Who Do You Trust?

A new poll out from the Better Business Bureau and Gallup Polling finds that most people still don't trust car dealers. For good reason, we find.

New to the top of the "don't trust 'em" list are furniture stores, cell phone providers, and real estate brokers too, closely followed by banks, grocery stores, pharmacies, stock brokers and home improvement stores.

And almost 20% of the people polled said that they trusted businesses less this year than last year. Well, maybe the chickens have finally come home to roost. Then again, maybe they never left?

The poll results here aren't much different than the Harris Poll results in 2006 when people ranked stockbrokers and realtors at the bottom of the list there too, but that was without car dealers even being included in the rankings at all. The closest category included was mechanics, who came in only slightly above realtors.

And being in Canada doesn't make much difference in the poll results either, according to Leger marketing, who completed a poll in May 2007. There, they found levels of trust declining too and, of course, used car salespeople were at the bottom of the "trust list" for Canada (apparently things are worse up north?). Just slightly higher than used car salespeople were politicians (a feeling we're familiar with in the US too) and only two notches above that were new car salespeople (so you'd rather trust a new car salesperson than a used car salesperson? I don't think so...).

In the recent BBB-Gallup survey, Americans considered honesty, fairness, dependable, reliable, good value for the money and good prices to all be key factors in trusting the businesses they deal with every day in every aspect of their lives. Okay, so much for car dealers ...

If you've been lied to by a car dealer or another merchant or if you're a victim of fraud, we can help. We've been helping consumers get back their hard-earned money from crooked businesses for almost 30 years.