Worst businesses

Introduction

These are companies and online organizations who I find less-than-reputable. I should note, these are just my opinions: you may disagree (send e-mail!). These companies are blacklisted with me, because of my personal experiences with them. See below for my motivation for posting this list. See here for my Better Businesses List.

Dave’s Worst Businesses List

Company Type of company My beef with them
866Imaging Printer supplies Sold recycled cartridges claiming they were new
Amazon Online anything Refuses to honor credits on any subsidiary storefronts that are indistinguishable from the main site. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still deal with them. I’m just real unimpressed with this hiding of companies (it’s kind of like a flag of convenience for boats).
ATA Airlines (never) Airline Together with Expedia, made me purchase ticket, took months to credit it back to me. Seats significantly smaller than other airlines.
BlankCDCDR CD/DVD media Couldn’t figure out a simple request to combine two orders into a single shipment.
Cable WholeSale Electronics: switching boxes, etc. Defective merchandise, no free return
CDBaby Music CDs Very cutesy company who sold my name to the artist I bought without my permission. Shame on them. I really liked them until I got spam from the CD artist I bought from them.
Chase Manhattan bank Bank, credit card Put card on hold repeatedly because I didn’t use it enough
CrossCountyBank Credit card Took advantage of poor credit status to charge yearly fee equal to credit line
Dantz Software Very poor customer support. Makes Retrospect.
DirecTV Satellite TV Poor customer support for technical problems, poor resolution, no accountability on station removals
E-Trade Canada Online trading (Canada only) Don’t know how to cancel an account, despite repeated attempts to do so
Expedia Online flights and trips Can’t figure out how to honor electronic tickets
Fujitsu PC Computer Misrepresented features of laptops, made it difficult to return the laptop
Handspring Electronics Makes the Handspring VISOR (Palm knock-off). Shoddy, unreliable hardware, poor, abusive customer support.
Intervideo Software No upgrades or support after very short period, even when upgrade required to make it work with current OS (e.g., Windows XP). Make WinDVD, which is good software.
Ionsky Broadband ISP Where to start: no support, misrepresented service area, didn’t show up for scheduled appointments, refuse to honor their own commitments for service. Only in Boulder.
Kansas City airport Airport Smelly, old; security lines poorly organized, no amenities. Try not to fly through here if you can avoid it.
Microsoft Software Where to start: no support to speak of, expensive software with copy protection (viva linux)
Mission Security Systems Alarm systems Charged $150 to program a security code on a system.
NameScout Domain registrar No support, no accountability on domain name registration and administration.
NetGear Electronics No support, no upgrades for known hardware problems
OfficeMax Electronics Took them 2 months to credit back $1000.
OLM.net (never!!!!) Web hosting My old hosting company: they were always down, had no monitoring of their own computers (I had to always call them to tell them this site was down). Very poor technical know-how.
Providian Bank (never) Credit card Took advantage of poor credit to give me a $250 credit line that costs $250 per year. Refused to up credit line.
Qwest Phone service Screwed up long distance and billing when I moved, resulting in >$700 phone bill. Took MONTHs to get it down to actual $30 bill.
Rayne Water Softening Water conditioning Don’t show up when they say they will, don’t call when they say they will, never come equipped to do the job they’re paid for, may have actually damaged related equipment. It took 8 weeks for them to do a simple maintenance of the water softener and filter.
Real Networks Software Inferior, buggy software; jumped on the make a buck bandwagon with their new “subscription service”. Hard to find the free version anywhere on their site.
SiteTurn.com (yes, my current hosting company) Web hosting Very poor support, false advertising about capabilities of hosting plan, long lead times on straightforward questions. No 800 number available. No support of any sort available when site is down.
Sprint Long distance phone Over two moves, even when advised weeks in advance, still have not figured out how to move my long distance to a new number or address.
Tempurpedic Beds They still owe me money, can’t figure out where to send anything, took weeks to give partial refund. Their beds are good, just don’t buy them directly from the company (local prices are better anyways)
TheGPSworld.com (never!) GPS Falsely advertise in shopping.yahoo.com for better prices than they ever have (through multiple listings). It looks like their false advertising caught up with them as their site no longer works. Yeeha!
United Airlines Airline On time? Ever? Poor frequent flyer rewards (takes many more miles to get in their lounges than most airlines)
Verizon Wireless Cellular phone Shutdown business phones abruptly on weekends when nobody can rectify situation. Insist on verification of all details to recharge money into disposable phones (????!!!! Who cares where the money is from!) It’s unnecessarily difficult to use their prepaid wireless.
Viking Computer Computer Shipped whatever was lying around their office to me prior to going out of business (or failing to return all calls and e-mails). I assume they’re out of business.
www.myclub.com: especially the renowned Hee Dong, dishonest owner of kabal.com Cybersquatter Where to start: Hee Dong misrepresents constantly the current status of kabal.com. (He claims to have offers of $2500 USD for this domain; and asks me to match). I offered him $200 USD to buy the domain. He’s clearly a cybersquatter, and I won’t pay him one cent over $200 to buy the domain. In fact, for $1500 I have documented proof that he bought the domain in order to sell it and can wrestle the domain from him through an ICANN arbitration. I can’t believe his company is allowed to be a sub-registrar for domains.

Motivation

When making a purchase or business decision to go with a particular company, I find that I frequently have few datapoints to work with. Is the company reliable? Have they been screwing other customers? It is my hope that the search engines will pick up these (well-linked) pages, both to give people positive and negative feedback before they make their decisions. I am not fixed in the content of these lists, and I would like nothing better than to move some of these companies off my “Worst” list and onto my “Better” list, through their subsequent resolution of my beefs with these companies.

If this helps anyone, great… If you don’t like your name or company listed, there’s only one way to get it off the list: satisfy me (David Kabal).