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What's your list of banned brands?

What brands do you avoid at all cost? I don’t keep up with the news all that much, and many of the reasons to avoid something don’t make it there anyway. So I’m asking here to make a big list of things to avoid. It could be anything from bad security practices to really frustrating packaging. Working as a cashier myself, I definitely know there are plenty of brands I avoid purely on the basis that their product is a pain to stock.

On the flip side, what’s the alternative? If you avoid Pepsi, for example, what do you turn to instead?

DirigibleProtein ,

Crowdstrike
Microsoft

marketsnodsbury ,

Walmart and Sam’s Club.

You know you’re probably dealing with the baddies when the Criticism and Controversy section of your main article on Wikipedia grows to the point where it links to another Criticism of Walmart main article.

pr06lefs ,

Tesla. Elon is proving to be a consummate billionaire scumbag and I don’t want to be associated with him.

andrewta ,

Hyundai . i will never buy another one again. ever.

seats are hard as rocks. they break down way to fast. the rear view mirror is set way to low in the window creating a safety hazard for looking forward. it needs to be set much higher on the window. (so i have to look up a little to see the mirror… so f’ing what?!) get the damned thing higher so it doesn’t block my view when i try to look front and right of the car.

that’s just a few of my annoyances with that car. i’m done with that company.

Hugh_Jeggs ,

☝️Note - only applicable in North America

They have virtually zero consumer protection laws so companies can get away with selling utter crap at inflated prices, and so obviously, they do.

Samsung home appliances, Hyundai and Kia cars, TVs with adverts built in (lol) are just a couple of examples of good quality products that have specific models that they only sell in the US because they can get away with it

Perfectly fine to buy them elsewhere

i_stole_ur_taco ,

I gave up trying to maintain a principled list of companies because globalization and supply chains make it too hard to really find a single asshole.

Your chocolate was picked by slaves. Your clothes were almost certainly made by exploited workers. Does that toy have a lithium ion battery? You’re not going to like how many of the raw materials were extracted. The name of the company on the sticker of the shit you bought is just a small piece of the rot.

dan ,
@dan@upvote.au avatar

Any brands that make devices that plug into mains power that aren’t UL or ETL certified. I’ve seen way too many cases where people buy generic smart switches with no certification and they trip the circuit breaker or catch fire due to poor quality construction. Certification isn’t perfect, but it’s way better than products not being certified.

SethranKada OP ,
@SethranKada@lemmy.ca avatar

I don’t think I’ve ever checked, but I can get behind that. I’d rather not die because a company decided to cut corners.

Know_not_Scotty_does ,

The awesome thing is that those marks can be counterfeit and you only know by looking up the number.

dan ,
@dan@upvote.au avatar

Oh yeah, that’s the other thing I forgot to mention. Make sure the mark is legit.

In general, branded products that are an actual brand (not some Amazon special) and have good reviews should be okay.

dan , (edited )
@dan@upvote.au avatar

This might be an unpopular opinion but I avoid Western Digital hard drives after their two recent issues:

  • In 2020, they silently started selling SMR (shingled magnetic recording) drives as NAS drives, without labeling them as such, even though they’re not appropriate for use in a NAS. They can get very slow and cause issues during RAID rebuilds. tomshardware.com/…/wd-fesses-up-some-red-hdds-use…
  • In 2023, they started flagging drives with a warning just because they had been powered on for three years (26,280 hours), even if all the SMART data was fine. The “fix” was updating systems like Synology to totally ignore WD’s alerting (WDDA) and only use SMART. I think the warnings are still present, but NAS software just ignores them now. arstechnica.com/…/clearly-predatory-western-digit…

Both were intentional changes to try and increase profits.

I’m using Seagate Exos drives, which are the same price or even cheaper than WD Red Pro drives, when on sale.

SethranKada OP ,
@SethranKada@lemmy.ca avatar

Huh, I didn’t know about that. I only bought mine because they were the only ones the store offered, but I guess I’ll try to find another brand when it comes time to replace them. I’ve been meaning to get a new NAS sometime anyway, so that’s a good excuse as any to do so.

dan , (edited )
@dan@upvote.au avatar

Their drives are good quality and work well. I just don’t want to give them any money after they intentionally misled customers :)

I’m in the USA and bought two brand new Seagate Exos “X20” 20TB drives for around $250 each last year. One from Newegg and one from ServerPartDeals. Normal price is over $350, but I’m sure they’ll be on sale again at some point.

Mothra ,

McDonald’s.

I’m not much into fast food but if I’m craving a burger and chips I’ll get it from a pub.

KittenBiscuits , (edited )

Jimmy John’s

The owner has been photographed with big game “trophies” of elephants and a leopard.

TW: deceased animals

Snopes fact check: true

This guy pisses me off so much. Hunting like this (where it’s private land, the staff do all the work of finding you a prize, & they basically point you at the endangered animal when it’s time to pull the trigger) is so obscene, grotesque, unnecessary, and self-fellating. Fuck this dude in particular.

SethranKada OP ,
@SethranKada@lemmy.ca avatar

Completely inexcusable. How people can get away with this kind of behaviour is beyond me.

punkcoder ,
@punkcoder@lemmy.world avatar

chik-fil-a…

SethranKada OP ,
@SethranKada@lemmy.ca avatar

Huh, haven’t heard that one before. What did they do?

I’ve never been to one, so continuing that isn’t much of a bother to me anyway

Chozo ,

The chain's owners regularly donate to anti-LGBT organizations. They used to do it through company donations, but after being called out for it they stopped donating through the CFA corporation, but still donate privately to the same organizations.

SethranKada OP ,
@SethranKada@lemmy.ca avatar

Good enough for me, I’ll avoid them in the future.

Sterile_Technique ,
@Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world avatar

Goya

Don_Dickle ,

Late to the apparent party but Phillip Morris . They own a shitton of food and pot licences.

Zagorath ,
@Zagorath@aussie.zone avatar

Samsung. For a bunch of reasons, but I think the main starter of it was when I learnt this story.

Amazon. I don’t think I need to explain why on this site.

Obviously both of these are near impossible to avoid completely. Samsung makes the internals of far more products than they put their name on, and AWS runs a big percentage of the web. But I avoid their store, Prime, and Audible.

SethranKada OP ,
@SethranKada@lemmy.ca avatar

Completely agree on both points. I actually use a Samsung phone, and it’s been nothing but a privacy nightmare. I’m planning to switch as soon as I’ve saved up enough to afford it.

Yeah, Amazon is a mess. I personally avoid anything even tangentially related to them. I’ve noticed that they tend to be lower quality with worse privacy than the alternatives, and their only benefit is price. Even then, Audible is a ripoff on a massive scale.

Aurenkin ,

Holy shit I hadn’t heard that story, that makes my blood boil. I would have contacted my embassy and turned that shit into an international incident. Also isn’t paying for someone’s flight in and refusing to let them fly back home some kind of trafficking charge?

Anyway, I guess it’s easy for me to say because I could at worst afford to pay for my flight home in a pinch.

Vanth ,
@Vanth@reddthat.com avatar

Starbucks. Union busting. Support of Israeli government committing genocide. Bad takes on race and gender. And they burn their beans to shit.

SethranKada OP ,
@SethranKada@lemmy.ca avatar

Fair enough. I’ve never been, don’t much like coffee, and I can’t say I ever plan to go there. They don’t sound like the most pleasant of places to relax in.

pineapplelover ,

Even if you like coffee, they make absolute shit coffee. Go to a local coffee place instead. I like my Vietnamese coffee, so any Vietnamese coffee place will give me much better cup.

hal_5700X , (edited )

Gillette. Due to their toxic masculinity ad. Why are they talking about that stuff? I went to them for shaving stuff, not for a talk about toxic masculinity or whatever. The good thing about the ad. It got me into safety razors. They’re way better then cartridge razors. So thank you, Gillette. For making me stop using cheap plastic razors.

SethranKada OP ,
@SethranKada@lemmy.ca avatar

Reasonable. Personally, I never learned how to use a razor, so I just use an electric shaver. It doesn’t give as good a cut, but I’m happy to contribute to a boycott anyway.

AlligatorBlizzard ,

If it’s the ad I’m thinking of, I actually kinda liked it. But I definitely agree with you on the safety razors. Better shave and better for the planet. Don’t buy plastic cartridge razors, you’re getting ripped off and needlessly contributing to the plastic problem. Now if only I could find blades that a 100 pack didn’t mean 20 plastic 5-packs of blades, but it still is a lot less waste than a cartridge razor.

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