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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?

Nemo ,

Coke. Assassinating union leaders is not something I can stomache.

ClassifiedPancake ,
  • Nestle (not easy because the branding is not always obvious, but once you have it memorized it’s no problem)
  • Tesla (easy because the cars are shit anyways)
  • Müller (German dairy product company that has close ties to the fascist party AfD. Relatively easy but they do have some subbrands that are not obvious)
Tagger ,

I don’t want to ask this, excuse I like my yoghurt, but can you tell me more about the Muller-AfD link?

ClassifiedPancake , (edited )

The CEO is regularly meeting with Alice Weidel (one of the lead members) and says openly that he is interested in her party’s political views.

corroded ,

Apple.

I refuse to pay a premium for locked-down proprietary hardware solely because it looks more visually pleasing than an alternative that performs better.

hperrin ,

I avoid Nemix RAM, because the first time I bought a bunch of sticks from them, they had an 18% failure rate. I paid to ship the bad sticks back, and they sent me more bad sticks. Nemix said they worked fine, so I sent them the Memtest screenshot with all the errors. They didn’t want to pay shipping to replace them again, so I just returned them and got some Micron RAM, and it’s been working perfectly.

Supervisor194 ,
@Supervisor194@lemmy.world avatar

Dollar, Hertz and Thrifty car rental. Also Budget, but for different reasons.

Never use Dollar, Hertz or Thrifty under any circumstances unless you want to be fucked. Never prepay with Budget unless you want to be fucked.

__init__ ,

Can confirm, got fucked by Hertz last time I rented a car. Who’s your go to?

Supervisor194 ,
@Supervisor194@lemmy.world avatar

I truly do not know. I was using Budget, my truck was in the shop and two days’ rental was going to be $142. Two hours after reserving it my mechanic tells me he’s going to have me done today - so I cancel the reservation.

Because I chose “pay now” rather than “pay later”, I’m charged a $150 cancellation fee on a $142 rental (the fee posted on the website - $50 - is not for “prepaid” “same day” cancellations - not that the website told me this anywhere obvious, of course).

So I literally would have done better financially to drive the fucking thing around for two days for no good reason.

Protesting to customer service gets me a resounding “go fuck yourself.”

I’m now open to suggestions, I was using Budget because they had the best prices of what remained to me, but never again.

__init__ ,

Damn. I’d have tried a chargeback, especially if their site is incorrect or misleading (idk how recently this was). It’s damn near impossible to see who actually has the best prices because you can’t tell what anything really costs until they tack on all the horse shit fees after returning the car.

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.

Tagger ,

Tony’s Chocolate …

Someonelol ,
@Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

The saying “there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism” is pretty true for most of us right now. The oligopoly we have going on makes it extremely difficult to consistently do the right thing. The only real way forward is to regulate the shit out of these products. If only we had another Upton Sinclair to scare the general populace into giving enough of a shit to demand unilateral action.

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 ,
@Mothra@mander.xyz avatar

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.

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