Explain if you want.
Mine (not in any order):
[ol]
[li]Time Warner Cable (customer service so bad, words cannot adequately describe.) [/li][li]TicketMaster (so obviously hateful of their customers)[/li][li]Steam (for a tech company, so completely, utterly bad, technically.)[/li][/ol]
Comcast (horrible customer service)
Cingular (I know they’re AT&T now. I ordered 2 phones from them, 1 arrived missing parts and non-usable. After spending hours on the phone being transferred here and there they hung up on me. Never did get my phone replaced.)
WALMART (grrr)
XM/Sirius radio. They are outsourced to Asia and the phones sound like you’re calling with Skype. The employees are reading a script.
Walmart
Ebay
Pitney Bowes
They do outsource, but if you ask the right question you get transferred back to America (or at least to someone who’s native language is (American) English) that isn’t working off a script and has a lot more flexibility with what they can do.
But yeah, the last time I called them to activate a radio it was a train wreck. Bad enough that I actually considered not doing it and just canceling my subscription instead.
U-Haul. Their reservation system is a complete and total lie. They will give you a reservation regardless of whether they anticipate actually having a truck at the time you’ve reserved. When you show up, it’s basically first-come first-served, so good luck getting a truck at all, much less one in the actual size you reserved.
I was beaten to it. The worst company I’ve ever seen that actually stays in business is U-Haul. I’ve never heard of a customer service experience with them that wasn’t a horrid, dismal litany of anguish. Their customer service is almost maliciously horrible.
You could probably do a master’s thesis on how a company that’s so front-line inept can stay in business, but I suspect it’s simply that they got so big that they’re the only option anyone has, and it’s a business in which market entry is so difficult, and the business so unglamorous, and nobody would ever try.
I admit I do not for one instant understand why anyone would think Walmart was a bad company in the sense the OP described. In terms of being a retail store, Walmarts are perfectly competent. They have stuff you can buy for a good price, so you go buy it. If Walmart were like UHaul, then if you want to Walmart to buy a box of Frosted Flakes you’d go to the cereal aisle and find no Frosted Flakes. So you’d go to get Corn Flakes and the first 87 boxes would be empty. You’d call a WalMArt “customer service line” and after 27 minutes on hold be told that the nearest Frosted Flakes or Corn Flakes are in a WalMart 40 miles away. Then you’d drive there and find they had Frosted Flakes but they’d been onthe shelf since 1974 and were stale. Now delirious with hunger and desperation you’d take the box up to the cash and there would be nobody to ring the sale through, and when someone did show up only then would you find out that the $1.98 price tag was a lie; the cereal will actually cost you $14.73, because in addition to the list price you have to pay a cash register fee, store floor wax fee, boll weevil insurance, and a charge for the parking spot you left your car in.
The only other company I can think of that I find genuinely bad to a puzzling degree is Cogeco, a major cable TV/internet/phone outfit in Canada. They’re stunningly bad, administratively speaking; everyone who deals with them, it seems, has a length story of them just hopelessly screwing up every aspect of your account. If you call them to, say, change your address, there’s absolutely no chance whatsoever they’ll get it right. And again, they are a semi-monopoly, like UHaul. Probably not a coincidence.
Ticketmaster isn’t incompetent, they’re just unethical.
The Unum Group (disability insurance). Most insurers like to keep “their” money, even in the face of a valid claim, but IMO, Unum has institutionalized denying benefits to injured people for their own profit.
I’ll also second the vote for Pitney Bowes.
Microsoft: All their products, ever. There could be volumes of books written about how they abuse their monopoly position.
For limited instances, WalMart is indeed competent. However, over the long range…well, I can rarely find games or books that I want to buy at WalMart, but WM might very well have run bookstores/gamestores out of town. I know that in one of the smaller towns near Fort Worth, WM ran most of the fabric stores out of business, leaving only a craft shop with a very small selection of fabric by the bolt. Now, of course, WM is discontinuing their fabric/sewing departments. This means that the town’s inhabitants, which used to have a few fabric stores withing 10 miles, now have to drive 25 to 30 miles to get a decent fabric selection. Also, in more general merchandise selection, WM only carries the cheaper brands. If you want a better brand, you have to go somewhere else, if there’s any other store in town.
WM is not competent in the long run.
Isn’t that the definition of being competent? They do what they do very well. Ignoring the ethics of the situation (which IMHO has nothing to do with competency), they are making money, lots of money. What you are talking about, running other companies out of town (which they are, according to you, doing a good job of, it’s one of their competencies), isn’t a question of competency, it’s a question of business ethics.
Microsoft. My new at the time notebook computer came with Vista installed at the factory. That operating system was so buggy and frustrating that when it came time to upgrade my wife’s computer I bought her a Macbook Pro. I will never again buy a computer that runs a Microsoft operating system. As a bonus, the Apple hardware is so much higher quality in both design and engineering than any other brand on the market.
Vista pushed me into Apple computers, for good.
I did pay for Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac as most of the world uses Office.
There’s competence in the short run, and competence in the long run. Selling tainted meat at bargain prices is competence in the short run, if nobody is going to hold you accountable for it. However, you’re gonna kill off your customer base. And WM has now given people a reason to go shopping somewhere else, rather than at WM. If someone needs 10 yards of muslin, s/he will have to go to some other store, rather than picking it up at WM. And since s/he doesn’t HAVE to go to WM, s/he might as well go to Target, or even some other discount store, to get other necessities. Even though I have hated WM for years, I’ve usually stopped in a time or two because I needed some basic fabric or crafting supplies, which I couldn’t get at Target. Now, however, if I’m out running errands, and I need some batting or other sewing supplies, I’ll make a stop at a craft shop and then go to Target or any place OTHER than WM.
And the OP didn’t ask about competence, specifically, and DID reference disdain towards customers.
Walmart has decided that it will not make money selling fabric, and Walmart is smart enough to factor in the scenario you described. So, still not incompetent.
Target brings in about $65 billion a year, Walmart brings in over $400 billion, they are the number one public corporation in the world. You can rest assured when they run they decide to bring in fabric, they know full well that if it doesn’t work out, they will lose a certain percentage of their customer base for the reason(s) you mentioned. There’s an accounting word for that which I’m blanking on at the moment. This is why they are competent. Nothing is done on a whim, nothing is just “hey, let’s bring in fabric and see what happens” I’d go so far as to say before the first yard of fabric was even purchased by Walmart, they knew how many customers they would lose if it didn’t work out. And you’re right, the OP didn’t mention competency, I was just replying to your post.
Unisys.
Complete fuckers in every sense of the word.
The solutions and products are aboslutly without value unless of course they bought something from someone else and rebranded it.
The coustomer service can best be described as deny, deflect, and delay long enough for the warantee to run out. And forget about extending the warantee becasue the fucking system NEVER WORKED IN THE FIRST PLACE. That is not an option in the Unisys business model.
These assholes are responsible for the closing of at least 2 large facilities in Chicago that I personally know of and the loss of hundreds of Chicago jobs. The companys finally decided to cut losses when it became clear Unisys would NEVER deliver, move the facilities and start over.
To say they are without value is giving them too much credit.
I got a size bigger than what I ordered or paid for, and they had a deal with the storage place I was hauling my stuff to.
A close relative is on disability from Unum. Their harassment is unreal, even in the face of what is a disability that would be clearly evident to even a child.
Comcast. At this point, when I get pissed, I just call them and ask for the $20 credit they can give when people bitch a lot without having to wait for a supervisor’s permission. I missed a small mini series I had to purchase later, and a ton of other programming I missed because of their shitty DVR’s. Gah. I can’t wait till FIOS comes in.
Sunsrus.com, an online/ebay store selling designer eyewear has screwed me over recently. A year ago my glasses frame snapped, and I found them the cheapest on their site. They were in my hands 7 days later, I was thrilled, I sung their praises to whoever would listen. Fast forward to last week, when I received the lenses I’d ordered six frickin’ weeks previous (they weren’t affected by the ash). I open them and they…don’t fit the frames. Not even close, gaping holes. I better not get problems when I call them tomorrow morning about their little problem.
Birthcontrol.com used to be a great place to order (with a legal doctor’s script) BC pills online. Best prices online, great customer service - never had a problem, always professional service. Not anymore! Last two times they’ve forgotten to email me shipping confirmation - not a big deal, but certainly a building annoyance. I’ve been with them for 2.5 years and whenever I only have one (3 month) refill left, they email me so I have at least three months’ notice to get to the doctor. Obviously they have the records and the script, they’re billing me, this makes sense. Well I order another 3 month batch last week, and they charge my credit card but don’t ship. Hmm. I get an email saying I’ve run of of refills, would I please get them a script? Well, assholes, there’s two weeks left in my pack, shipping takes a week, and any good doctor’s schedule - including my gyno - is full for at least two weeks. How will that math work out, and WTF do you suggest I do, eh? The bone they throw me is free shipping for life. Uh, what? How about you refund my money and I leave your shitty company and write negative reviews about you wherever I can?
Time Warner? I’ve dreamed of getting Time Warner back since moving to Jersey and being forced to go with CableVision.
CIGNA. Sure, all health insurance companies are dicks and would gladly watch you die to save a few pennies, but CIGNA raises it to an art form. They deny the most routine claims, almost reflexively, probably because there are a handful of people who can’t, or won’t, fight them. They are one of the few companies that I have a deep, burning, disturbing hatred for.
There are options besides U-Haul, though admittedly probably not one in every market that U-Haul has penetrated.
Penske, Ryder, and Budget are all competitors, though not the behemoth that U-Hail is. I used Penske for my move and was impressed. Clean, new truck, easy pick-up and drop-off, and no hassle for a one-way move.