In fact, they can be so horrible that they are positively evil. But what are the companies of which you are 1%ers? Meaning you are not in the 99% of the population that hates, despises and loathes the company. You don’t get on the social bandwagon of recreational outrage whenever someone tweets or FB messages how this company is worse than Nazis.
CenturyLink: Provided me with the best internet I’ve every had. No outages and fast fast fast. Anytime I had to contact customer service (rare because as an ISP they were great) I got wonderful service. I hated moving because I don’t have them at my new house and I would go back to them in a heartbeat.
United: I shared my woes of flying Air Canada back from Greece. The last leg was on a United flight out of O’Hare the next morning. While my family were dozing (you never really sleep) on the benches at the gate, some United staff member made sure we have blankets. Do you know why emergency personal carry blankets? It’s not about warmth! Actual fact it’s the psychological need for humans to swaddle themselves during stressful situations. It didn’t keep us any warmer but all agreed that God it was necessary. Knowing what a shit experience we had, United personnel at the gate and on the flight made sure to smile and let us know that they took getting us home seriously. Oh and they found our lost luggage within 24 hours and delivered it because Air Canada couldn’t be bothered.
And now with the Southwest meltdown, United seemed to be the only carrier not jacking up their fares to get people home. We got a one-way ticket 2 days after Christmas on a flight leaving within 24 hours (the notice we had that his Southwest flight was cancelled) for $550 + $35 bag fee + $0 seat fee (no charge ) That is not excessive for the conditions under which we got the flight and a lot of people were paying $thousands per ticket because of the gouging. I have to fly out to my mom’s funeral in a couple weeks. Less than $250 round trip on United. Let’s go!
Is Amazon too obvious? Mrs. solost hates ordering stuff from them because they are a juggernaut of a monopoly, wiping out other businesses small, medium and large. Also she says she hates paying for the rich guy to take another joyride in his spaceship.
But damn if it isn’t convenient as heck. They have just about everything that you might ever want. Now that an Amazon distribution center is just a few miles away, we often get stuff we order the same day or first thing the next morning.
People keep moaning about how the “US-military-industrial-complex is always rolling in the dough when war comes around.” Guess what? The much-vilified American military industrial complex is exactly why America is able to supply lots of weapons to Ukraine to fend off Russian aggression. Without the MIC, we’d have nothing but some sanctions and stern words to offer.
Guys like Putin are why America needs to retain top-dick military status in the world. The MIC can roll in the dough as much as they please; plus, I’ve always loved sleek jets like the B-21 Raider. The MIC can be Scrooge Duck and dive into the gold coins as long as HIMARS is blasting Russian Wagner mercenaries to bits. I’d be handing fat, fat contracts over to the MIC if I were Congress (but with deadlines that they have to, actually, meet for delivering products.)
I have sympathy for the blanket companies who have been telling people that it’s about warmth, even though some skeptics think that’s just to increase blanket sales.
Same here. that’s why I listed it as a ‘horrible’ company that I ‘love’. Why would I love it if I had bad experiences with them?
However, Amazon is known for its monopolistic tendencies, its drive for ultra-efficiency at the expense of its employees (having to pee in bottles because of insufficient break allowances) and its owner, who takes so much of the company profits for himself that he’s able to take vanity trips into space.
So, ‘horrible’ being a pretty relative term, I think my example fits the OP, unless I misunderstood.
Are there any companies that are hated by that many? Maybe Southwest Airlines after their recent debacle?
For me, it’s Apple. I still remember getting my first MacBook and iPhone, and thinking that they were so much less complicated than stuff that ran Microsoft Windows at the time. I still have occasion, for work related reasons, to every once in a while to use a phone or computer that isn’t an Apple product. The other guys still have all kinds of complexities that Apple got rid of and make their systems so much easier to use.
Kat Von D Cosmetics. It’s no longer under Kat Von D’s ownership, but back when it was, the owner came under fire for her anti-Semitic remarks, anti-vax … maybe some other stuff I don’t remember. Point is, she’s a controversial figure.
But her brand makes the best eyeliner I’ve ever tried, my favorite concealer, and some great lip products, so I shell out my money anyways.
Yeah, that aspect of the OP confused me a little as well. You’d think if the company was that universally despised, it wouldn’t be around for very long. Unless it was the only game in town. Like the cable provider Comcast / XFinity: they are pretty universally despised, and for good reason. They nickel-and-dime you to death, their customer service is awful, and they make cancelling anything as painful and drawn-out as possible. It was a happy day when we cut our cable with them. Yet, we still get our internet through them because they are much faster than the next fastest internet provider, which for us is AT&T, which is almost as despicable as a company as Comcast / XFinity.
Big Pharma companies (though I must admit that I work for one.) Research & development expenses for all these new drugs are not cheap by any means, and there are thousands of failed drug candidates for every successful one that reaches market. If the companies can’t make a profit, there is no way that the drugs could ever come to market (unless you propose some sort of government subsidy program).
Maybe 99% is hyperbolic, but here are a few that come to mind…
Monsanto was routinely vilified - some justified, some based on ignorance about GMO. The Wikipedia page describes it as “defunct”, an oddly pejorative term to my ear given its value when it was acquired by Bayer, but maybe that’s standard Wiki terminology.
Exxon, with the Exxon Valdez disaster and climate change denial? I don’t know if it has cleaned up its image by now. And I guess you need to take into account climate change deniers who see no problem.
Comcast is legendary for its appalling and dishonest customer service.
Equifax? And I don’t know that they have done all that much to rescue their reputation, because as a business what their clients think of them is more important than what the public think of them.
The Weinstein Company is the only one I can think of that might literally pass the 99% threshold, but of course it no longer exists, and that’s a bit of a cheat because obviously the company per se wasn’t the problem.
I think a better gloss of the OP is something closer to:
What are the companies that you love that lots of other people love to hate on?
It’s fun to bash corps. Whether they really deserve it or not. Everybody bitches about the reliability of their cable TV company and the monopoly rip-off prices you must pay them for shoddy indifferent service.
The mundane reality is they’re about like any other big business: penny-pinching around the edge, stolid & tone deaf in PR. Plus, with 100 million customers, creating a few new enemies every single second as some stuff somewhere inevitabley goes wrong. But at the same time delivering a decent product to most of those 100 million.
I suppose a different way to formulate the OP might be:
Which commonly hated-on big companies have not pissed you off? Yet.
Having brought up Comcast, I’ll say that their reputation for appalling customer service is well deserved. Literally every single time I have dealt with customer service they have done something underhand or deceptive to try to bill me far more than the deal they promised.
I will say, however, that the ISP part of the product that Comcast deliver is great. It rarely goes down and they consistently delivery the 600 Mbps that they promise for $50 per month (now that I have cut the cord). I just checked and I’m getting 800 Mbps right now. I think I’m capped, but it’s over 1TB, and unlimited is available for a reasonable price. It’s pretty remarkable how little we pay for the information and services we have access to online.
My objective is just to deal with their customer service at most once every 2 years, and ideally never. So they have probably achieved what their business plan specified.
) That is not excessive for the conditions under which we got the flight and a lot of people were paying $thousands per ticket because of the gouging. I have to fly out to my mom’s funeral in a couple weeks. Less than $250 round trip on United. Let’s go!