What companies have made your blacklist?
What companies have made your blacklist?
What companies will you never give another dollar to?
What happened that put them on your blacklist?
Mine is Sony. First the rootkit scandal, then the removal of Other OS from PS3s after featuring it as a selling point in the marketing. Totally deceptive and I won't give them my money.
Blizzard
Back when they implemented Real ID and forced people to provide real namr and identification for playing the games they paid for, these motherfuckers locked me out of my account for account sharing because someone logged in from another country. That was me, logging in for my lunch break at work, about 1 hour away from home. They demanded I not only gave them my real name, but even send a copy of my passport to them by email. Obviously I refused. I had the original box and the game code, but they didn't care. There were no other fraud indicators. Just me logging in from work and using a pseudonym. I never got any of my games back. Fuck them
Nestle and it's many derivatives. Water stealing, baby starving, child slavers.
Nestlé is the big one for me. Their stance on water is...evil.
HP. This one is easy. Low hanging fruit. For me, I bought an expensive gaming laptop that arrived defective. I asked for a replacement, they denied and required I send it in for repairs. Waited a month for them to tell me there isn’t a problem. Asked for a refund instead of having it shipped back. They said that’s not how it works, they have to send it back first. So I get it, with the defect still, and call to get a refund. They initially deny a refund due to being outside the refund period and offer a “buy back” credit. I had to spend an hour explaining why that’s not happening and why they’re going to give me a refund or expect to see me in court. Keep in mind, I hadn’t used this laptop more than an hour or two and it’s been shipped around and forth for two months. I did get my refund at least, but the headache was insane and I refuse to even look at HP products.
Adobe: Already said by others. For me, it’s because they charge an insane amount of money for barely-functional software. I used Affinity products instead.
Google: They cancel their services so quickly, it’s more like they’ve blacklisted ME. I refuse to pay for anything they offer in the event it will be discontinued in a year or two. RIP Play Music.
Amazon: Prices increase, service quality decreases, value decreases exponentially. The product I paid for at $79/year was far more superior to whatever Prime costs today. Mostly third party cheap trash. Unfortunately, and most likely by design, there are just a few specific reasons I’m forced to give Amazon money every so often. But at the very least, I’m making the highest conscious effort to avoid them.
I’ll update this if I come up with more.
Edit 1: Netflix: They keep removing quality content and increasing prices. Anti-consumer shit. They are both the reason I stopped pirating and considered starting again.
Apple. They make some decent stuff but it has repeatedly become more expensive to own and maintain because repair is nearly impossible. And because of the monopoly they are building it is guaranteed to get much worse.
Additionally everything they do has a ripple effect across the industry. The average flagship phone is now over $1000. The average phone doesn't have a headphone jack or micro SD expansion, or replaceable battery, and are all impossible to repair. Computers impossible to upgrade. Extra ram and SSD capacity being prohibitively expensive (8gb of ddr5 is 40$, apple charges 200$, similar scheme with their proprietary SSD's)
It's apparent that with Apple's continued success the rest of all of our electronics have continued to get worse and predatory to squeeze more money out of us.
We reap what we sow and if we sow a company that is hellbent on enshittifiying all of our everyday devices and gouge us for our money, we aren't going to have any other companies left (or at least those that won't participate in this practice)
I work in computer repair and I have witnessed first hand how hostile aAple is to the consumer. Serialized components that are impossible to replace, to perforated cables that tear more easily during disassembly. It is dumbfounding that a company with such little respect for their customers is so successful.
X, Musky asshole
Tesla, Musky asshole
Chic Fil-A, homophobic corporate politics
T-Mobile, does not stand behind promise at purchase
Verizon, loud skank stores
Papa Johns, owner asshole opposed Obamacare
Hobby Lobby, right wing Christian asshole ownership/products opposed Obamacare
MyPillow, asshole MAGA owner
Trump brand any business, asshole MAGA cheeseturd ex-president loser of 2020 election by many votes
Too many more to name, and too many worthwhile brands and businesses to support.
Wells Fargo.
The short version is, they forced me to close my savings/checking account due to $32 in insufficient funds that was reported to Chex Systems by my former bank, and told me that I could reopen them once the report was cleared.
I got the report cleared with proof that it was due to a third party (AOL - who admitted it and got the report removed) that made unauthorized charges to an account I had closed.
When I went back to get my accounts reopened, the manager spoke me like I was the scum of the earth for ever having been reported, even though it wasn't my fault and I had proof. She told me that I couldn't open an account at Wells Fargo for 7 years, and said I could come back after that and open accounts.
As if I would ever go near Wells Fargo again after treating me like that over a $32 report that I had proven wasn't my fault.
The ones that I come across nearly every day in one way or another:
Twitter - manipulation, right wing bullshit
Facebook - privacy, manipulation
Reddit - manipulation, right wing bullshit
Walmart - exploitation, right wing bullshit
Nestle - exploitation
Chick Fil A - right wing/religious bullshit
Papa Johns - right wing bullshit
McDonalds - exploitationI've never been to Cracker Barrel because when I was younger they fired all their gay employees, were taken to court over it, fought and won.
Chick fil a same sort of reason, stupid discrimination.
Have never been to Applebee's because I don't have to and why would I?
Bank of America because they once stacked withdrawals over deposits, said I was overdrawn by 0.60 for some immeasurably short period of time, and slapped a $35 overdraft fee on my account. I called, bitched until I got my $35 back, and closed the account. Hate them with a burning passion. Have had to deal with them at two jobs since and they seem still as bad.
Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Reddit, X, Tesla, Sweet Green, Chick-fil-A, etc.
Google/Facebook: spyware
Microsoft: Windows is spyware and I’m just done with Windows. There are many better options for software.
Reddit: CEO is a prick. Gone the way of Facebook
X/Tesla: CEO is a prick, racist and anti-semite
Sweet Green: CEO blacklisting students for protesting war
Chick-fil-A: Run by far right bigots
Google, should be self explanatory, but for me specifically for pretty much making YouTube worse with every change they make since that's the only service of them I still use. And I'm not going to also pay them to sell my data.
Epic Games, for continuously fucking over Linux players and Unreal fans (and well players in general but specifically those two groups).
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The most recent one: EA. I had disliked them and their practices for quite some time now, but there was a game on sale that I found interesting enough to purchase .. it was like 2 Euro or whatever, so no big loss. AFTER the download they wanted me to sign an electronic agreement to basically harvest all of my data and requiring me to be permanently online in a singleplayer offline game at all times so they could monitor me, and if I didn't agree I wouldn't be able to play the game. No refund. I uninstalled it and will never purchase anything from them again - that was the last straw, the last ever chance I was willing to give them. And no there was no warning of any kind before the purchase - they deliberately waited until after they had my money to "ask" for that bullshit.
Amazon - human rights violations in their warehouse
- Activision-Blizzard
- Adobe
- Capcom
- Digital Extremes
- Electronic Arts
- Nintendo
- Sony
- Ubisoft
- Warner Bros.
- + too many more to list
Anti-consumer practices. The gaming and software industries are full of it.
- Unity Technologies
Have shown that they have no problem screwing over their business partners. Even though they walked it back, they cannot be trusted to not try it again. You would have to be a fool to start a project in Unity now.
Goya. It's easy to forget amidst the tsunami of far more severe bullshit between 2016 and 2020, but when Trump abused his authority to hawk a fucking bean advertisement in the oval office instead of leading the country during a pandemic... yeah, decided I'd never buy a Goya product again, ever.
EA, Nestle, Amazon.
Surely I don't need to explain why.
Apple. Vendor lock-in and anti-competitive practice. I'd boycott Google too but at the time of writing I can't dump the mail for example.
Tesla, until they sign an agreement with the Unions in Sweden. I'm voting right, I'm not a member of an union, but if you want to do business here you follow our culture and norms.
Probably half a dozen more I can't think of now.
Chick-fil-A. Direct support to anti-LGBT+ groups. Then after they said they would stop, they were found to still be doing it. But don't worry, they said they'd stop for real this time.
Payless Shoes. Awful experience checking out once. No reason to ever go back. They're closed now, so nothing to worry about there.
I just try to avoid giving money to any of the tech/media giants. Doesn’t mean I’ll never buy anything from them, but I’ll actively seek to find alternatives to their products.
Apple, because their phones are shit, and they made their phones with child labour. Red bull because they haven't withdrawn their products and business from Russia like McDonald's did. Volkswagen, because they fucking lied on all of their vehicles with the emissions test. Blizzard, because they rape and sexually abused all of their female workers. Shell gas station from an oil spill they refuse to clean up. Riot Games due to them not completing my refund. KFC because I got sick from their food twice. Sam's club, because they thought my membership was expired even though it was not, and I clearly payed their stupid membership fees the day of, to shop in their warehouse they wouldn't let me shop, so I issued a charge back from my credit card company and never went back. Prism kites, more specifically the synapse models, fuckin main left cord just snaps in the middle without me being in a full headwind. Shite product, and company. Ford, because their engine mount placements for the escort were terrible, and I shouldn't have to remove part of the subframe to get it off, just terrible engineering. Now I drive a Toyota, and I'm happy
Bank of America. I have dealt with them on a corporate level, multimillion dollar assets, mind you, and seen gross incompetence and negligence that scared me. I'm talking about constant insecure data practices, inconsistent rules, terrible record keeping, and asset mismanagement.
The biggest weakness appeared to be how they treated their employees. Our "local branch" went through multiple managers in less than a year, and when we did business with the "employees du jour" in our quarterly meetings, they all acted like scared college students. Unprepared, inexperienced, and some cocksure with blatantly wrong information. And some downright unprofessional. For example, we had a meeting where they kept pronouncing our company name wrong, spelled our name wrong a different way, and kept adding parts to it. Like:
"Okay, as president of Reginald Incorporated--"
"Remington. Like the gun."
"Regingun international - -
"No no. REM MING TON. Remington."
"Right. Remington International - -
"Incorporated. There is no 'international' in our name."
"But you're a Japanese company?"
"No. We're American. We do business with the Japanese."
"Oh. Huh. Okay, as president of Remington Incorporated of Japan - -"
"NO. Just 'Remington Incorporated.' That's it."
"Oh wow. Sorry. I'm going to have to fix that on this paperwork, then."
"Yes. That's why we're here."
Anything poisoned by the hand of Elon Musk. I loved Twitter ten years ago... now it's a toy for a vain, self-consumed fool, a stupid child allowed to play with power tools. I deleted my accounts months ago and studiously avoid visiting the site, or any links leading to that site. It fills my mouth with bile just thinking about what it's become.
Easyjet. They sent us an update in their app saying they delayed our flight a few hours due to ill pilot. We were waiting near the gate (nearest cafe) but not quite within view, and no flight boards nearby. They decided not to delay after all but did not send an update to the app, and nothing over loudspeakers. My paranoia got the better of me so i wandered down to the gate around the original time of flight to take a look. When I saw they were boarding after all i called the family down, but we had missed it by a minute or so. They would not let us board. They preferred to delay the flight while they unloaded our baggage. We had to pay for and book with another airline to arrive at our hotel at midnight losing a day of our Greek Island holiday. When we complained to their service desk, they refused to refund us, and said "we DO suggest you always keep up to date by watching the flight boards". There was a giant sign by their desk that literally said "download our app to keep up to date on your flights". I will never give those fucks another dollar, and I tell this story to anyone who will listen.
- Chipotle, for union busting
- Walgreens, for attempted corporate inversion
- Chik-fil-a, for general Christofascist asshattery
- Hobby Lobby, for general Christofascist asshattery
- Walmart, for general corporate asshattery
I've also been trying to find an Amazon Smile alternative after Amazon killed it earlier this year, but haven't had any success yet.
There’s so many. Oreo changed their cream filling and you can see they only fill the rows by like 2/3 now Ebay (I honestly don’t know anyone who hasn’t had problems on the platform how are they still in business?) When I was a teen, my manager at dominoes fired me after I caught him stealing my tips. I wont even eat free dominoes
Nestle Apple EA
BP. Obvious reasoning.
All of those shitty Big Tech companies including Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle and many others, all corporate Social Media platforms (including Reddit of course, fuck Spez), those shitty Hollywood media corporations, CDNs like Cloudflare or Akamai, Tesla and everything related to Elon Musk, Starbucks, basically all fast food chains, every Chinese or Russian company, every Israeli company, The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Nestle and many others. I also try to stay away from PayPal, banks and insurance companies as much as possible, they are criminals.
We shouldn't just focus on shitty companies. Foundations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are basically tax-exempt billionaire investment funds in disguise. This is a great video about the lies of billionaire philanthropy: https://youtube.com/watch?v=OH4uh8cHuto
EA, Ubisoft, Activision/Blizzard, Netflix and any streaming service, LG
EA, Ubisoft, ActiBlizz. All for their various flavours of greedy nasty and/or sexual abuse. Bethesda is honestly likely to go on the list soon as well.
Burger king.a few years ago i went through the drive through to get my little sister a milkshake. Machine down, okay what about an ice cream? Oh thats down too. " i didnt know I came to McDonald's" dude over the menu laughed.... but then this big ole cunt of a manager comes yelling at me to leave their property! I dont remember what all was said but it ended with me yelling back at her "fuck you, you dont just come screaming at people over a joke. YOU FAT BITCH!" Then i went to a McDonald's and told their drivethrough lady and got free ice cream while they laughed. And i havent been back since.
I'm going to go classic and name a company that personally wronged me: Noodles & Co. I used to work in a mall and every single restaurant in the mall had a mall employee discount. It was usually a token discount between 5-10% but still it made a difference on your lunch break during an 8 hour shift. Noodles & Co. had no discounts for mall employees and one time I found a hair in my food there. It's petty but since then I have never returned to that restaurant
CVS and Walgreens.
Walgreens pulled out of selling certain reproductive health items in numerous states even though they would have been an ideal test case and certainly could have absorbed the costs of litigation.
CVS fucked up my meds years ago during a period i was cash pay, and then doubled down on the error and expected me to pay for it. Basically, extended vs immediate release, and $100 va $1.
Never did get an apology, or even an admission that the paper scrip said immediate release.
My employer unfortunately insists on using them as a PBM but that doesn’t mean i need to buy drugs from them.
They did another thing a few years prior that angered me deeply, but that’s neither here nor there. Something something “the law requires…” and the law verifiably did not require that behavior or process.
Also, you can bet your ass that I will never give one unnecessary dime to Express Scripts. Without disclosing too much, they have a monopoly on a thing that’s got some regulations around it, and I’m stuck with them for fulfilment. Doesn’t mean I’ll ever give them a penny voluntarily.
Seriously considered switching to a different formulation of the same long term med just to avoid them, but it didn’t make sense for my use case. Doing so would just have put me back in Come Visit Satan’s clutches anyway.
Nintendo, EA, Blizzard, Epic, Huawei.
Very, very few. I figure that all large companies are awful in one way or another; the only difference is whether we know about it or not.
I prefer to shop locally when it’s an option. I like feeling as if my business genuinely matters.
Any company with an ad that makes me wait or click more than once.
US Airways. They left me stranded at a layover and I nearly missed my grandfather’s funeral. When I asked to be rebooked after waiting three hours in line, they offered me a 10% off coupon for the airport hotel; no refund or credit for the incomplete flight. I eventually found a flight out. It was $2000.
Applebee's. They wanted to screw their employees during COVID.
And their food is mediocre.
Most of them
None. I'm not rich, I don't have the luxury of straight-out boycotting any particular company. If I could, both Amazon and Walmart would be top of the list. And I'm sure many others.
Hell, I've been wanting to finally delete my Facebook account for years now, but Facebook marketplace is apparently the ONLY place I'm ever going to be able to sell anything. It's the only reason I still have the account. I have long since delete all posts, photos, and literally any other data that they would let me delete, aside from marketplace posts and associated messenger conversations. Used to buy and sell constantly on Craigslist for many years, now I haven't been able to successfully sell a single item in at least the last 2-3 years. Letgo was a decent one for a while, until the app got bought by, and then shut down by, OfferUp. And the OfferUp people are basically con artists (use shady methods of boosting the number of "active" listings, in order to artificially inflate the value of their company). It has been nearly impossible to sell, or even BUY anything on OfferUp, after several years of trying to make user of the app.
T-Mobile was pretty awful, and stuck me a big cancellation fee when I left. I had been with them for +15yrs. Never would i return
Netflix Paramount Chick-fil-A Hobby Lobby
.... and whoever else seems to be run by bigots or ad pushers
Sony, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Blizzard/Activision, EA, Every car company (I only buy pre 2010 cars). I could go on but you get the idea. Modern megacorps are fuckin gross.
EA, Ubisoft and Blizzard are kind of on my soft-blacklist, if that counts. My greylist, I guess you could say. I can't say 100% I'll not give them money in future, but I don't want to. And they make it so easy to boycott them because they aren't making anything I give a shit about.
Facebook and Elon Musk's companies (both's effects on global society are way more egregious than other tech companies,) pretty much any company that wears faith on their sleeve
Sony, Apple.
apple,microsoft, google etc
Every single one... unfortunately, you just have to live in this world 🤷.
Too many.
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This is a colossal list
I’m over it now, but for 5 years I was anti-public transit. After working a 12 hour OT shift I took the train home. Sherriff was on the train and started checking peoples tickets. I opened my bag dug around literally 30+ other tickets, found my day pass and turned it over.
But I didn’t get a day pass that day, I got a one way because of my OT plans was supposed to be an Uber home.
So I got fined $250 for it. The crazies would just get pushed off the train but normals would get fined I guess. Pissed me off so much I just stopped using the public transit for half a decade.
Taco Bell has tried to kill me more than once. After the 6th time I said enough was enough.
EA, for destroying many of the dev companies and game franchises I loved growing up.
Nestlé, for destroying the planet, stealing water, and poisoning kids in less-developed countries.
I still deal with every company people here are listing. I even really like some of them despite the owners views etc. (if you make a good chicken sandwich and beat your wife, I’m still gonna eat that sandwich while hoping you go to jail).
I have not seen anyone mentioning Reddit yet though, and that kinda shocks me. I know it’s not the same as giving them a dollar but they’ve received no eyeballs, add revenue or obviously content from me since the exodus.
I think it's easier to say which ones haven't made my blacklist
I go by more of a criteria than a list. This criteria is followed personally but fits even more at my own workplace in the protocol. The criteria is really just things like "these businesses do not follow courtesy", things like GoodWill, Autism Speaks, and Catholic Charities. There's a charity ranker that has listed Catholic Charities as the top charity almost three years in a low. That's on the blacklist too, we've known better all along. I can give a much larger list if asked.
It's one thing to treat your people like fools, it's another to run on gifting by members and still do it.
Several local (but national chain brand) furniture stores.
So many reasons. One had better quality furniture on display than what they sold by a long way. Another tried to give me not one but two firm mattresses instead of medium and lie to me about them. Yet another got caught out blatantly lieing to my face about delivery times and procedures.
All of them had great customer service right until the point that they had our money and then completely treated us like garbage afterwards.
Superstore/Loblaw's and really any and all big box grocery store in Canada. They fixed bread prices and are colloquially known as the "Bread Cartel".
(not only have none of these companies made any effort at improvement, they’ve consistently gotten worse as time goes by – remember one comedian commenting “the bar was on the ground and y’all brought shovels”)
Sodastream because they were built on Palestinian occupied territory before they moved facilities back to Israel to avoid the bad press.
Spence Diamonds because they have the most annoying advertising and diamonds are bullshit carbon anyways.
Advertising being horrible is a huge red flag that your business is somewhere I won't be going at all. Car dealerships giving away gold bricks, hot dogs, telling you they are your friendly neighbor, giving away trips or extras with every purchase means those things are all baked into the price already and you are spending more then elsewhere.
Samsung. Vodafone (NZ)..
Carl's Jr. because of that awful sexualized man campaign. Awful ad campaigns also for Dove, Axe, Jimmy John's and Jersey Mike's. I'm sure there are others I'm not remembering at the moment.
Burger King and Chili's because of cavalier attitudes towards food poisoning.
McD's, Twitter, Susan G. Komen, commercialized fundraising of any kind, and Reddit for obvious reasons.
Lots of games I won't play and apps I won't download because of their ads.
Twitter
Tesla
HP. Bought a "gaming" pc monitor, it gave up the ghost literally 2 years and 1 month I bought it, standard 2 year warranty.
I reached out to their support,, "sorry nothing we can do, here have a coupon for 10% off a new one".
The guy seemed surprised when I asked if I could use it on other manufacturers products (I couldn't). I think I'm the one that was really surprised there, why would they think I'd ever buy anything from HP ever again in my life? Because I fucking won't.
I opened it up, and found that solder traces behind whatever the big chip on the board is have melted and fused together, probably shortcutting the hell out of something. This is just fucked up engineering...
HP
Printers suck enough as it is.
They used to make good computers but that was a long time ago at this point. Some of their laptops or other devices are probably fine but fuck HPMost.
For being shitty.
I've never -and will never- give a dollar or any control over my networks to Cloudflare.
They temporarily disrupted KiwiFarms, the anti-trans forum. They also temporarily disrupted right-wing Daily Stormer.
Anything free speech should not rely on Cloudflare.