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.
I wish we could throw the Adobe executives into the sun. They have the worst anti-consumer business model ever for the most bloated, unusable software.
To this day, Adobe CS5 is probably the best all-encompassing software package they’ve ever released. CS6 added a few things, but was buggy AF. Then CC came out and it’s been in eternal-beta since. So many lost files and sometimes even OS-destroying updates.
Google Play Music still stands as the best commercial music app I’ve used, I miss it, and whatever marketing person got them to change the glorious branding of Play Music, Play Movies, and Play Store for YouTube music, Google TV and Play Store should be fired with extreme prejudice.
At even faintly busy times, they have lines waiting to self checkout, because half the self checkouts are closed. And of course, they have only one regular register open with 8 people with full carts in that line.
It’s nuts to me that every Walmart has like 30 checkout lanes and AT MOST there are 4 open and then they have two sides with self checkouts where only 1 side is open.
If it’s anything like superstore in Canada, they need too much babysitting. Even if there is a store specific person able to fix problems to prevent them from happening again, corporate will force push an update that reverts it. Lots of product entries for things not available on that side of the country will return after being removed and all they do is lock up the system because they don’t actually exist. Every little thing requires the human cashier to reset or override something. I ran 8 at a time on my own when they were new but most people couldn’t do that while ensuring nobody notices the problems and get angry. 4 is reasonable for a non-beginner. Any more requires ridiculous micromanaging.
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.
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.”
I’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.
Most of these make sense but the Applebee’s one isn’t really on your shitlist. From what you’ve said you just seem indifferent to it, much like you’d be indifferent to any other store you have no interest in.
Yeah boycott may be too strong a word, it’s more like they are at the bottom of my list in what I look for in a restaurant, and I live where there are other options. I do object to them but on grounds of being a chain, generally shitty to employees and not good or interesting food, I will not give them dollars but don’t hate them like I hate BOA or Cracker Barrel. They just seem like something that doesn’t need to exist.
Years ago they ran a competition along with their “GoodWeird” campaign. I got high enough on the leaderboard of their little web game to win a (substantial) prize yet they refused to ever respond to me.
I don’t care if ThinkPads are good, fuck them. Especially fuck their marketing team.
You’re right, I got the direction of acquisition backwards, I’d thought IBM acquired Lenovo, not the other way around, my apologies. My vote is for IBM then.
Google, Amazon and Facebook will never see another cent, ad-view or personalized data point from me.
So far, this has affected relatively little to be honest. The most impact was losing access to WhatsApp.
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
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