the time those actions were filed. It’s important to understand BBB is a private nonprofit organization, not a government regulator — its ratings represent BBB’s own internal opinion methodology rather than an audited, government-verified consumer protection metric, and no federal or state regulator directly oversees or certifies how individual local BBB chapters apply the rating methodology.

How to Read a BBB Profile Critically Alongside Other Trust Signals

Given both the legitimate value BBB profiles do provide (a genuinely searchable complaint history and business registration record) and the real limitations and criticism the system has faced, a homeowner is best served treating a BBB rating as one input among several rather than a single, definitive trust verdict. Cross-referencing a BBB profile’s complaint volume and resolution pattern against a business’s Google Business Profile reviews (which reflect direct, unfiltered customer sentiment BBB’s own rating explicitly excludes), Yelp reviews, and — for a licensed trade like roofing — that business’s actual license status and any disciplinary history with the relevant state contractor licensing board, gives a considerably more complete and reliable picture than relying on any single source alone.

Why This Matters Specifically When Evaluating a Roofing Contractor

Roofing is a trade where a homeowner often makes a single, large, infrequent purchasing decision under real time pressure — particularly after storm damage — making trust signals like BBB ratings, online reviews, and license verification especially important parts of the vetting process. A roofing company’s BBB profile can reveal genuinely useful information: how many complaints have been filed against that specific company, what those complaints were actually about, and whether the company responded and resolved them — but, as described above, it says nothing about the company’s actual workmanship quality, pricing competitiveness, or overall customer satisfaction beyond the narrow lens of complaints specifically filed through BBB’s own system. Combining a company’s BBB complaint history with direct license verification through the relevant state contractor licensing board (covered in our companion piece on verifying roofing contractor licenses) and a broader look at customer reviews across multiple platforms gives a homeowner a genuinely well-rounded basis for evaluating a prospective contractor.

Other Questions People Ask

Does a bad BBB rating mean a company is doing something illegal?

Not necessarily — a poor BBB rating typically reflects unresolved or unanswered customer complaints filed through BBB specifically, which is a different question from whether a business is operating illegally; licensing violations or legal enforcement actions are a separate matter best verified directly with the relevant state regulator.

Can a business get its BBB rating removed or hidden?

BBB profiles and their associated complaint histories are generally maintained as part of BBB’s public record; a business can respond to and resolve complaints (which can improve future rating calculations) but generally cannot simply have accurate historical complaint data deleted from its file.

Is BBB accreditation required to have a BBB profile at all?

No — BBB maintains profiles, complaint records, and letter-grade ratings for many businesses regardless of accreditation status; accreditation is an optional, additional paid membership layered on top of a business’s underlying profile and rating.

People Also Ask

How does the BBB rate roofing companies?

Using the same general Standards for Trust methodology BBB applies to any business — complaint volume and resolution, transparency, licensing status, and time in business — rather than a roofing-specific grading criteria.

What does a BBB A+ rating actually measure?

A composite score based on a business’s complaint history and how well it responds to and resolves those complaints, along with transparency and licensing factors — not a measure of customer satisfaction, review scores, or workmanship quality directly.

Can a company pay for a better BBB rating?

No — per BBB’s own stated policy, accreditation dues are separate from the rating and do not buy a better grade or remove a legitimate complaint from a business’s record, though the rating system has faced documented outside criticism over the years regarding how reliably this separation has held up in practice.

Sources

• Better Business Bureau, BBB FAQ and Overview of BBB Ratings (bbb.org)
• Better Business Bureau, Overview of BBB Ratings methodology document (archived via Truth in Advertising)
• Slate, coverage of 2010 BBB accreditation/rating controversy
• CNN Business, 2015 coverage of BBB ratings and regulatory enforcement actions

BBB no longer publishes the exact current numeric point-weighting for each rating factor on its live site; the factor categories described here are confirmed directly from BBB’s own current and archived materials, while specific historical point values should be treated as illustrative rather than a guaranteed current formula. Last updated September 2026.