Companies that deserve to go bankrupt

The BBQ Pit
1

I wasn’t sure whether to put this here or in The Pit, but my gut said IMHO, so here goes:

What company do you know of that, AFAYAC, is rotten to the core and deserves to go down in a flaming wreckage that would make the Hindenburg look like a church picnic?

Mine is Pantorama, Inc. They are a Canadian-based company that sells brand-name fashions, and they are the most corrupt group of charlatans I have ever seen.

My experience with them is based on working for their Ottawa district, and I bet that many of the problems are due to their choice in a district manager, but the fact that they chose her says nothing good about them, and my experience with upper management and HR is pretty crappy as well.

At the store level, they encourage employees to lie about one another to management. Managers are instructed to remind employees that they are all 100% replaceable. They have astronomical turnover rates, which ultimately costs them money, but they have no interest in long-term solutions, just band-aid ones. The Machiavellian machinations that go on between district managers, managers and employees are a constant evil plague. People who gossip, narc, backstab and use more naive employees are praised and coddled while honest employees are run out.

I worked for them for almost a year in five different stores, and over and over, I saw good, honest hardworking people run out, or out and out fired, while the slimeballs who had been walking all over them, got promotions. They would literally use employees; run them ragged until they got fed up and quit, or had nervous breakdowns (one of my co-wokers actually got a doctor’s note prescribing a 4-week vacation; she was hardly sleeping or eating for two weeks before that).

Head Office is openly hostile to the sales associates who put themselves out there and make them money every day. They frequently send excessively snarky correspondence critiquing small errors. HR exists for the sole reason of keeping employees at arm’s length, so that HO can avoid lawsuits. They are cold, calculating and have no interest in running a quality business that contributes to the economy in a lasting way (which is accomplished by treating associates well enough to create company loyalty).

I know that much of this stuff goes on in other companies, but I have never seen it so brazenly encouraged or rewarded. It was disgusting, and I hope they hemorrage money until they shrivel up and die.

2

Glad to hear your outta there.

3

Sounds pretty much like every large company I’ve ever worked for.

My vote however goes to Disney.

I’m not so sure about ABC and ESPN and the Family Channel, or any of the other subsidiaries (although Go.com could take the ride in the handbasket too and no one would complain), but Disney itself is evil incarnate.

I worked for them for about 7 months before I’d taken enough and left in disgust.

About a year and a half ago, if you called or emailed Disney through any of their contact numbers or email addresses, it’s possible that I was one of the poor sods that answered your call or blew you off through email.

Their email response is a joke, nothing but dialogue trees that don’t answer anything and from the friend I have that still works there (poor guy), they are cutting them back even further. The answer to any technical question or problem is to suggest clearing your cache and cookies. If that doesn’t work and you write or call back, there are numerous circles you can be run in until you give up in frustration.

Shortly before I left they introduced a, IMO, downright dirty business practice. If you went to their website and purchased something, anything, upon your purchase a pop-up window would, well… pop up, offering a deal on a subscription web service they offer. If you clicked anything but the X in the top right corner, you accepted the terms of agreement and they used your just entered credit card info to sign you up with a default name and password that they didn’t give you. Sneaky eh? The kicker was that the deal offered 3 months of the service for free. Great deal, no? Problem is, most people don’t realize they’ve signed up and when the 3 free months goes by and the mysterious charge shows up on a credit card bill, you’re already past the 30 day period with which to cancel without charge, according to the ToS you agreed to. You’re now the proud owner of 9 more months of a service you didn’t intend to purchase and probably couldn’t access without calling in and getting your username and password, which is of course akin to banging your head on a brick wall.

Oh, and of course the annual renewal is automatic. Don’t try calling after 30 days of the renewal either, it’s a done deal for another year.

Beyond that, Michael Eisner spends more time with his foot firmly entrenched in his mouth (I spent 3 weeks replying with a standard apology email for a comment he made about homosexuality); good people get worn out and slime gets promoted; lying to customers is encouraged and almost anything to retain business is acceptable practice; their ESPN site has never, to my knowledge, ever had a live draft for a fantasy sport ever go off without some problem or another; and in general they’ll do anything to milk anyone out of every dime they can all the while paying poor wages to the slobs that take the full brunt of the publics anger and overpaying middle managers with the intelligence of tree sap to micro-manage from 300+ miles away.

Throw in their recent history of putting out shoddy sequels to classic movies and resting on their laurels and good name and frankly, I’d love to see them go under. Poor Walt.

4

OMG, soulmurk, then you don’t even want to KNOW what Disney does to their cruise ship employees.

My best friend worked on one for a while, and I don’t know how she did it. And she was working with the CHILDREN. You’d think they’d have incentive to treat the children’s program people decently enough that they could ensure the safety of their little charges, but no.

It is standard for the employees to only get five hours of sleep per night. They are fed high-sodium slop. As a “safety precaution”, they have to do redundant attendance checks where they count each child at each “checkpoint”. What makes it ridiculous is that sometimes two checkpoints are just at either ends of a hallway (that no one else uses). Sometimes parents are left waiting for twenty minutes or more to pick up their child, because it takes the Group Leaders so long to count the kids. This leaves parents angry and frustrated, and they of course take it out on the Leaders.
The play areas on the ship have big showy fixtures that have no “fun value”. There is even one area that has a big long “bar” that Group Leaders have to keep kids off of, because they could fall and hurt themselves (one already did). It is completely impractical, and a waste of money, money that COULD have been used to implement a bar-code system to keep track of the kids (like in hospitals).
The Cruise directors are constantly demanding higher levels of service from the staff, but are completely unwilling to invest any time, money or effort in the staff.
From what I heard, Disney is hemorraging money as well, so they may be downsizing things like their web presence and their cruises very soon. I doubt they’d ever get out of the movie business, it’s the only industry in which they have anything going for them.

5

Second on Disney. Also Princess. Also McDonalds, just because of their continuing contribution to obesity and toxic waste and for sucking the souls out of our children. General Electric for their refusal to own up to pollution. Exxon for refusing to pay what they owe for the Exxon Valdez spill. Halliburton for being the army of evil flying monkeys that they are. Man, the list goes on and on.

6

I don’t have any new examples, though the ones posted so far are great. I would just like to say, lola, that “Machiavellian machinations” is the best alliteration I’ve heard/seen in a while.

7

I’d have to say that the publishing company I worked for a few years ago should go be attacked by hordes of ravening vultures, because it’s a bloated stinking corpse of what used to be a decent company.

I won’t name what it was or what they sold because I don’t want to get sued, so I’m sorry if what follows is a bit waffled.

First and foremost, the man who owned/ran the company only hired English majors. Why? Because we were desperate to find work that mattered to us. A publishing company is pretty much gravy. So he would reel us in with that tempting Editorial position, only to say that he wanted us to learn the ins-and-outs of the business.

Where do I find myself? Taking orders by phone, packing orders, and data processing.

He paid us nothing for the privelege, either. When he first told me what he was going to pay me, I thought it was a joke. But I thought that I could use the editorial work to build my resume for a year or two before I took off for greener pastures. Hah!

He never paid the printers – or anyone else – on time, actually waiting for a couple of notices before he sent the money.

He would charge $120.00 for a book that took less than $5.00 to make.

The authors didn’t make anything either.

He would justify all this by saying that the authors’ main happiness was to see their work in print. The people who bought the products could afford it. The people he was in debt to didn’t need the money. And the people working for his company should be damned grateful to have the jobs they did, no matter how much he paid them or what they were doing.

One of the women who worked with me survived on pasta and lived in the crappiest place you have ever seen! She was going to lose her apartment, last time I spoke with her, because she wasn’t getting a living wage!

And here was our boss, living in his multi-million-dollar estate. One of us (there were only eight of us) asked how much he made in a year, he said $50,000. Then he tried to give us a sob story about how he was a small business owner, boo hoo, forced to live on bread and water so the rest of us could live it up.

What he didn’t mention was the regular 1.5 million dollar chunk he took out of the company each Christmas, apart from his pay.

He would count the staples and the rubber bands. He would make us print on the back of used paper because toner was so expensive, dontcherknow. And if any of us paused between calls to talk about our lives outside of work, he would walk over and stand right next to us until we went back to doing whatever.

This man was so cheap he didn’t actually let us edit anything at all. I wish you could see some of the books that came out of his company. They are appalling.

I think that was the worst part by far, that we could even take pride in the books we produced. Life was hell while I worked there.

8

EEEEEEK!

I just placed an order with Disney.com today (pre-ordered the Finding Nemo DVD set and got the lithographs), and I clicked “No” to the exact same dialog box! :eek:

How do I check whether or not I’ve gotten “subscribed,” and how do I take myself off if I am?

Agreed. Between their penny-pinching tactics (have you seen the maintenance at Disneyland lately?) and the cheap-o sequels, I really wish they would either collapse or get bought out by a quality entertainment company. Pixar would be a good start. :wink:

9

UHaul. Not only have I never had a positive experience with them, not only have I never known anyone who had a positive experience with them, but I have never known anyone who did not have a negative experience with them.

Shitty equipment, tons of hidden fees, most times your “reservation” doesn’t mean squat, incompetant managers, etc, etc, etc.

There’s a thread somewhere here where people detail their experiences with UHaul. It’s not pretty.

10

The people behind the http://www.theholylandexperience.com/ The Holy Land Experience…

and the Wilhelmina Scouting Network www.wscouts.com - my former employers. Essentially, they’re a bunch of former credit card fraud convicts using those 1-800-MODELING ads to prey on the dreams of people all over the world.

Not happy to see U-haul listed above… I’m moving tomorrow, and guess who I’m renting a truck from? :wink:

11

I rented a U-Haul truck once. No muss, no fuss, no problems. The clerk even waived my fuel refueling fee when the gas station he directed me to for diesel turned out to be shut down. :slight_smile:

12

K-Mart. Oh, wait. They already did.

13

The stupid evil phone company I used to work for. And, the stupid evil manufacturing company my husband works for (after he gets out, of course). PECO. Comcast. The New York Yankees. The Dallas Cowboys. (Are the Yankees and the Cowboys even companies? Oh well, who cares, I wish they would just fall off the face of the Earth anyway. Fuck you, Steinbrenner and Jones!!) UPS, because they hired the cocksnot who delivers packages to us (and who ALWAYS throws the boxes at the door and then runs away, even when we watch him).

14

I honestly don’t know that they still follow that practice, but you’re right for wanting to check.

I don’t think I could/should give out the number to call (and they’re darn near impossible to find), but I’d recommend going to Disney.com and digging around for a contact number. Usually they have separate numbers for orders and cancellations and tech support, etc., but of course the purchasing numbers are easy to find while the others are all hidden.

I’d suggest calling a number associated with Disney’s Blast, as that’s what the offer is (or was) for and they all go to the call center I worked at. Explain what happened and ask if you accidentally signed up for Blast. If yes, they’ll offer you the moon and stars to keep the subscription but just tell them you want to cancel it. Let them get out their three save attempts though, they’re required by the company to try three times and if you cut them short they get bad marks on their performance reviews :wink:

15

W… (the bank with the stage coach), They have no morals.
They reversed a few checks when there was money in the account, returned the funds that would have been paid out on the checks to the account, tool $35 dollars for each check reversed, (which totaled more than the checks) then reran the checks, after deducting the $35.00 fees. One did bounce that time, add another $35.00, and of course, rerun the check the same day (23:59:59 later I think). Anyway, their error turned into a $175.00 error, plus a $25.00 demand from a merchant for the bounced good check.
I called the bank branch the account was at, (a satellite in a grocery store) and was told to call another number. I get a Robert, who is new and knows nothing. After I’m convinced Robert is really the window washer, I ask for his supervisor, and he places the phone on hold. A minute later he returns, “She said I was right”. I got no where talking to the supervisor, and, I couldn’t even get her name for my records. All I have is a record of talking to Robert, who, would not give his last name either.
If you are at the bank with the stage coach, bail out while you can. The answer, new bank. I think you’ll be surprised at the link below.

CLICK HERE
That was the longest url I’ve ever pasted, if it doesn’t work…enter
http://www.badbusinessbureau.com and search for your business, or enter your unfavorite!

16

The rest of it was deplorable, but don’t blame Robert or the manager for not giving their last name.
In my experience, people in service professions, as a rule, do not give their last names. Not to their suppliers, not to customers, not to anyone outside the company.
If you had been dealing with a half-decent company and was able to talk to someone higher up who would actually try to sort out the situation, giving the the other people’s first names, and what department you found them in would have been enough info for the Super to know who you were talking about.

17

My employer.

The current CEO is well on the way to making it so and the stockholders really don’t have a clue.

My employer?

The US Government.

18

The “new management” at our complex. New management takes over and every month I get an “unpaid bill” notice of one kind or another. Then I have log in to online banking, print out a copy of the cancelled check, run it over to them, and sit there while they figure out that golly gosh, I actually DID pay the bill. And that’s not including the time I found a “Pay this by Monday or you’re evicted!” notice they’d put on the door at 4:55 on Friday. So I had to go sort that out and, yes, we’d paid it three months before. The irony is, we’ve been here over a year, and none of our bills have EVER been late. I like the complex and apartment, but if they keep giving me stupid notices, I’m moving.

19

Okay, thanks. I’ll probably wait a day or two for my “subscription” to get logged into the system, then call them up and get it yanked. Too bad there isn’t a way for me to check online whether or not I actually have a subscription, though (at least, I couldn’t find one).

20

I can’t believe the people posting here who want the corporations they worked for to die because of the crappy jobs they held. Face it, if you’re working at McDonalds or baby sitting kids, you’re going to be treated like shit (and that’s to be expected). If you have a poor education, you’re going to end up with a crap job like telemarketing. If you don’t like it, stop your bitching and quit. Out society is so full of whiners; it’s disgusting.