“I can’t even believe they would do this. You know, I don’t know what their motivation is – they had nothing to gain, and what are they protecting the public from? A good deal?” ~ Mike Lindell, MyPillow Inventor
UPDATE: Mike Lindell of MyPillow published the video above on Jan. 11, 2017 to assure his customers that he views each and every customer as his “only customer,” and thanks them for their support.
Chaska, MN – Was the “accreditation downgrade” issued to the company “MyPillow” on January 3, 2017, by the Better Business Bureau of Minnesota and North Dakota politically motivated? Was the press release by the BBB announcing the downgrade unprecedented? In an exclusive interview with Alpha News, MyPillow owner and President, Mike Lindell discussed the BBB downgrade of his company.
According to press releases from the BBB, the accreditation revocation of MyPillow came after a series of issues:
Based on a pattern of complaints from consumers, a Better Business Bureau of Minnesota and North Dakota (BBB) advertising challenge, and a government action taken by California state agencies, Better Business Bureau of Minnesota and North Dakota’s Board of Directors revoked MyPillow’s BBB Accreditation on December 15. Subsequently, the company’s BBB rating was lowered to an F.
The BBB says one of the reasons for the downgrade is that MyPillow ran a “buy one pillow get one free” offer for too long according to the BBB’s guidelines.
“In July they had nominated me for one of their most prestigious awards” Lindell said in interview with Alpha news this week.
The Chaska, MN based pillow maker boasts 1500 employees and 25 million pillows have sold. Lindell says his company has responded to a couple hundred complaints over the last five years.
Lindell says suddenly in August the agency informed him there was a problem with his advertisements.
Lindell claims that he tried explaining to the organization that he had committed to the promotion through the 2016 holidays and pulling the marketing campaigns would be extremely costly. The BBB disagreed.
Lindell says the timing of BBB is suspicious because it came at the same time Lindell publicly voiced support for then Presidential candidate and current President-elect Donald Trump.
Lindell met with Donald J. Trump for the first time in August. ”I thought that was awesome that he would meet with me and ask all these things, and I got to know him and after that meeting, I’m going ‘wow, this guy is going to be an amazing president,’ Lindell said.
After his meeting with Tump, Lindell put out a press release showing his support for Mr. Trump.
Lindell says after he put out the press release his relationship with the BBB became different: “Once I had that meeting with Mr. Trump, it seems like that’s when everything changed,” Lindell said.
They Wanted Everybody to Pay Full Price…
In November, after the election, Lindell met with the BBB board. Lindell described the meeting, “I told them at that board meeting, ‘why would you guys try and destroy a company, that you know, we’ve got the best complaint record of anybody, the best customer service in history.”
He says the stigma of the “F” rating will hurt his business, “You know people are out there thinking that something is wrong with our product or my customer service.”
Lindell said the BBB wants all of his customers to pay full price, “they had nothing to gain, and what are they protecting the public from? A good deal?”
The BBB is denying that the accreditation revocation is politically motivated. In a press release on Jan. 4, 2017, the organization states:
We are aware that the owner of MyPillow publicly supported one of the four candidates in this year’s presidential race; however our Ad Review challenge – which led to the company’s accreditation being revoked and their BBB rating to be lowered – began in August of last year, long before the business owner’s political affiliation became public knowledge.
Lindell says he will continue trying to explain to customers why the BBB dropped his rating, “I want to get on TV and get the word out there, what we’re doing, what Mike Lindell (Foundation) and MyPillow are all about so people don’t think that there’s something wrong because the BBB brought us from an A+ to an F and tried to destroy us,” he said.
A search of the Better Business Bureau press release database showed that the public announcement of the accreditation revocation of the MyPillow company was highly unusual. No other announcements of the same type came up in the search.
Subscribe to Alpha News to read about Lindell’s plans for working with Dr. Ben Carson and his future political plans in the upcoming Part II of the Alpha News Interview with Mike Lindell.
UPDATED 1/12/2017 12:04PM
Andrea Mayer-Bruestle
Andrea Mayer-Bruestle is a former writer for Alpha News.
