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surprise
Worst Company In America UPSET: #63 Hallmark/Westland Meatpacking Stuns #2 News Corp!
Grab your popcorn, ladies and gentlemen! We have some eye-opening Worst Company in America news for you. Round 1 is finally over and the results are in: #63 Hallmark/Westland Meatpacking Company has upset #2 News Corp.! More » -
worst company in america
Round 33: Comcast vs The American Arbitration Association
Tier 1 voting is over (we'll get a nice standings chart up soon). Now it's time for things to get more intense, now we'll have some real competition. This is Round 33 in our Worst Company in America contest, Comcast vs The American Arbitration Association.
This is a post in our Worst Company In America 2008 series. The companies nominated for this honor were chosen by you, the readers. Keep track of all the goings on at consumerist.com/tag/worst-company-in-america
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worst company in america
Round 32: News Corp vs Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company
This is Round 32 in our Worst Company in America contest, News Corp vs Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company, marking the end of tier 1 voting (phew!). Vote which sucks more, inside... More »
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worst company in america
Round 31: Chase vs United Healthcare
This is Round 31 in our Worst Company in America contest, Chase vs United Healthcare. Vote which sucks more, inside... More »
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worst company in america
Round 30: Clear Channel vs Toyota
This is Round 30 in our Worst Company in America contest, Clear Channel vs Toyota. Vote which sucks more, inside... More »
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worst company in america
Round 29: Countrywide Home Loans vs Dish Network
This is Round 29 in our Worst Company in America contest, Countrywide Home Loans vs Dish Network. Vote which sucks more, inside... More »
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worst company in america
Round 28: Sprint vs Hewlett Packard
This is Round 28 in our Worst Company in America contest, Sprint vs Hewlett Packard. Vote which sucks more, inside... More »
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worst company in america
Round 27: Blue Cross Blue Shield vs CNN
This is Round 27 in our Worst Company in America contest, Blue Cross Blue Shield vs CNN. Vote which sucks more, inside... More »
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worst company in america
Round 26: Gamestop vs Monster Cable
This is Round 26 in our Worst Company in America contest, Gamestop vs Monster Cable. Vote which sucks more, inside... More »
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worst company in america
Round 25: Bank Of America vs Toys R' Us
This is Round 25 in our Worst Company in America contest, Bank of America vs Toys R' Us. Vote which sucks more, inside... More »
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worst company in america
Round 24: Toshiba vs Microsoft
This is Round 24 in our Worst Company in America contest, Toshiba vs Microsoft. Vote which sucks more, inside... More »
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worst company in america
Round 23: US Airways vs Washington Mutual
This is Round 23 in our Worst Company in America contest, US Airways vs Washington Mutual.
US Airways: According to Zagat's, they're the number one worst airline ("as "unhelpful" as "the DMV," "schedule should be published under "fiction" and the Philly hub is the "Bermuda Triangle of luggage"). They've also joined in with the other airlines in devaluing their frequent flyer programs (translation: legally steal money from you). If that sounds bad, just be glad you're not a US Airways employee. A recent NYT article revealed US Air employees actually hate their own airlines more than their customers do.
Washington Mutual, but one cockroach feeding off the sub-prime mound of bat guano, recently rejiggered its executive bonus pay so no execs would feel any pain from the imploding mortgage market they profited off of and helped create. Two years after acquiring Providian, they still haven't integrated the two systems, sometimes resulting in customers getting completely stranded overseas after having their wallet stolen. More »
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worst company in america
Round 22: American Airlines vs Blockbuster
This is Round 22 in our Worst Company in America contest, American Airlines vs Blockbuster.
American Airlines: canceled 3,300 flights last week to make sure some wires were properly wrapped and tied, disrupting travel plans for hundreds of thousands of travelers. Granted, their lives would have been much more disrupted had any of their planes caught fire, but as this repair was on the FAA top list of things to check for, it should have been part of routine maintenance. That aside, American was the most-complained about of the big airlines for the past year, ranking in the tops for complaints about customer service and overall flight problems.
Blockbuster: is a crappy video store dittoed across the face of America. The worst thing about them is that they never have any movies that we like and sometimes they edit controversial movies to make them more mainstream-friendly. And based on reports from our readers, some of their in-store personnel seem to have discs stuck up their bum. More »
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worst company in america
Universal Music Group: Throwing Away Promotional CDs Is An "Unauthorized Distribution"
All promotional CDs are forever the property of Universal Music Group and giving or throwing them away are "unauthorized distributions," according to a brief filed by UMG. In a lawsuit filed in federal court, UMG claims that ownership rights to promotional CDs, typically sent to DJs, reviewers, and others in the music business to generate hype for new releases, are expressly retained by the label. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is taking up the fight against this absurd position in UMG v. Augusto. More » -
worst company in america
Round 21: Time Warner Cable vs Radioshack
This is Round 21 in our Worst Company in America contest, Time Warner Cable vs Radioshack.
Time Warner Cable: Has been known to employ crackheads (figuratively speaking) as their installation technicians, leading to all sorts of hijinx and complaint letters.
Radio Shack: Won't let you buy batteries unless you give them your zipcode. Their previous CEO resigned after it was found out that he made up the degrees on his resume. They don't take cash without getting your home address. They were fined by the FCC for selling TVs without warning consumers of their impending obsolescence. Oh, just give up, Radio Shack, they've invented the internet. More » -
worst company in america
Round 20: Wellpoint vs Charter Cable
This is Round 20 in our Worst Company in America contest, Wellpoint vs Charter Cable.
Wellpoint: is a health insurance company that's part of BlueCrossBlueShield. They don't believe anesthesia is necessary for colonoscopies. That pretty much encapsulates all you need to know about them.Charter Cable: gets all-around poor marks for quality of service, customer service, and technical support. They're on the record as admitting to blatantly lying to their customers. One time they irrevocably deleted 14,000 customer's email accounts, including all their emails, even the ones that you have to scroll all the way to the bottom to find the secret message. Whoops. More »
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worst company in america
Round 19: Dell vs Home Depot
This is Round 19 in our Worst Company in America contest, Dell vs Home Depot.
Dell: Formerly the king of direct to customer PC sales, Dell now has a well-deserved reputation for abysmal bad customer service ever since they outsourced their Home and Home Office customer service departments (secret trick: always order from Small Business, it's US based and the reps and techs still know what they're doing). Horror stories of botched warranty repairs abound. Just Google "Dell Hell" and you'll know what the company is so reviled.Home Depot: Got rid of all the nice retired electricians and plumbers on its floor staff and replaced them with surly low-paid workers who didn't know a brick from a brace, and didn't care. They let their in-home installation business line be contracted out to incompetent unprofessional local contractors and then didn't hold those teams accountable when egregious mistakes were made and seemed to make it a policy to, at the store level, ignore customers who complained. Perhaps because these were the same guys whose business Home Depot was trying to attract by focusing on the lucrative contracting and construction industries. More »
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worst company in america
Round 18: Sears vs Citibank
This is Round 18 in our Worst Company in America contest, Sears vs Citibank.
Sears stores are dirty and staffed by people who don't give a damn. Getting a warranty repair is a nightmare. The company seems to be composed of different warring factions, with the customer as canon fodder.
Citibank: Like most retail banks excited by late 90's deregulation, Citibank got hot and heavy into the subrpime mortgage industry and helped to precipitate the current economic crunch. They boost people's credit card interest rates for no reason, sometimes have customer service completely impervious to logic, and otherwise behave like a typical gigantic bank, which is to say, horribly. More »


















