A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch
Four years ago, in October of 2012, I wrote an article about companies that I won’t do business with if I can avoid it. You might recall my vitriol towards the Sony Corporation for the evil they did by installing a root kit on my computer. I still haven’t forgiven them and likely never will. I’ll just smirk when they get hacked again.
Instead, I’m going to talk about some other companies that haven’t done a very good job of retaining customer loyalty. Some have a long track record of errors and I’m surprised that they have stayed in business. Others probably will not go out of business but probably should.
Yahoo! has recently been sold again (maybe) to Verizon. This is a company that once was once the most popular website in the U. S. Once worth over $100 billion dollars, it started to decline about fifteen years ago. Verizon is reportedly going to purchase it for about $5 billion. Over the years, Yahoo! Missed out on chances to buy Twitter, Facebook, Google and YouTube. The latest news is the hack of more than 500 million user accounts. Rather than inform customers, the company didn’t do anything for two years. They must be lousy hackers, since Yahoo! has between 2 and 3 billion users. I think we’ll be hearing more in the future. I don’t have to worry. I deleted my account about five years ago.
Another company recently in the news is Samsung. If you haven’t heard about the Galaxy Note 7 problems, I hope you’re enjoying your vacation on Mars. I think that Samsung initially did a great job of responding to the exploding battery reports by recalling all of the phones, no questions asked. Now it appears that the replacement phones are having the same problem. As I write this article, Samsung has ceased sales of the device. I don’t think the story is over yet.
I could write several pages on how badly Sony has treated their customers over the years. If you are interested, feel free to do a search on my website and review my past thoughts. They haven’t changed.
There are many companies that unfortunately are able to stay in business even though they don’t give a rat’s you know what about their customers. I’m mainly thinking of communications companies. Have you heard of any positive customer service stories about ComCast, AT&T, Verizon, etc? I have. They almost always get a lot better whenever some competition enters the market. Often they end up buying the new companies, take a market loss and then return to their past ways.
It is beginning to look like we might soon lose other organizations. Both of our major political parties are in danger of putting themselves out of business. Neither bear much resemblance to their roots. Maybe it is time to resurrect the Whig or Federalist Parties. We could also turn to the Dixiecrats, the Progressives or the Natural Law Party. The Know-Nothing Party could be the most appropriate choice.
Thanks for reading.