I think you need to whiddle down the communications companies, perhaps a bracket of 4 for just them.

I'd say rank them by worth.

Monsanto probably has the largest web of how they are destroying our lives...

By the above comment, I mean post them in a food web type system... just for something non-traditional.

I guess I need to know whether we're going on bad customer service (U-Haul), general evilness (Monsanto), corporate irresponsibility (Wal-Mart), or companies that have personally screwed me (AT&T).

Or "attemping to undermine the American system of justice with frivilous lawsuits flooding the courts and taking taxpayer money and judicial time away from actual important issues for which their lawyers probably ought to be disbarred, while simultaneously destroying a rich musical tradition in the pursuit of profit," in which case RIAA.

Wouldn't an ordering based on actual votes in the round be sufficient?

I'm going to have to go with best buy.

If we're talking brackets then you've got to seed them. How? Number of BBB complaints? Number of articles on consumerist in the past year? Fortune 500 rank? Its debatable, but the point is to pair them up like the NCAA tournament with the highest ranking getting an advantage (for being a terrible company) and yet producing the opportunity for upsets as well as some good mid-bracket matchups. This will be fun!

I'd have to say combinding Fortune 500 ranks with number of articles on the consumerist in the last year would give a good reference for seeding with Fortune being independent (like an RPI ranking) and the consumerist being a little more relevant to our purposes here (sort of like the judgement of the selection committee).

Anywho - lets knock this out before March Madness begins.

BP should be included on this list. Living near one of there fine establishments always gets me choked up.

VZW for the win.

I feel a Halliburton repeat coming on. Setup like the NCAA Does, have 4 regions, put the worst customer support in one, general evilness in another and so on. why limit it to 16, go the full 64 !

I like the four regions idea... here is a proposed bracket, I would leave it to others to rank within each. This fits fairly well, with the exception of Monsanto.

COMMUNICATIONS
ATT-Cingular-SBC
Clear Channel
Verizon
Comcast

ENERGY/TRANSPORTATION
Exxon
U-HAUL
United Airlines
Halliburton

RETAIL/FINANCE
Bank of America
Best Buy
Wal-Mart
Monsanto

MEDIA
News Corp
RIAA
Sony
Time Warner

The RIAA isn't a company per se, is it?

I think MPAA and Sprint should be on there, Sprint for sure since we have been reading about all their poor mismanaged secrets.

Could we have them fight to the death? Although, I'd be afraid of a "There can be only one" power absorbtion that would have the last standing company destroy the known universe or something...

How did Yahoo! not make this list?! Lets give the names and emails of journalists to the Chinese government so they can be executed. Good job guys. That was really cool.

Since this is Consumerist, readers would be FAR better served by running a contest in different consumer areas, e.g.:
- worst bank to do business with
- worst utility company to hook up with
- worst telco or cell phone company
- worst insurance company to insure your car

Then Consumerist could pull some clout, with media saying "Consumerist readers nominated XYZ as the worst cell phone company in 2007."

An all-around pissing contest, on the other hand, doesn't help us be more astute consumers. It's hard to compare a lost luggage problem with a bad call center.

SEAR SERVIVE DEPARTMENT SUCKETH

I don't see how it could be anyone other than the RIAA.

Oh I wish I could vote for you all, I really do! You've all done SO poorly that you all equally deserve to win. I just hope that the winner sets an example for the rest of the contestants and shows what it truely means to be evil.

Why not do a 1-16 ranking using the preliminary votes you already have?

The idea behind a bracket/ranking system is that the #1 seed should have the best shot of winning.

So your 1, 2, 3, and 4 seeds would be the RIAA (which isn't really a company, but I guess it's too late for that), Wal-Mart, Halliburton, and ExxonMobil.

Seed the rest according to their preliminary round votes.

Regarding the sector sorting: It's not really fair to let ExxonMobil and Halliburton go head-to-head in the early rounds, when clearly they both deserve a spot in the final 4.

Seed them quasi-NCAA-style (top two/bottom two, 3-4/13-14), by rank of the number of complaints recorded by the BBB.

General evilness would work, too, but how do you measure that?

well i think this list is a bit too specific. i personally vote for the communications industry (cingular, att, verizon, sprint, etc.) and second, though i've made my arguments that the us government qualifies as a corporate entity, it's not on here.

I'd seed them based on poll votes.

That way, the real worst companies can fight to the death in the final brackets, instead of just kind of puttering out right at the start. Yawn, boring.

You need to remove Halliburton and ADD Apple Inc. They use child labor cause "global warming" from thier factories and have hoorid customer service, of course they are all a bunch of arrogant liberals so what should we expect.

I vote Sony and Apple.

They both suck. Apple fucked me in the ass.

As for Cingular(AT&T), I have no problems with them at all.