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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?

ssm ,

Ugh god… Tech brands, off the top of my head:

  • Asus (Scammers)
  • Lenovo (Fuck lenovobios, bad hardware quality past 2010 or so)
  • Sager (Scammed me by selling a laptop with too high power draw that resulted in crashes)
  • Microsoft (Mega spyware corp, bad software, worst OS on the planet)
  • Apple (Likely spyware corp, Bad locked down devices, anti right to repair, overpriced)
  • Google (Biggest Baddest spyware company, monopoly on many platforms)
  • Nvidia (Extremely hostile to open source, will likely never work on OpenBSD unless Nvidia seriously changes their stance; even then there’s so much bad faith at this point I wouldn’t trust them)
  • Meta/Facebook (Mega spyware corp, zuck is a lizard)
  • Tesla (Loudest most-punchable most-hatable fascist at the helm, employees caught spying on users through interior cams)
  • All major phone manufacturers (Android sucks, iOS sucks harder)
  • Pine64 (Charging circuit is software controlled for some insane reason, supports Manjaro)
  • All major smart TVs (spyware, always-on microphones, locked down OS with ad-ridden clients)

Okay companies:

  • Valve (Still hosts a shitty DRM platform, but it’s the best one; only listing because the Steam Deck is awesome)
  • Framework (Pro user repair, good hardware, no complaints; look forward to RISC-V board)
kowcop ,

Honestly… Google Play… someone re-gifted my son a $20 Google Play card a few years ago, and I tried to buy something for him and realised the card was about 2weeks out of date, and after about 10 back and forwards with support, they wouldn’t honour it… a trillion dollar company. I get it, but their cold indifference just seemed mean

CaptainBasculin ,

EA got my account stolen with 1200+ hours of playtime via fraudulent support tickets. That’s why, I am not touching anything EA’s involved with ever when they absolutely suck at account security.

xilliah ,

Whatsapp is difficult for me to avoid, but I’ve been pulling it off for years now.

Honestly here in the NL it’s almost as if people see it as some sort of government institution. We have neighborhood watches on there and they openly display the logo as a form of security measure. Honestly it’s kinda creepy that that kinda stuff flows through their opaque servers and software.

I’d prefer an open and distributed protocol, with the largest node being government run. You can’t avoid such large nodes, so it’s better if they are run by a centralized democratic system. Aka @gmail.com, Lemmy.ml, mastadon.social (did I get that right?)

Tak ,
@Tak@lemmy.ml avatar

This is always so shocking to me as an American where not many people use Whatsapp. I wouldn’t doubt if snapchat is more common than Whatsapp in the states.

grue ,

Sony, for all sort of reasons (the rootkit and other DRM, pushing proprietary formats like MemoryStick and ATRAC3, removing OtherOS (a.k.a. Linux) support from the Playstation, etc.).

Blizzard, because of Freecraft and BNetD (I was boycotting them long before they merged with Activision).

Ideally, I would boycott Nestle and the other abusive agri-conglomerates, but honestly probably a lot of their products slip through because (a) it’s hard to tell what’s made by who because of all the subsidiary brands, and (b) with all the consolidation, pretty much everything is made by some shitty megacorp these days. I mean yeah, if I eschewed normal chain stores entirely and tried to buy everything from local small businesses or something then I guess I could avoid them, but ain’t nobody got time (or money!) for that.

BroChiMinh ,

Nestlé, Amazon, Coca Cola, Mars & its associates, Mondelez (“Kraft” for the 'muricans). I try to avoid basically any corporation greedy enough to go against human rights in the name of profits.

prex ,

But where will you get your super processed food?

kenkenken ,
@kenkenken@sh.itjust.works avatar
  1. Apple
  2. Meta (but actually it effectively avoids me, I not much avoid it)
  3. Nazi states (the new axis powers) affiliated brands when I can, especially for the tech companies.

If you avoid Pepsi, for example, what do you turn to instead?

Tea, probably.

BassTurd ,

Broadcom

Sorse ,
@Sorse@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

As a 2017 MacBook Pro user running Linux on it, I agree 100%

Ephera ,

I mean, lots of them. But I have a personal vendetta against Amazon. I worked at two companies for a few months, which supplied to Amazon among others, and it was just ridiculous how similar and bad their experiences with Amazon were.

At both companies, whenever we had to stock a delivery to Amazon, we had to use these brand-new pallets, which looked like you could break a toothpick out of them and it’d be sanitary.

Why did we not use old pallets? Because even though Amazon demands all the products to be packaged individually (so they can send them out to customers directly), if even just a handful of the packages get damaged during transport, they will send the whole truck load back at your cost.

And the asshats would take our brand-new pallets, then send back old-ass pallets, which we were then forced to use for all our non-shit customers.

No one at these companies wanted to work with Amazon. It was just that a significant amount of orders came from there, because of people like you and me using Amazon. So, I decided to not do that.

xilliah ,

Do you have a recommendation for me as an online shopper?

Ephera ,

During the pandemic, lots of offline shops built up a web shop, so that’s where I order most stuff. Often enough, just opening up a map and looking at the shops near you, can already give you an idea. I’ll also just do web searches for a product and see if any specialty, offline-first or manufacturer shops show up.

What also often works, is to look on big aggregator platforms like Amazon, Ebay, Etsy etc., but when you’ve found a product, then look if that brand/manufacturer has an own web store, or again via web search, if there’s any other smaller stores also selling that same product. If you do that a few times, you’ll usually find decent stores where it’s worth looking at their other products, too.

That’s kind of also what I actually like about doing this: Anyone can sell any crap or scam on Amazon et al and since you can’t look at it for real, it’s difficult to tell what’s garbage and what’s not.
These specialty/offline-first/manufacturer shops usually have a reputation/customers to lose, so they generally only sell stuff with a minimum of quality.

Also, if you order multiple products, you don’t get a bazillion different packages delivered, but often rather just one, with all products combined.

Nemo ,

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

black0ut ,
@black0ut@pawb.social avatar

CocaCola did what?? Why didn’t I know that? Guess I’m a pepsi guy now, wow.

ClassifiedPancake , (edited )
  • 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 (Luxembourg dairy product company that has close ties to the German 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 owner of the company is regularly meeting with Alice Weidel (one of the lead members) and says openly that he is interested in her party’s political views.

Tagger ,

Well, I can live without yoghurt

xilliah ,

I’ve been boycotting muller for a while kow because they had the most obnoxious ad imaginable and this was before I couldn’t take it any more and went for blockers.

Although I must admit part of me hopes that if we ever do go full cyberpunk that there will be a huge müller pyramid full of cows.

1000012897

FriedRice ,

Do you have a link to the story about Müller and connection to AFD, im asking because i didnt know that.

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.

witty_username ,

My work forced a recent macbook pro on me. One of those with the ARM chip.
I am in awe of the quality of that macbook.

Tak ,
@Tak@lemmy.ml avatar

It’s certainly one of those things where I love to hate on Apple but some things they do, they do very well.

0_0j ,
@0_0j@lemmy.world avatar

Exactamundo! That’s why snapdragon is playing catch-up LOL

neo2478 ,

Tell that to my 2014 MacBook Pro that is still going strong. I can do CAD and video editing and the thing still performs fine. Battery life decreased a bit but still lasts way more than enough.

and the new Apple chip ones are also ridiculous. I have one for work, and was able to leave my computer closed in my backpack for several hour running code training an ML model. The thing did not even get warm and the battery went down by 2% only.

That being said, I think the best computer is the one that works for YOU. In my previous job I was forced to use windows and boy did I suffer! Even Office felt clunkier on windows than Mac.

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

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