Tucson’s Better Business Bureau had received numerous complaints about ARS Rescue Rooter and even suspended its membership, but customers who looked up the contractor’s rating online this summer found it had an “A” grade.

Jared Stokes, a Tucson resident, is locked in a battle with ARS Rescue Rooter over an air conditioner problem that caused $4,000 worth of damage to his house, he said. He checked the BBB’s website in June, after ARS’ bureau suspension took place, and found ARS’ rating was an “A.”

ARS has 48 complaints on file with the BBB for the past three years, with 14 for advertising and sales problems and 34 for service problems, according to the BBB’s website.

“I had asked them why it had an A rating when its accreditation is suspended,” Stokes said. “They never answered.”

The BBB’s online file about ARS has noted the suspension since April, said Kimberly States, president and CEO of the BBB of Southern Arizona.

ARS’ accreditation was revoked on Sept. 23 and the company has not sent an appeal of the revocation.

The BBB works to resolve complaints filed against companies, States said. Each complaint has a BBB middleman who writes to each party, and tries to see if there is a way to resolve the complaint.

Stokes complains, “The Better Business Bureau will only go two rounds. They (ARS) basically snowballed or filibustered their process and nothing was solved. They say the process is over.”

ARS took BBB complaints seriously because the company valued its high ranking at the bureau, said Sue Barrett, who was sales lead coordinator at ARS until this summer.

One of Barrett’s jobs, she said, was to answer the letters the BBB sent out when it received a complaint.

The idea, Barrett said, was “to solve the problem and try to keep the rating.”

“The whole thing wasn’t so much to satisfy the customer as it was to keep our rating,” she said.

Michelle A. Monroe is a University of Arizona journalism student and a NASA Space Grant intern. Contact her at mmonroe@azstarnet.com