Eleven (11) Most Hated American Companies

[amirm]

http://247wallst.com/special-report/2017/01/10/americas-most-hated-companies-4/2/

1. Comcast
2. Bank of America
3. Mylan pharmaceutical
4. McDonald's
5. Wells Fargo Bank
6. Facebook
7. Spirit Airline
8. Dish Network
9. Sears
10. Sprint
11. Wal-Mart

Can't say I disagree with any of them.

 

[iridium]

I feel that they are the DEVILS.

iridium

 

[Sal1950]

What a bunch of BS!
It should be obvious that the company's with the most customers are going to have the highest number of complaints.

I'll personally start with Comcast, I've had them for 6 years now since I've moved to FL. Their customer service has been stellar for me on the few times I required it. My internet connection gives me a consistent 90 Mbps down and HD TV DVR service with the KOOL new voice operated remote is great. All totally reliable, not a single outage over a hour or two in the 6 years, never even skipped a beat during Oct's hurricane Matthew.

Before them living in Chicago, I was an early adopter of Dish Network and used their TV service for over 20 years. Everything I said about Comcast relating to customer service and reliability extents to them also. The few times I needed assistance, talking to their customer service reps on the phone in Utah was always a very pleasant experience. In the early years they used to have a monthly call in show with CEO Charlie Ergen where you could call in or mail in and ask him questions directly. He always seemed like a nice guy that was genuinely concerned about peoples needs and issues. A old girlfriend of mine in now working in phone CS in a Phoenix AZ center and is thrilled with the way she's been treated since starting as a new employee about 2 years ago. A great company to work for she says.

Wal-Mart, you get what you pay for, nuff said. As a general rule lowest everyday prices around if that's what you want.

I've worked on the other side of the counter just about all my life. Just about the first thing you learn is people rarely speak up when you given them great service, they pay their bill and walk away. But they'll piss and moan till hell freezes over if someone so much as blinks a eye at the wrong time. Just human nature to be a PITA

 

[amirm]

The article actually is not just about customers but also employees hating working there in some instances. It is the latter that caught my eye originally.

There are other companies with huge number of customers such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Ford, GM, etc. that didn't get these ratings.

Overall, what sticks with me is why they don't care more to change their image. Whether fair or not, the ratings do reflect the general view that people have of them.

 

[Sal1950]

Overall, what sticks with me is why they don't care more to change their image. Whether fair or not, the ratings do reflect the general view that people have of them.

How do you know they don't care or are not trying?
If they changed everything and performed some miracle making everyone happy, next year there would be a new list with a new top 10. Maybe Apple, Google, Amazon, Ford, GM
All I'm saying is that if my personal experience (and also my girlfriend working for Dish Net) is totally at odds with the list, something is off.
Sears is apparently paying a price for some errors in management since it has announced the closing of over 150 Sears and KMart locations this spring. I'm sure some there had the foresight to see these problems on the horizon and made some efforts to avoid them, sadly unsuccessful.
Sometimes the hardest thing to change is peoples perceptions.

 

[DonH56]

I don't have a lot of experience with some of them. My experiences with Comcast have been mixed; I'd guess 4/5 they have been great, but that 5th time they are a pain. I ended up having to go to the store, explain the troubleshooting I had done, explain why the three people on the support line were wrong, and hand them the defective part (it was the box, they sent me a remote, twice, even after I explained the steps I had taken to ensure it was not the remote). At least they gave me some freebies at that point for my trouble. My son, OTOH, went through he!! getting his cable working. He requested a change and they dropped his service, spent a month blaming the building's wiring, changing modems, etc. before figuring out somebody at the home office had flipped the wrong setting and cut him off by entering the wrong MAC address... IN the meantime he used his phone and overspent our data plan, argh.

BoA I agree should be on the list. I no longer bank with them. Citi would also get my vote (the bank, not the card). McD's gets our order right about 1 time in 3. Wells Fargo deserves it for their last fiasco. My experience with Sears has been good but it's been a while; they appear to be afloat because of one deep-pocketed investor these days.

On the flip side, my experience with Amazon's customer service has always been fantastic.

 

[amirm]

How do you know they don't care or are not trying?

Because their perception among the general population is this bad?

 

[Sal1950]

McD's gets our order right about 1 time in 3.

McD's blew it when they started that yuppie coffee crap. Lines at drive-ins and inside both got so long waiting for some nut to get his mocha momma jonna wipped jizz coffee made. McD's is supposed to be FAST food, in-out in a couple minutes with a BigMac. fries, and a coke, Give me my burger and get out of my way. $5 rip off coffee is for Starfu-ks

 

[amirm]

McD's blew it when they started that yuppie coffee crap. Lines at drive-ins and inside both got so long waiting for some nut to get his mocha momma jonna wipped jizz coffee made.

Oh, is that why their lines are so long now? I was wondering. I hate going there. The drive through is hell. They even have double lines and it still moves like snail.

 

[svart-hvitt]

Oh, is that why their lines are so long now? I was wondering. I hate going there. The drive through is hell. They even have double lines and it still moves like snail.

FWIW, McD works quite well in Norway. For some reason, McD is dirtier (literally) in American than in Norway. The best McD I had was in rural France. The burger patties were really juicy and tasty (relatively, in comparison to the normal taste).

 

[Dismayed]

What a bunch of BS!
It should be obvious that the company's with the most customers are going to have the highest number of complaints.

I'll personally start with Comcast, I've had them for 6 years now since I've moved to FL. Their customer service has been stellar for me on the few times I required it. My internet connection gives me a consistent 90 Mbps down and HD TV DVR service with the KOOL new voice operated remote is great. All totally reliable, not a single outage over a hour or two in the 6 years, never even skipped a beat during Oct's hurricane Matthew.

Before them living in Chicago, I was an early adopter of Dish Network and used their TV service for over 20 years. Everything I said about Comcast relating to customer service and reliability extents to them also. The few times I needed assistance, talking to their customer service reps on the phone in Utah was always a very pleasant experience. In the early years they used to have a monthly call in show with CEO Charlie Ergen where you could call in or mail in and ask him questions directly. He always seemed like a nice guy that was genuinely concerned about peoples needs and issues. A old girlfriend of mine in now working in phone CS in a Phoenix AZ center and is thrilled with the way she's been treated since starting as a new employee about 2 years ago. A great company to work for she says.

Wal-Mart, you get what you pay for, nuff said. As a general rule lowest everyday prices around if that's what you want.

I've worked on the other side of the counter just about all my life. Just about the first thing you learn is people rarely speak up when you given them great service, they pay their bill and walk away. But they'll piss and moan till hell freezes over if someone so much as blinks a eye at the wrong time. Just human nature to be a PITA

The article doesn't give many details on methodology, but they are referring to satisfaction rates. Presumably they are calculating by dividing the number of dissatisfied responses by the total number of responses. But that still leaves open questions about the sample, and response rates. Open surveys are often biased because dissatisfied people are more likely to respond. But a properly constructed random sample can control for that behavior.

Companies such as AIG, Countrywide, Lehman, and Goldman Sachs are high on my list because they played major roles in blowing up the economy. But they aren't high in the minds of consumers, and Countrywide no longer exists as a separate entity (swallowed up by B of A).

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I worked at BofA (NCNB/Nationsbank/BofA) all through the 90s, their greatest growth period, in corporate marketing. It was a great run, and a great job. I was an SVP most of those years, and my group and I survived one merger after another. It wasn’t as great for a lot of other people, though, and when I look at it objectively, not one of the many mergers (a euphemism; they were all acquisitions), big and small, was really good for anyone but senior management and, eventually, share holders. They resulted in fewer, often more expensive products and services, additional and growing fees, closed branches and lost jobs. If the idea behind our anti trust laws is to avoid anti-competitive behavior and to ensure that mergers and acquisitions serve customers and communities as well as shareholders, or at least avoid negative impact, those laws failed miserably in the banking industry, long before the mortgage crisis gutted people’s retirement savings.

But I don’t blame the banks. The sole objective of a publicly-traded company is ROI, and they will pursue it relentlessly, without conscience, until the loss of customer confidence or the fines and legal fees are more expensive than the gains (Don’t be fooled; “good corporate citizenship” is public relations and Human Resources is a litigation avoidance department). It’s the nature of the beast, and we should expect no more of it. In most cases, I don’t blame the customers either, because the industries with the most striking combination of high pricing and horrible customer service - telecom, cable, banking - have been steadily deregulated and consolidated, until they have little restraint and their customers have very few options.

I blame politicians, specifically the simplistic, clueless bastards who talked themselves into believing that “free markets” just meant setting companies, particularly those who were big campaign contributors, free from restraint. The result, in the industries discussed here, and many others, has been fewer consumer choices, higher prices, collusion among the limited choices remaining, and an incredibly difficult, unlikely path for any company looking to enter and compete in these industries...the exact opposite of free markets. They are bad because they have no reason to spend the money required to be good.

Rant complete. Thanks for listening.

 

[Dismayed]

I worked at BofA (NCNB/Nationsbank/BofA) all through the 90s, their greatest growth period, in corporate marketing. It was a great run, and a great job. I was an SVP most of those years, and my group and I survived one merger after another. It wasn’t as great for a lot of other people, though, and when I look at it objectively, not one of the many mergers (a euphemism; they were all acquisitions), big and small, was really good for anyone but senior management and, eventually, share holders. They resulted in fewer, often more expensive products and services, additional and growing fees, closed branches and lost jobs. If the idea behind our anti trust laws is to avoid anti-competitive behavior and to ensure that mergers and acquisitions serve customers and communities as well as shareholders, or at least avoid negative impact, those laws failed miserably in the banking industry, long before the mortgage crisis gutted people’s retirement savings.

But I don’t blame the banks. The sole objective of a publicly-traded company is ROI, and they will pursue it relentlessly, without conscience, until the loss of customer confidence or the fines and legal fees are more expensive than the gains (Don’t be fooled; “good corporate citizenship” is public relations and Human Resources is a litigation avoidance department). It’s the nature of the beast, and we should expect no more of it. In most cases, I don’t blame the customers either, because the industries with the most striking combination of high pricing and horrible customer service - telecom, cable, banking - have been steadily deregulated and consolidated, until they have little restraint and their customers have very few options.

I blame politicians, specifically the simplistic, clueless bastards who talked themselves into believing that “free markets” just meant setting companies, particularly those who were big campaign contributors, free from restraint. The result, in the industries discussed here, and many others, has been fewer consumer choices, higher prices, collusion among the limited choices remaining, and an incredibly difficult, unlikely path for any company looking to enter and compete in these industries...the exact opposite of free markets. They are bad because they have no reason to spend the money required to be good.

Rant complete. Thanks for listening.

Save some blame for the economists at my alma mater, U Chicago Booth School, for creating bullshit models consiststent with their political philosophies, but that fail miserably in the real world. It is why I claim that the very best economists rarely rise to the level of mediocre scientists.

 

[stunta]

All I'm saying is that if my personal experience (and also my girlfriend working for Dish Net) is totally at odds with the list, something is off.

What is off is that you are using a sample size of 2 (you and your girlfriend) to counter what is on the list.

I've had a good experience with Comcast for over a decade. I've also had friends who've had a terrible experience with them. But still, I haven't conducted a survey with stat-sig number of votes to determine one way or the another.

I am glad Wells Fargo is on the list. They screwed up big time and we almost lost the house we wanted to buy in Boston because they couldn't get the appraisal done on time. Luckily we switched to a local bank just in time to get the closing done. And then there was this scandal with fake accounts and such.

 

[dallasjustice]

I blame politicians, specifically the simplistic, clueless bastards who talked themselves into believing that “free markets” just meant setting companies, particularly those who were big campaign contributors, free from restraint.

I can’t let this go. Sorry.

You believe that large multi-national banks in the United States are or have in the last century competed in a “free market?” Do I need to list all of the corporate welfare these banks have enjoyed long since before the repeal of Glass-Steagal?

Ridiculous.

 

[Soniclife]

You believe that large multi-national banks in the United States are or have in the last century competed in a “free market?”

I read that as him saying they have been competing in a “free market", not a free market. One being an economic idea, and the other something politicians hide behind to avoid doing things that they don't want to.

 

[dallasjustice]

I read that as him saying they have been competing in a “free market", not a free market. One being an economic idea, and the other something politicians hide behind to avoid doing things that they don't want to.

Maybe you are correct. I'm just tired of every economic problem in the U.S. laid at the feet of real Capitalists when many industries in the U.S. (particularly banking) don't resemble Capitalism in any way.

 

[svart-hvitt]

Maybe you are correct. I'm just tired of every economic problem in the U.S. laid at the feet of real Capitalists when many industries in the U.S. (particularly banking) don't resemble Capitalism in any way.

Did you know that economists more than 50 years ago started to regard monopoly and variations thereof as unproblematic due to assumption of competition? They started to assume that a monopoly is a benign state because competition would make the monopolist act as if there were a free market of atomic suppliers.

Weird, right? That’s what happens if a «science» is captured by certain interests.

 

[dallasjustice]

Did you know that economists more than 50 years ago started to regard monopoly and variations thereof as unproblematic due to assumption of competition? They started to assume that a monopoly is a benign state because competition would make the monopolist act as if there were a free market of atomic suppliers.

Weird, right? That’s what happens if a «science» is captured by certain interests.

Monopolies are much more commonly found in industries infested by government intervention. In the few industries where this isn’t the case, the monopolists are universally favored by the consumer because they provide an outstanding product or service.

 

[Dismayed]

Monopolies are much more commonly found in industries infested by government intervention. In the few industries where this isn’t the case, the monopolists are universally favored by the consumer because they provide an outstanding product or service.

Governments regulate natural monopolies. And market concentration is the natural path of capitalism because, unlike the simplistic models taught in econ 101 classes, products are differentiated. Perfect competition is a fantasy. And market concentration is the natural progression, but not necessarily because of superior product offerings.