Complaint Policy
Blue Collar Guild, LLC — internal handling policy and public statement Version 1.0 · Effective 30 September 2026
Why this exists
Someone will call angry about a member. It might be the second week or the second year. The worst time to decide what you do about it is while they are on the phone.
This document decides it in advance. The public half goes on the site. The internal half is how you and any staff actually handle it.
The single principle underneath all of it:
> The Guild is an advertising service. We control who advertises. We do not control the > work. So we act on what a member told us, and we stay out of what a member did on > a job — except to record it, and to remove a member whose conduct we can't stand behind.
Crossing that line is what turns an advertising company into a party to the dispute. Every rule below exists to keep you on the right side of it.
Part one — the public statement
*Goes on the site, linked from the footer and from every business profile.*
Telling the Guild about a problem
Blue Collar Guild is an advertising service. The businesses listed here pay to advertise. We do not employ them, supervise their work, set their prices, or guarantee anything they do. Any agreement about a job is between you and that business.
That said, we decide who advertises here, and we want to know when something is wrong.
Call (615) 766-3976 or email complaints@thebluecollarguild.com. Tell us the business name, the county, roughly when it happened, and what went wrong. If you have paperwork — an estimate, an invoice, a text thread — hold onto it.
What we will do
- Acknowledge you within one business day.
- Look at whether the business's listing is accurate: license, insurance, trades, service
area, the claims on their profile.
- Contact the business and give them a chance to respond.
- Suspend or remove a listing when a member has misrepresented themselves to us, lost a
license or insurance they claimed, advertised work they aren't permitted to do, or behaved in a way we won't put our name beside.
- Keep a record of every complaint, whatever the outcome.
- Tell you what we did.
What we will not do
- Decide who is right about the work itself. We are not a court, an inspector, or an
arbitrator, and we have no way to judge whether a roof was installed properly.
- Order a business to refund you, return, or finish a job. We have no authority to do
that and claiming otherwise would be dishonest.
- Pay for the work, the damage, or the dispute. We are not a party to your agreement.
- Remove a member because a complaint was made. We remove members over what we can
verify, not over an allegation.
Where to go when it's bigger than us
We will always tell you these, and we would rather you use them than wait on us:
- Tennessee Board for Licensing Contractors — licensing complaints, unlicensed
contracting, work beyond a license's monetary limit
- Tennessee Division of Consumer Affairs — consumer protection complaints
- Your county codes or building department — permits and inspections
- The contractor's insurance carrier — property damage
- Small claims court — money disputes; Tennessee's limit is well above most residential
jobs
- Local law enforcement — theft, fraud, threats, anything criminal
Reviews are separate
A review is your account of work a business did for you. We read every review before it posts, and we don't publish reviews from people who didn't hire the business. We do not remove a truthful review because the business asked us to, and we do not edit what you wrote. If a review is false, the business can tell us and we will look, but disagreeing with a review is not grounds for removing it.
Part two — how we handle it internally
*Not published. This is the runbook.*
Log it before anything else
Every complaint gets a record the moment it arrives, before any judgement: date, complainant name and contact, member, county, what happened, what they want, and who took it. Nothing is handled by memory or by text thread.
Staff can log and handle complaints. Only the owner decides to suspend or remove a member, and only the owner talks about refunds — of Guild fees, never of a member's job.
Sort it into one of four buckets
1 — Listing accuracy. The license number doesn't match the state record, the insurance certificate has expired, they advertise a trade they aren't licensed for, the profile claims something untrue, the photos aren't theirs. → This is squarely our business. Verify against the record. Contact the member. Correct or suspend the listing. Same day if the claim is about licensing or insurance.
2 — Scope violation. A member on the "under $25,000" tier bid or took a larger job; a member worked outside the counties they pay for; a member advertised an unpermitted trade. → Our business. They signed an agreement about this. First occurrence: call, correct the listing, note it. Second: remove.
3 — Conduct. Didn't show, didn't call back, was rude, took a deposit and vanished, threatened someone. → Record it, and watch for a pattern. One complaint about a missed appointment is life. Three about deposits is a decision. Deposit-and-vanish, threats, or anything criminal is immediate suspension and a referral to law enforcement — we don't wait for a pattern on those.
4 — Workmanship or money. The tile is crooked, the bill was higher than the estimate, they won't come back to fix it. → Not ours to judge. Log it, tell the complainant plainly that we can't arbitrate, give them the referral list, and note it against the member. If the same member accumulates these, that's bucket 3 — a pattern is conduct even when each incident isn't.
Timelines
| Step | When |
|---|---|
| Acknowledge the complainant | 1 business day |
| Contact the member | 2 business days |
| Member responds | 5 business days |
| Licensing or insurance problem | Suspend same day, ask questions after |
| Decision and reply to complainant | 10 business days |
Suspending over an expired certificate isn't a punishment — the listing makes a claim we can no longer support, so it comes down until we can.
Suspension and removal
Suspended means the listing is hidden and billing pauses. Reversible. Removed means the listing is gone and the agreement is terminated. No refund of the period already paid — the advertiser agreement says so.
Remove for: a false license claim, a lapsed license they didn't disclose within 10 days, repeated scope violations after warning, a credible pattern of taking money without working, threats or violence, or lying to the Guild about any of it.
Do not remove for: one unhappy customer, a bad review, a price dispute, slow scheduling, or a complaint from a competitor. Competitor complaints are common in trades. Ask directly whether the complainant is a customer or in the same business — the answer usually arrives without a fight, and it belongs in the record either way.
What you say on the phone
The three sentences that keep you out of the middle:
> "I can't tell you who's right about the work — I wasn't there and it isn't our place." > "What I can do is check that everything they told us is true, and act if it isn't." > "Here's who does have authority over this, and I'd start there today."
Never say "we'll make them fix it," "we vetted them," or "we'll get your money back." All three are untrue, and all three are the kind of thing that gets read back to you later.
Records
Complaints are kept for three years — long enough to see a pattern and to show a regulator or a court that you acted. Quote requests are deleted after 60 days. Both retention periods are stated in the privacy policy.
Every complaint record notes who handled it and what was decided. If a member is ever removed, the record is what justifies it.
Review it twice a year
Sit down with the log every six months and ask: which trades generate complaints, which counties, which tier, and is anything in the sign-up process letting the wrong people in. The complaint log is the best early warning you'll have about the health of the roll.
Before this goes live
- An attorney reviews it. Parts of this make claims about what the Guild will and won't
do, which is exactly the language that gets tested later.
- Confirm the referral list. Agency names and the small claims limit change.
- Set up complaints@thebluecollarguild.com and have it reach a person, not a folder.
- The advertiser agreement must match this. Suspension, removal without refund, the
10-day lapse-notification duty, and the scope commitments all have to appear in the contract members sign, or none of it is enforceable.
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