The Diamond Certified Directory features report pages for top rated companies throughout the Greater Bay Area. Photo: American Ratings Corporation, 2017
Last month, we mailed the brand-new 2017 Diamond Certified Directory to more than 810,000 households throughout the San Francisco Bay Area (if you didn’t get your FREE copy, click here). Whether you already rely on the Diamond Certified Directory to find top rated local companies or you’ve never heard of it before, we figured it’s a good time to get (re)acquainted.
Every April, American Ratings Corporation publishes 10 versions of the Diamond Certified Directory, covering all of the Greater Bay Area (including Monterey). Every company listed in each Directory has earned the prestigious Diamond Certified award. Our ratings team works year-round vetting local companies. They phone past customers, verify licenses, and ensure that things like certifications and insurance are up-to-date. That’s why you won’t find every company that operates in a certain area in the directory. We only list top rated companies and most companies can’t qualify.
Companies are listed by business category. Do you need a new roof? The Diamond Certified roofers in your area will be listed under “Roofing” toward the back of the book (it’s in alphabetical order). If you don’t know which business category matches your needs, you’ll find a list of industries at the beginning of the listings section.
Once you’ve found the right industry category, you can read about each Diamond Certified company that serves your area. We list essentials like hours of operation, services provided and contact information in the top half of the sidebar on each company’s page. The bottom half of the sidebar is given over to the ratings themselves, showing you details such as the number of surveys completed, customer loyalty ratings and customer satisfaction score. While you’ll see here that every company has slightly different figures, none are low. Remember, we list only the companies that pass our rigorous 12-step rating process.
The Rating Process is described on the first page of the Diamond Certified Directory. Photo: American Ratings Corporation, 2017
Each company page also features a written profile that will help you get to know the company. It’ll let you know if the company is family-owned, what kinds of services it excels at and what its customer service philosophy is.
At the bottom of the page, you’ll find just one of the many survey responses we’ve received. If you’d like to read more, we publish all of the responses we’ve collected for each company on its online report page. (To access the Diamond Certified Directory online, go here.)
Company listings are the heart of the Diamond Certified Directory, but don’t stop there. The directory has many other features that are designed to help consumers. The newest addition is the Helpful Expertise feature at the back of the book, where Diamond Certified Expert Contributors share tips and tricks of the trade with consumers.
The front pages of the Diamond Certified Directory go into further detail about the Diamond Certified Resource as a whole. We explain precisely how the ratings process works and go over the differences between the Diamond Certified Resource and review sites. We also discuss our Performance Guarantee: We feel so confident in our ratings process that we offer mediation services in case a dispute arises between you and a company. If the company fails to honor its contractual obligations, uphold industry standards or participate in good faith to resolve the issue, we will refund your purchase price up to a limit of $1,000.
We’re so confident in our ratings process that we back consumers with a Performance Guarantee. Photo: American Ratings Corporation, 2017
We hope you find the 2017 Diamond Certified Directory helpful. Look for quarterly updates in the mail throughout the year, and remember, you can always access the Diamond Certified Resource online.