Worst Company of the Year 2012Follow

Has this been posted someplace already???

Consumerist Magazine does an annual poll to choose a US company to bestow with the distinguishing title Worst Company in America. The winner also receives the coveted Golden Poo Award.

Last year's winner was BP. This year, running away with 64% of the vote was the gaming company, EA.



Second worst was Bank of America.

STORY







Edited, Apr 9th 2012 4:36pm by Elinda

It was posted in the General Games forum, iirc.

All this poll proved was that a significant portion of the Consumerist's voters are idiots. Consumerist can defend the choice all they want, but the fact of the matter is that BoA has destroyed consumers' lives. EA has never even destroyed a consumer's wallet.

Using their logic, a little girl with a lemonade stand that took your money, kicked you, then ran away should be the worst company.

Furthermore, blaming EA for the faults of the entire industry is hardly acceptable. I think they're an awful company. I'd be much happier if they had never bought my favorite studios. But they aren't the reason video games have remained expensive. They aren't the reason DLC exists. They are just one small part of a much larger system that encourages it. And they've even made significant headway recently in trying to get away from the worst cases of DRM, to give credit where it's due.

Bank of America, Walmart, etc. have actually ruined lives. Petty nerdraging masking that is idiotic.

[EDIT]

Dear Joph,

GFY for being able to say, in one sentence, what I spend three minutes writing (which is worse in the end anyway).

Edited, Apr 9th 2012 10:42am by idiggory

Well, I won't pretend it keeps me up nights. But just because thing B is silly doesn't make thing A any less silly in its own right.

But even if we agree that Crazy Vlad's Sweatshop Socks, Inc is worse than BoA, it still means that EA shouldn't be number one and is only there due to gamer nerdrage. So you still can't take it seriously.

Edited, Apr 9th 2012 9:58am by Jophiel

Open online poll that occurs right as internet savvy nerd-folk reach peak of furor over EA's games and policies. Pretty open and shut.

I don't find it particularly interesting.

Both BoA and EA sell a product in an attempt to make a profit. You can argue that both squeeze the consumer through one form of manipulation or another.

The fact that BoA is a bank and presumably it's product is more relevant to the lives of people is really irrelevant to the task at hand. What about Tyson foods. It's product is pink slime. Is selling us nutritionless, preservative packed foods worse than selling us over-priced mortgages?

Personally I'm in agreement that, in general, those companies that exploit people (in the form of labor) are less ethical than those that are 'tricking' me out of my money.

Still, the purpose of the poll is for consumers to speak out about a company that they felt ripped them off or gave them bad value. I don't think it's purpose is to prioritize the value of different markets.






Edited, Apr 9th 2012 6:15pm by Elinda

Joph, you best be trollin, lest you really do enjoy the idea of eating liquified cow goo and ammonia. I mean, I'm a pretty big snob about my food, but I think most people agree that there is a point where the blurred line of what is considered "food" makes them rethink what they blindly purchase every single day.

I didn't say I enjoyed it. I wouldn't purchase it in a squeeze tube and carry with me throughout the day. But assuming the ammonia is rinsed out as it's supposed to be, I don't have a huge objection to its use as filler. I'm more interested in having it clearly labeled as such (as opposed to "Reprocessed Beef Protein" or something) so consumers can decide whether to purchase it or not. The 'slime' aspect is an emotional one -- most processed food looks pretty heinous at some point as it gets turned into its final product. But this is coming from a guy who still enjoys hot dogs.

Think of Tyson as the noble Indian, using every part of the buffalo

My favorite part of the buffalo is the part that is so inedible that it has to be treated with poison for us to eat it.

Going purely by personal anecdotes, my vote goes to Delta Airlines. Followed closely by Verizon. Fuck 'em both.

Verizon sucks, but AT&T's reclassification of their network speeds, specifically to deceive customers, definitely beats them out for me.

Delta's a good one though. I could see voting for them. They were defeated in the first round by Spirit Airlines, and I don't really understand why.

USPS was on the list though, which confuses me. They aren't a company, they're a gov't agency.

Hadn't heard about the AT&T thing; I've never used 'em before, but that'd irk me.

Verizon bothers me, not really because of their obscene charges and ludicrous contracts (though they are annoying), but more because of a customer service situation when I was trying to get them to activate our internet in the Buffalo Area.

We were in an apartment complex where everyone used Verizon. Despite this, they told me that they didn't offer service in my apartment. Just mine, apparently, even though I was literally surrounded on all 6 sides by people using Verizon. They said they needed their engineers to look into it, and to wait 3 days. Nothing I do or say can convince them that they're wrong. I call 4 days later only to find that nobody ever did anything about it, anyway.

That process above repeats itself with only minor changes to the details 7 full times. I had been apprehensive to use a tiny competitor, and was holding out against hope for Verizon to stop being insanely idiotic, but to no avail. After the 7th time, I call the competitor and they install the very next morning. That afternoon, the Verizon rep calls me to happily inform me that I could have been using Verizon all along, they just made a mistake labeling my apartment. I told them to go **** themselves.


Delta is a less interesting story. They stole my digital camera out of my checked bag (I now know that I shouldn't have put it in there, but this was my first flight since I was a toddler, and I didn't know better). After about 30 phone calls of them stymieing me, a rep literally said "Well, then sue us." Then he hung up on me.

I've been somewhat amused by the whole "pink slime" issue lately. What did people really think processed food was? Everything from lunchmeat, to hotdogs, to hamburger helper has used "processed meat product" (or some variation of the phrase) for longer than most/any of us have been alive. At least it's not people (we hope!).

I feel your pain bro. I've been trying to get Verizon to fix a problem with my connection dropping randomly. I've been trying to get them to fix it for six @#%^ing months.

Edited, Apr 9th 2012 4:33pm by cidbahamut