This is Round 1 in our Worst Company in America contest, Comcast vs Menu Foods. One company kills pets. Another kills file sharing. Which is the greater crime? The wisdom of the internet will decide.
See the master bracket of all the companies here.
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@AceKicker: Thank you for being a voice of reason.
To all the people saying Menu Foods manufactured just the cheap foods: No, they didn’t. They manufactured high-end brands, too.
To all the people saying it was just a few pets: No, it wasn’t. It was thousands.
To all the people saying it was just Menu Foods and you could always buy a different brand: No, it wasn’t. There were literally dozens of brands (I believe the number was over 60 at least count, for each of cat foods and dog foods), both dry and wet, from numerous vendors, not just Menu Foods. So no, you couldn’t just buy a non-Menu Foods brand and be safe. Nor could you know for certain what foods were manufactured by Menu Foods, or any other facility or plant, because the industry fought tooth and nail to actively hide that information from consumers. Even those who disclosed which brands they manufactured refused to disclose where they sourced their ingredients, and which facilities certain foods were manufactured in.
In short, for about half a year, pets were being killed by poisoned food created by unadulterated greed across the board, from most major and store brands, and there was little or no mainstream consumer information provided about any of it. Hell, for months afterwards, people were finding poisoned foods still for sale on shelves. Foods that had already been recalled.
Maybe some of you are annoyed about TCP RSTs. Maybe you should be. But you’re selfish bastards if you think being prevented from running BitTorrent is worse than having a family member murdered in the name of profit.
We all know this is just the foreplay before the final Battle Royal Cage Match between Bank of America and Best Buy or Comcast.
@S-the-K: I download illegal pets, so you can see how I’m conflicted.
@sifr: agreed.
Comcast is less evil and infuriating than any other cable/internet/etc. provider I’ve ever had to deal with; therefore, the greed-fueled pet-killers win.
For those of you that think that the Menu Foods Debacle was minor, you might want to hop on over to [itchmo.com] the top 2 stories are about food recalls and the 4th story is about Menu Foods.
I have no doubt, that because of the demographic of this site, that Comcast will win. I just think you guys shouldn’t be so dismissive of what Menu Foods did and continues to do.
I don’t have Comcast nor do I buy Menu Foods for my pets. But I love my pets and Hate those that kill them! For those of you who have Comcast, why can’t you just go elsewhere? Or is that the problem..Comcast won’t let you?
I both own pets and download files. Files, I could live without, but mess with my pets and I will cut you.
And from information about the class action lawsuit: As of April 2007, a total of 3,730 pets died of kidney failure and another 11,700 got sick.
@milty45654: Your assumption on why I voted Comcast is wrong. I voted Comcast because I have consistently gotten poor service, they don’t deliver on their product, and they screw up my billing. They also sent a high/drunk tech to my home for the installation – who arrived 7.5 hours PAST the scheduled time.
Sure, I care about my two dogs. But I have a choice with what to feed them. I don’t have a choice about my cable provider. And yes, I must have cable because I need the cable cards for my TiVo. Otherwise, Comcast wouldn’t be getting a penny from me.
@cinlouwho: Comcast is the only cable provider for my market.
They claim they don’t have a monopoly because of competition with satellite providers. But I can’t get a cable card from the satellites for my TiVo, so I’m stuck with a cable provider.
@cinlouwho: There are a lot of areas where there is only a single provider, especially if you’re outside the city. You go with them or you go without. Here in NH, the top half is owned by Verizon (which is trying to sell all their lines off to some worse off company named Fairpoint) and the bottom half is Comcast, with Time Warner getting the better part of Maine. They would rather have monopolies in contained areas than trying to compete in the open market.
As for Menu Foods, they managed to make it on the list so no one is saying they’re a saint. They screwed up big, but it’s the repeated abuse of their customers that makes me hate Comcast more. Search for Menu Foods and search for Comcast at the top of the page and see which one gets the worse wrap. Network blocking is just one of a huge list of transgressions. I can’t hold one big atrocity over thousands of smaller ones done every day.
Can’t access the poll.
@jefeweisen: “But I have a choice with what to feed them.”
really? identify the manufacturer of your pet food. Identify the source of the ingredients used in your pet food. Identify the facility in which your pet food is manufactured.
Bet you can’t.
For all those that think the recall wasnt Menu’s fault, Menu changed suppliers to reap a bigger profit, they and other pet food companies began getting reports of sick pets in Nov/Dec and chose to do nothing. They did not willingly come forward, another company threatened to go public if they did not begin a recall so they had no choice. They let thousands of pets die before the official recalls began in March of 2007 and to this day they are trying to lessen the number saying maybe a hundred, what a crock. And why is there no outcry over Menu Foods CO dumping his stock so conveniently the day before the recalls, didnt Martha Stewart get jailtime for something similar? And exactly what do you believe Menu has done to “fix” the problem? They havent reimbursed a single soul, they havent apologized to anyone expect for the Pet Food Industry and to date, there are no real changes that have occurred to make pet food safer. Menu’s publicity still tries to make them the victim rather than all the families pets they killed. If you think this only affects pet food, think again, our pets were the canaries in the coal mine. Your food is next. That to me, deserves a big vote for Menu being the worst company in America. And think about those pets who are still having medical issues from their poison food, the fallout from this even though it was one year ago, is still happening. Menu had tons of money to have had testing equipment at their facility to have prevented this, a similar problem happened to Asia pets in 2004, and it was from the same combo of toxins, this was not an unknown substance as they would like everyone to believe.
@S-the-K: So, how do people with pets, who download illegal files vote? Or, how about those who have no pets and don’t download illegal files?
Yeah, silly generalizations are kind of messy, huh.
I voted for Comcast. I don’t have a pet and see no need for a pet and its my personal opinion that humans shouldn’t keep animals as pets, they should be allowed to survive on their own and not be caged up or kept indoors all day.
My pets are family members. I can get another Internet provider or escalate to the CEO or whatever with Comcast, it’s not important. Knowingly, intentionally, deliberately poisoning my family is important.
Yes, Comcast sucks. Next to Menu Foods, Comcast sings with the angels.
This has got to be the worst matchup possible for a first round. Why can’t it be Menu Foods vs like Facebook or something? You know, make it easy for us so we don’t have to come away feeling like we’ve been labled either as hippies or pro-dead puppies.
@sirf: If you tell me tomorrow that all pet food is unsafe, then I cook rice and chicken and feed them. Simple.
@milty45654: Net Neutrality is more important to me than a company that accidentally poisoned pets.
Comcast threatens net neutrality. This stifles innovation, free speech, and means that big media and big corporations can “own” the internet. Do you even fathom what that means? Millions of peoples livelihoods depend on net neutrality. Billions of people communicate and receive their information freely due to net neutrality, and billions of chinese people are stifled and censored from a lack of it (or at least their government tries). Net Neutrality is what allows the internet to spread ideas and change our lives, instead of being another media outlet controlled and censored by corporations. Without Net Neutrality, all of this could end.
So I say fuck pet food. Seriously. This is about freedom, and it is much more important to me than anyone’s dog or cat. Although, if a dozen adorable LOLkittens and “LOLpuppies” were staring me down, it might be harder to click on ‘Comcast’.
@Jefeweizen: “then I cook rice and chicken and feed them.”
Obviously, you haven’t looked into the details of making homemade pet food. It’s a bit more complicated than buying rice and chicken and cooking it. Like, for example, needing to source hearts and bone, and grind them, along with ensuring proper additives and additive levels (e.g., taurine).
There’s a reason a lot of people don’t cook their own pet food, and it’s not laziness. By and large, the neighborhood butcher is a thing of the past, and with their passing, so passes most people’s ability to prepare pet food at home, because they cannot source the necessary ingredients.
If you’re going to do something like that, I recommend Primal Pet Foods ( [www.primalpetfoods.com] ) instead, carried by Whole Foods. It’s what I feed my cats since the pet food nightmare. $17/bag feeds my two cats for about two weeks.
@ludwigk: “So I say fuck pet food”
That’s funny. I was just thinking “fuck ludwigk’s spoiled overprivileged ass for whining about file sharing”.
@DrGirlfriend: I agree with you. All emotions aside, **** happens. Sorry if your pet died.
The company took reasonable steps to remedy the situation to ensure that future incidents never happen.
When you mass produce food, eventually something is going to mess up somewhere. We all take for granted the fact that we have safe food in this country. Which is why everyone is getting emotional over this Menu Foods issue. But recalls and other situations are the downside to industrialization. Some mass produced batches turn out to have problems or impurities. Or workers may ultimately not follow the rules. There is only so much a company’s management can do.
Comcast’s business model, thrives on the fact that they have back door dealings with politicians. They are allowed to have an unchecked monopoly on cable television and Internet service.
When people complain that they aren’t getting the service that they agreed to pay for in their contract, Comcast ignores them or even cuts them off, while still expecting a check every month.
As far as Internet is concerned, in many areas it’s either Comcast or AT&T. Not much choice in the market, as you can see. I’ve tried AT&T. They killed their chances after they kept overcharging me and my room mate for service, then refunding us random amounts of money every 3-4 months. Now I’m upset with Comcast that they made it difficult for me to check my work e-mail over a VPN due to their packet shaping scheme.
Advertising unlimited bandwidth should be illegal if they don’t actually want to provide users with at least a few gigabytes a month.
I can go on and on about their crappy cable tv service but I’ll probably use up the rest of my bandwidth quota from Comcast and get black listed for a month if I make too big of a post.
Let’s not forget that Menu DOOFS did not do any form of compensation for those who lost their family members as a result of Menu’s tainted food. Our legal system views pets as property and allowed them to get away with murder.
@Akamaru:
yeah, to hell with the lives and health of us and our pets, we have to protect the rights of people like you saturating our local nodes so you can have every piece of pr0n ever created, along with all the stolen music and software you can get your hands on.
Seriously, list the number of commercial applications that make use of bittorrent or other p2p distribution mechanisms: Let’s see….. WoW. That’s pretty much it. And there are alternative patching mechanisms available for that.
So, unless you’re going to sit there with a straight face and demand that your life is irreparably harmed by not being able to download MP3s from bands who have intentionally and in writing made available their product for free, and from whom no other means of distribution is available, you’re coming off like a spoiled child.
Wah! My bittorrent doesn’t work! Wah! I can’t saturate my node without negative repurcussions! Wah! I can’t watch reality TV 24/7/365! Wah!
Intentionally producing and selling melamine-laced ingredients, intentionally buying them, and intentionally distributing foods containing them all for the sake of a quick buck at the expense of your and your family members’ health comes in a damned sight higher on the importance meter than your ability to bask in the luxury of on-demand crap TV and high-speed network connectivity.
@yesteryear: Are you surprised? This is the same forum that decided the RIAA was worse than Halliburton last year.
Menu Foods killed or sickened possibly tens of thousands of companion animals. Their CFO sold a whole bunch of stock right before the pet food recall was announced. A year later, and they still haven’t made good on the substantial veterinary bills to those who submitted claims.
For those of you that aren’t into pets, they were the canaries in the mine. Don’t think you’re not eating adulterated garbage also.
If y’all are worried about file sharing, it says a whole lot about the society we live in.
Someone should post this to itchmo and other sites, so the vote more accurately reflects the severity and reprehensibility of Menu Foods’ behavior.
What the hell is wrong with you people?
@lpranal:
You can’t retroactively unthrottle the internet, doing it now would be like buying a new pet for the person and apologizing.
@milty45654: Local monopoly. Research before making comments please.
i vote menu foods. i haven’t had a problem with comcast.
I appreciate that bad service is a pain in the a** – however, being annoyed is not being dead. There are more pet owners now then ever in the US. And as I’ve seen mentioned more then once – the pet food crisis is the canary in the coal mine. I love my kitties, but I love my mom too. I don’t want either of them to eat food tainited with plastic, antifreeze, tylenol or anything not listed on the ingrediants. Don’t be short-sighted.
Menu Foods, all the way.
Where was this all day yesterday? I visited the site numerous times, never saw this, and missed my chance to vote!! dammit!
Menu Foods FTW!!
You know, make it easy for us so we don’t have to come away feeling like we’ve been labled either as hippies or pro-dead puppies.
@AceKicker: It wouldn’t have had to be like that if people would stop insisting that the other company isn’t so bad.
Comcast: As you said yourself they’re evil on purpose. Bad customer service, purposely degrading the service they provide, and the fact that they are a monopoly in many places. It is stupid and unfair to deride people voting for Comcast for only caring about file sharing.
Menu Foods: Killed pets. Made many more pets sick. Denied it for weeks and even now, according to shibadiva, refuse to pet vet bills for the animals they made ill. They may not have poisoned the food on purpose but they weren’t necessarily trying to make sure the food was safe either.
They are both bad companies. People have different opinions about which is worse and for different reasons. That’s fine. But no one did their argument any good by trying to pretend people’s issues with the other company were petty.
@Narockstar: And those are just the reported numbers. You could probably at least double both of those for the people who didn’t report or didn’t understand what was happening to their pet.
For me my vote for Comcast, which is really a vote against Comcast, is more about lousy customer service magnified by the power of a monopoly franchise granted to it by local governments. I call it Comcascism.
Considering I have a large home & barn that is a foster home for nearly 25 cats (all fixed) who with the exception of the cats who would not eat cat food, and would only eat tuna & chicken breast, every single animal died. Various ages, and health, and they all went and died!
Come on, it’s not even a contest…Bombcast may suck as a company, but people were losing family members over the crap Menu Foods pulled. Comcast is just generally completely incompetent, but I’d still purchase service from them.
And those who think that that’s no big deal, tell that to every child who’s ever lost a pet.
stopNgoBeau — For you and others that do not recognize the horrid greed of Menu and Diamond Foods in selling contaminated pet foods — the melamine and cyanuric acid is from coal production and was found in wheat gluten, wheat flour, rice flour and rice gluten. Just read your boxes of crackers and snacks. What is in them? This is not all, most of the recalled pet food was “gleaned” by hog and chicken farmers and fed to their animals. THEN IT WAS SOLD TO AND EATEN BY YOU! Menu foods is really in a tie with Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN with we US citizens as the creatures. Many of us have eaten animals that ate contminated food. BTW, THOUSANDS of animals died and the FDA helped the companies ignore most of the reports.
PS — the pet food problems started years ago in Asia 2004, then other countries. My cat, Purr-Purr, nursed me through cancer, then I put her on Natural Balance. Then added Trader Joe’s canned pet food — still manufactured by Menu Foods. She developed cat renal failure, but I did not know it and could not afford the vet bills. So yeah, Menu foods and all greed motivated businesses should be exposed and boycotted.
I see a lot of comments about having product choices with pet foods. Most pet food companies outsource to Diamond Foods and Menu Foods. That’s right, you think you are getting different products, but you really are not. It was at Diamond Foods that they put the poison rice gluten in a product that did not even have it on the label. Dead is dead. I can write all over the place complaining about the raw deal with Comcast and hope things improve. I cannot bring back my pet. BTW I now do research,do not use pet food with grains, and use companies that are not associated with Menu or Diamond etc.
@AceKicker: Waaaah! Who cares about dead pets? I want my torrents!
A lot more than 10 pets were killed, but what if it was “only” 10? How many dead dogs are worth free access to file sharing?
Read the timeline Their CFO was dumping stock while they were receiving complaints of poisoned pets. They may have waited as long as 3 months before announcing anything.
It did say company in America, right? This is a no brainer. Anyone with a heart and soul or any decency for that matter knows the answer to this silly question. You figure it out!!
I had Comcast’s Triple Play for 5 days. Nothing worked. It took many hours over the phone over two months to make sure I wasn’t charged for their terrible service. Still, no living creature died as a result. I vote Menu Foods.
BTW, next tourney you need to do a better job of seeding. Comcast and Menu Foods are both #1 seeds in my book and shouldn’t be meeting until the Final Four.
I’ll go with Comcast. Their customer service, while pathetic, isn’t even an issue. They’re trying to control the internet, block access to competitors, and monopolize the entire communications industry. Menu foods is terrible, but Comcast raises the bar (or I guess lowers it would be more accurate).