The floor of the Worst Company In America BattleDome is stained with the blood of the vanquished. But only one company can earn the privilege of placing the WCIA Golden Poo in its trophy case, so the violence must continue.
The first round of WCIA voting resulted in a handful of surprise victories for newcomers to tournament play.
Tiny, low-budget Spirit Airlines edged out Delta, the nation’s second-largest carrier by more than a dozen percentage points. It will be interesting to see if people hate Spirit’s fee-laden tickets as much as they despise all of Ticketmaster’s add-on costs.
Then there was WCIA rookie Electronic Arts, whose greed and putting-quality-third attitude trumped perennial contender Sony’s frivolous lawsuits and inability to create a hacker-free network. In the end, EA trounced Sony with nearly 81% of the vote. Will the anti-EA voters come out in droves for the company’s Sweet 16 bout against Best Buy?
With only 11.66% separating them, the closest match in Round One was the battle between UPS and the U.S. Postal Service. Ultimately, the all-but-insolvent USPS continued on to the Sweet 16, where it will face Facebook. Perhaps people just couldn’t vote for cute UPS guys in brown shorts?
Voting on the Sweet 16 begins later today (or it’s already begun, depending on when you’re reading this). There will be two matches today, with three matches each on Thursday and Friday.
Now is the time to speculate on which companies will slug, kick, dunk, slam and putt their way into the Elite 8.
SCHEDULE OF WORST COMPANY IN AMERICA 2012 BOUTS
SWEET 16
MARCH 21:
* Best Buy vs. EA
* Facebook vs. USPS
MARCH 22:
* Comcast vs. DirecTV
* Bank of America vs. Citi
* Ticketmaster vs. Spirit Airlines
MARCH 23:
* PayPal vs. Charter
* AT&T vs. Apple
* Walmart vs. GameStop
ROUND ONE BOUTS:
* Target vs. Best Buy
* Bank of America vs. Chase
* Charter Communications vs. CenturyLink (Qwest)
* Wells Fargo vs. Citi
* EA vs. Sony
* Sallie Mae vs. Ticketmaster
* DirecTV vs. Dish Network
* PayPal vs. Capital One
* Sears/Kmart vs. Walmart
* Netflix vs. GameStop
* USPS vs. UPS
* Comcast vs. Time Warner Cable
* Spirit vs. Delta
* AT&T vs. Verizon
* Facebook vs. Sprint
* Google vs. Apple
ELITE EIGHT
March 27 – March 28
FINAL FOUR
March 29 – April 1
WCIA FINAL DEATH MATCH
April 2
The Golden Poo winner will be announced April 4
This is a post in our Worst Company In America 2012 series. The companies competing for this honor were chosen by you, the readers.
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I am surprised that Spirit beat out Delta. I thought that Delta would have won by a landslide, with all of the missing and dead pets.
Aside from that, it’s exactly as I thought it would be.
I am shocked that EA beat Sony. Huh? Guys, hello, Sony purposely installed rootkits on their customers’ computers. That is literally a crime for which others have gone to prison.
One could argue that the Origin content delivery system does the same thing, what with people finding elements of SecuROM in it (for what, the fourth time, EA?)
For EA: Day One DLC. They’ve made it almost a standard.
Wow, I had 14 out of 16 right. I need to start betting on this stuff.
perennial favorites.
but shock at delta and sallie mae not making it.
Wow. 16/16. Makes me wish I had put money on this
Prediction for Elite 8:
BoA, Ticketmaster, Paypal, Walmart, AT&T, Facebook, Comcast, Best Buy (last two hardly required any thought…)
That’s pretty much been the top 8 every year for a while now
How, HOW, on Earth did Wal-Mart beat Sears out? Honestly, not one week goes by where we don’t have some serious horror story of how shitty Sears is at doing one basic thing; selling merchandise that people want to buy.
as long as they lose to paypal all is right in the world.
I have a feeling Paypal might sweep it…especially since Regretsy is sending all their followers over here to vote.
Boa will constrict Paypal’s advance, I say.
Wal-Mart treats their employees like garbage
My sister is a manager of a Walmart and would vehemently disagree with this statement. And before you say: “Oh, she’s management so it’s different”, she started as a stock girl and worked her way up to running a store within 5 years of starting with the company. My parents, who worked at Walmart for five years after their retirement from government jobs, would also disagree. Walmart routinely hires mentally disabled people, senior citizens, and lots of other folks who wouldn’t be hired at a lot of other places.
If an employee is unhappy with how they’re treated, it’s a free country and they can go work somewhere else. This attitude that Walmart holds a gun to their employees’ heads and treats them like crap is silly. Good employees thrive in almost any environment; bad ones get weeded out and piss and moan about how unfairly they’re treated. There is no draft in place forcing them to work there.
Is Walmart the best company in the world to work for? Of course not. But it’s freaking retail, and if you think they are any worse to their employees than Sears, KMart, Target, etc., I think you’re mistaken. I worked retail in high school, and all retail jobs suck, in my opinion.
If all retail jobs suck then why brag about your sister’s position? The job sucks because Walmart and their ilk make them suck. They practice borderline illegal behavior and penalize people who actually work well without being a slave to their system.
Does anyone else think that it would be awesome to have the voting percentages in the graphic?
Yes please….get on that!
An firefox still doesn’t work.
Which version? I have 11 and it works just fine. I had to set the NoScript scriptblocker addin to allow polldaddy.com, but that’s not a Firefox issue.
Yup, if you happened to install the web tracking blocker tool Ghostery that was recommended here on Consumerist a few months back, PollDaddy is one of the default things blocked by it.
You have go to into Firefox’s menu Tools – Ghostery – Manage Ghostery Options and uncheck PollDaddy, refresh your browser a couple of times or restart it, and you should be good.
Same thing goes if you’re using the HTTPS Everywhere extension . PollDaddy needs to be disabled since it causes the polls to break.
Ah, thank you. I should have thought of that after I had to disable HTTPS Everywhere for Netflix. It seems that Polldaddy lacks competent programmers also.
Hint to webmasters: If your site offers HTTPS at all, *EVERYTHING* has to run properly through it, it is no longer reasonable to assume that any page will ever be run on clear connections only.
For you. Fix your firefox.
In the schedule, it shows AT&T battling Walmart at noon on 3/23. It should be AT&T vs Apple. #corrections
My predictions for the next round:
BofA
TicketMaster
PayPal
Walmart
AT&T
Facebook
Comcast
Best Buy
My predication …
“BofA
TicketMaster
PayPal
Walmart” => BoA, PayPal => BoA
“AT&T
Facebook
Comcast
Best Buy” => (toughie) AT&T & Comcast => (toughier still) AT&T
The whole tournament was ill-legitimized when SallieMae lost to Ticketmaster.
Had 14 of 16 this round. I Picked Kmart over Walmart, and picked Sony over EA. Next round will be really interesting. Battles like EA/Best Buy and AT&T/Apple should be close.
My Predictions:
1. Bank of America
2. Spirit Airlines
3. Paypal
4. GameStop
5. AT&T
6. Facebook
7. Comcast
8. Best Buy
I’ve always wanted GameStop to get far but they never pass Wal-Mart.
Ooooh I wish Facebook could go higher than just the sweet 16 buy USPS is so horrible.
Are you kidding? Facebook will beat the shit out of USPS. Almost everyone uses Facebook daily, so its in the forefront of everyone’s minds. Nobody uses the post office anymore (which is its problem). Facebook is a horrible company because of greed and anti-consumer decisions. USPS is just badly managed and incompetent, but there’s nothing malicious there.
Come on PayPal, you got this!
Only reason Comcast beat Time Warner is because they have a bigger customer base – hence more voters. Same thing for DirectTV.
I disdain them all equally.
you lost me by not including Goldman Sachs in the cut.
Most of us have absolutely no business relationship with Goldman Sachs. Perhaps very indirectly, at best.
Voted with my heart and only went 12/16. I think I’ll do better in the Sweet 16 round.
i know they are a perpetual, but ultimately unsucessful participant in the WCIA, but the only one of these companies that has really, personally tried to screw me over is best buy, so even though its a lost cause…… GO BEST BUY!!!!!
WOO! 15 for 16!
Have you checked with the NCAA? They own the trademark to elite 8 and sweet 16.
Actually, their trademark application is for “NCAA Sweet 16″ (and sixteen) and “NCAA Elite 8″ (and eight).
WOO! 15 for 16! Verizon disappoints me yet again by being awful and NOT winning :-p
Wells Fargo is the worst and they still lost to Citi Bank… If Citi is really worst than WF, I’m not sure how they function every day.
Citi has been reasonably competent in servicing my mortgage (and credit card, but I rarely use that). I really don’t have much of a beef with them. Wells Fargo I have no dealings with.
I’m really sad Chase didn’t make it. Maybe next year….
I’m actually surprised Walmart beat out Kmart/Sears. I really think Sears is the worse company!
Must say I disagree on the EA/Sony and the AT&T/Verizon result, but other than that, I was spot on about the others.
I’m glad GameStop made it to the second round (finally) but they never beat Wal-Mart…. bigger audience I guess.
I see a Comcast vs BofA finals.
From my initial guesses, I only got 2 wrong (WalMart & EA). This only changes my next round selection to make WalMart, not Sears, win over GameStop, but they will lose to PayPal in the following round. There is no way EA is worse than BestBuy, and I don’t know how they won over Sony, so that part of my bracket is still intact. I can’t wait till next Tuesday when I get to see how well I did in this round.
I have a hard time believing anyone can have a chance against BoA. Might as well start engraving the golden poo now.
I’m glad Microsoft was never in the tournament as it had in previous years. Apple shouldn’t be in it either. They’re just there for the anti-fanboys. And anti-fanboys are every bit as annoying as fanboys.
Apple? The Post Office? Do any of you actually ever deal with either company?
I deal with the Post Office 6 days a week. At least once a week, I have to take the misdelivered mail that I received to my neighbors and they bring me mine. This has been the biggest factor in my move toward paperless billing.
So, yeah, they got my vote.
The Best Buy vs EA match is going to be a good one.
My predictions:
BofA vs. Citibank – BofA
Spirit vs. TicketMaster – Ticketmaster
Paypal vs. Charter – Paypal
Gamestop vs. Walmart – Walmart
AT&T vs Apple – AT&T
Facebook vs. USPS – USPS
Comcast vs. DirecTV – Comcast
EA vs. Best Buy – Best Buy
I’m cool with this. My only issue is Sony shoulda beat EA. I’d put Sony at number 2, right behind Apple. But EA is a horrific company as well, so its all good.
I got all but 2 right. I messed up on EA Vs Sony and Dish Vs DirectTV
-I thought Sony would win because of the hacking and terrible way they handled it.
-I’ve never used Satellite so I don’t know much about either company. I heard of DirectTV more.
Is it just me or is this a fairly uninspired group? I have a hard time hating any of them (except Best Buy) enough to vote.
Okay people how in the hell do you put ticketmaster above Sallie Mae? People committ suicide over the crap Sallie Mae does.
Please fire whoever did the matchups. With the exception of Comcast vs DirecTV and EA vs Best Buy I know exactly how this round is going to go. It’s going to be Bank of America, Ticketmaster, Paypal, Walmart, AT&T, Facebook, ?, ?.