It’s down to the final four worst companies in America, folks. The bracket has been updated and the next round will begin on Monday. Congratulations to the four companies that made it this far. You’ve really achieved something! Who do you think will win it all?
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How the hell did BOA lose? Did they have their employees cram the ballot box? They’re sure as hell not working, well not working correctly.
It’s fixed!
@asujosh1: Yes, but then if they cared what their customers thought of them they might not be so evil.
How will I ever decide? So much anguish!
Diebold over Wal-Mart due to Diebold’s strong support of fascists and rigging of elections. Even though America is mostly a giant corporatcracy and has little regard for its citizens (except the rich, of course), these people helping to make things worse deserve recognition.
/enter right wing crying over the truth and more stupid remarks about conspiracies and loonyness
Countrywide helped F our economy – F them
Maybe life is better than we all think. For the majority of the people bringing up this site, their primary concern is that some company is threatening to slow down the rate at which they can illegally obtain media.
Remember, a vote for Countrywide is a vote for Bank of America.
[www.msnbc.msn.com]
Diebold
Walmart
Countrywide
Comcast
A Superfecta, if you will:
[en.wikipedia.org]
In this competition, there have been companies that killed thousands of pets, denied people life saving medical treatment, stolen people’s houses, destroyed our manufacturing base, fraudulently emptied people’s bank accounts, and made Tila Tequila a household name…
And the best we can come up with is Comcast.
I don’t think I am going to play this game next year.
EXXON lost to COMCAST? Really? We are talking about the same environment wrecking, price fixing, 3rd world exploiting, robber baron bastards, right? Maybe I am underestimating how bad Comcasts service really is. Or EXXON managed to fix the vote…
Ticket master and Exxon are much worse than Comcast. They are just better at hiding their damage to society.
Bleh, this thing is broken. Maybe limit voting to registered members only to prevent gaming of the system if that isn’t done already. No Best Buy, Verizon, no BofA- looks like shenanigans to me.
@failurate: Amen.
Why is it Diebold’s fault that the shitty politicians we elect choose to buy their shitty equipment? Wal-Mart has no business being up there as they have a far lower number of horror stories than Sears, for example. Comcast and Countrywide deserve a deathmatch in the final, but I suspect Wal-Mart will land there just because people think it’s fun to beat up on them.
I have been a big proponent of Countrywide winning this thing from the beginning, and nominated them in the original post.
I gotta stick with them all the way through the finals.
It will be:
Countrywide
Diebold
Walmart
Comcast
I can’t believe that Comcast took it away from my pick, Exxon.
And, let’s be honest: none of this kvetching is going to make any of these companies change their own business models. Therefore, I can’t advocate going with the “practical” choice, hoping that it will foment change.
I am casting my vote for Countrywide on principle.
Why can’t all four win?
I don’t think people are blaming Diebold so much for the people who now hold elected office, but rather for claiming (and convincing our elected officials) that their machines were secure, when in fact their security was so trivially bypassed that it bordered on criminal negligence.
Anyhow, I would have thought it would be:
DeBeers
Exxon
Diebold
Countrywide
Just based on pure malevolence.
according to consumerist Big Oil is OK but local cable company is not.
gotcha!
My vote is that Comcast wins because people here seem to not have their priorities strait.
OMG I CAN’T WATCH LOST!!!!! WHATEVER WILL I DO!?!?!?!!
I just moved to a small town that has Comcast and no FIOS, WTF!!
.
DIEBOLD is pure evil, not because they make the hackable machines, but because they claim them to be reliable.
.
.
COUNTRYWIDE’s sins are shared by many lenders, it’s just that Countrywide’s impact is larger because of their market share.
Yes, they’re partly to BLAME for our nation’s economic downturn, but shouldn’t we at least acknowledge that they’re also partly to CREDIT for the real estate boon that benefited the entire economy?
I don’t like Countrywide, but * I’m just sayin . . . . *
I predict a Diebold v. Walmart explosion at the end!
Comcast is the worst. Ever try to cancel? I called for two weeks straight. 7am. 10am. 2pm. 5pm. 8pm. Doesn’t matter. “All of our customer service representatives are busy with other customers. Please try your call again later.” That’s it.
Finally, I just let my subscription expire. They called me at work wanting me to make a payment over the phone. I told them that I wanted to cancel. They told me that they can’t do that over the phone.
Then they sent a person to my house to get a check. I told them I had Uverse and was cancelling. The person took my STB.
Later I get bill for the month of service that I didn’t use because I had U-verse. I pay it rather than fight it.
Not over yet. 2 weeks later I get a bill for $475 for unreturned equipment. I called the number on the invoice and tell the CSR that their person took my STB. They said I needed to find a receipt otherwise they would turn it over to a collection agency unless I paid the $475. Luckily, I found the receipt that the guy left behind when he collected my STB. I call back and give them the receipt number and their employee’s ID number on the receipt. They tell me that they cannot verify this on the phone and that I would need to drive to their office and bring the receipt. I did and am finally told everything will be straightened out. Two weeks later, I get a “final notice” to pay $475. I AM SO FRUSTRATED! I am an attorney, and if I get turned into collections, I am going to sue them in court.
I know I’m weighing in rather late in this, but I’m honestly suprised TimeWarner isn’t anywhere in that bracket. I have had much worse experience with them than Direct TV.
That said, I think the final four is about right.
Comcast for the win. First we learned that internet service is more valuable than living beings, so what’s going to stop it from winning it all? Human rights violations? Ha!
Gotta be Countrywide. Just got a call today from some higher up office due to my letter that ripped them a new hole. We do not even have a home with them anymore and still they continue to harass us. Their criminal behavior has been so bad we are filing criminal charges against them in a couple weeks along with 2 lawsuits. I would tell them to go to hell but I believe their offices reside there already.
Comcast for having the worst customer service reps in the World. Comcast tried to bait and switch me when I recently signed up for internet service for 19.99 for the first 6 months via circuit city and when I called to activate it they were like I can’t activate that for you at that price but what I can do for you today is sign you up over the phone for first 3 months at 29.99.Then took me three days of calling to finally to get someone to activate it for the quoted price of 19.99
@RudeandRude: Precisely. Diebold is a good part of the reason why things are so fucked up in general in this country, and lubed up the public to get fucked by most of these other corporations.
Like many, I was torn and thought that Diebold vs. Comcast would be a difficult decision. Then the answer struck me.
Because of Diebold, the politicians that allowed Comcast to become so bad are in office.
i find it interesting that a bank of america-owned compan killed off BofA
Bank of America was knocked off by itself (or rather, its own subsidiary).
I think Diebold should “win.” I might be biased since I don’t have any mortgages, but even if I didn’t I’d still vote for DIEbold.
This only proves that your readers are complete retards. How can Countrywide and Wal-Mart ever be considered worse than Sprint and Bank of America? Idiots!
@highmodulus: Wait, you thought Verizon should have beaten DeBeers? And that Best Buy should have beaten Diebold? SERIOUSLY?
@failurate: If I rolled my eyes any harder they would pop right out of my skull.
Where did AT&T go?
@Rectilinear Propagation: …like I said, retards.
@heavylee-again: Maybe Diebold’s a sponsor for “American Idol”?
@SayAhh: Good point. If you think the BoA constrictor should’ve made the final, a vote for Countrywide amounts to the same thing.
My vote: Diebold vs. Countrywide in the final. Walmart has probably done as much damage to the US economy as Countrywide, but you could argue that it was really due to imbalances of labor cost between the US and Asia. Walmart just went looking for the cheapest suppliers and didn’t give a damn about macro-economic impacts, they didn’t try to scam the consumers on the scale Countrywide did. Comcast is terrible in places where it’s the only game in town, but apart from truly horrendous customer service, they don’t impact the rest of us. Now if ADELPHIA still was around…
Countrywide FTW, since their economic damage and financial shenanigans are more topical on this site than election rigging and political shenanigans from Diebold. Both companies are deserving to be finalists, since they’ve impacted millions of people outside their customer base.
@Superawesomerad: My attitude problem with Diebold isn’t so much the machines themselves, although the lack of verifiable security, use of known insecure components (Microsoft Access???) and lack of a valid recount mechanism (paper trail) are glaring flaws. Where I live we used machines from Sequoia, and none of the vendors were addressing the security/reliability concerns.
What annoys me about Diebold is the close ties of the company leadership with one political party over the other. There was not even a pretense of avoiding a conflict of interest and saying something like “Diebold executives may not contribute any resources (including their own services or use of their property) to the political campaigns of candidates participating in elections that are performed (all or in part) on Diebold voting machines.”
How ’bout a tie for first place….Diebold and Countrywide. And for an extra hour of good nights sleep, lets create a second category just for Comcast, with a priority on product & service (versus product/service and outcome/national impact). We can call it, say for instance, “Most diabolically hated and loathed company in America”….or maybe just the “Consumer Noose” award.
Or “Most Likely To Screw You!” Award!
Ahhhhh, daydreams….
Yummy!
@linoth: I now know who I’m voting for in that match-up.
The real question for me is what will I do if it’s a Walmart/Diebold battle in the end?
COuntrywide is going to win, I would’ve though it was going to be countrywide against exxon but oh well my money is with countrywide (litterally) I have to pay them mrotgage
You can’t just vote for Countrywide and blame them for the US recession. They were definitely a big part of the problem, but so were all those people who took our fairy tale mortgages expecting to flip their house in a few years.
Comcast, I have personal experience with, and they truly are an evil, completely self-serving corporation. They provide as little as possible while charging as much as possible to their subscribers. They’re up there with ValuJet, Enron, and Worldcom…
ALSO, FYI on Exxon… they have very little to do with the price of gasoline being so high. Everyone quit your whining and educate yourself about this. The price of oil is so high right now because of the weak dollar, increasing demand from India/China, and a lot of energy speculators buying up oil to profit off of it in the short term. I really wish people would read up about this… Blaming the oil companies is just wrong.
VOTE COMCAST!
I would think that Exxon screws more people than Comcast. Comcast’s market isn’t the entire country, but even if you don’t have Exxon gas stations in your area Exxon probably drilled or refined at least some of the oil that was turned into the gas you use. I never stop at Exxon gas stations, even though I know that doesn’t even hurt Exxon one penny and that I am probably still paying money to them through the gas I buy at a non-Exxon station. It just makes me feel better to drive past Exxon stations.
this is a no-brainer. walmart is the worst company.
Comcast FTL (for the lose)
Earlier in the bracket, personally I would have picked Ebay/Paypal over Capital One.
Wal-Mart FTW
I shop there not by choice but because they’re so cheap. I used to be an employee, and I was so cheap to them. So, I have it for them. Thank God (ME!) that Comcast is not here in OKC (YET!) because otherwise this might be a tough choice.
Countrywide FTW. Freaking mortgage mess is mostly their fault. Stupid sub-prime lending.
I think Diebold will WIN because they will rig every election and contest, even if it’s for the “worst company” category. There’s no such thing as negative publicity.