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Why are some companies hated? The answer often depends on who is asking. Corporations can anger their customers, fail their shareholders, and mistreat their employees.
24/7 Wall St. analyzed each of these angles to pick the 10 most hated companies in America.
Nothing harms the long-term reputation of a company on Wall St. more than a steep, and often unexpected drop in its share value, particularly one that offers almost no chance of recovery. The stock prices of several companies on this list lost most of their value as they posted high double digits declines. In all of these cases this means a loss of billions of dollars in market capitalization.
This has certainly happened at Nokia Corp., which has been swamped by competition from Apple Inc. and Samsung. It also happened at Hewlett-Packard Co., which has been losing money for several quarters and continues to give up market share in the PC industry where it held the No.1 spot globally until recently.
Many of the most hated companies have millions of customers and tens of thousands of workers. With this kind of reach, keeping employees happy is crucial to more than just good office morale. Poor job satisfaction regularly results in low customer satisfaction.
One way to ensure low worker morale is by mass layoffs, which many of the companies on this list also have in common. American Airlines is one example. The airline, which has laid off many employees, has very unhappy workers, according to company and employee rating site Glassdoor. The bankrupt airline was also rated by airline consumer interests website Airfarewatchdog.com as having the rudest workers in the industry.
Many of the most hated companies botched product or service launches. Failures include the new layout and pricing of J.C. Penney Co. Inc. stores and the series of failed product releases by Nokia. As many of the problems at these companies are dependent, such failures hurt revenue, which in turn force management to cut costs — often by way of layoffs.
Several organizations might have made this list, but have had too many good things go their way in recent months. This includes Netflix Inc., which made our list last year. Several bad decisions that hurt the company’s public relations in 2011, such as the increase in streaming fees, are well in the past. After a sharp drop in 2011, shares are finally recovering and are up more than 30% in the past three months.
It is worth noting that some of the companies on the list may have done very poorly by some measures but well by others. A few of the most hated companies have had good stock performances. Others may have satisfied customers. All of this was taken into account when the decisions for the final list were made.
24/7 Wall St. editors reviewed a variety of metrics measuring customer satisfaction, stock performance, and employee satisfaction. This included total return to shareholders compared to the broader market and other companies in the same sector in the last year. We considered customer data from a number of sources, including Consumer Reports, the MSN Money/Zogby customer satisfaction poll, ForeSee’s Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction Index, and the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index. We also included employee satisfaction based on worker opinion scores recorded by Glassdoor. Finally, we considered management decisions made in the past year that hurt company image and brand value from marketing research firms BrandZ and Interbrand.
1. JCPenney
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J.C. Penney went from being a mediocre national retailer with modest challenges to one of the great public company management disasters of the last few years.
Former Apple retail chief Ron Johnson joined as CEO in November 2011, and promptly decided to radically change the chain’s pricing policy. The negative reaction was immediate. Sales fell 20% in the first full quarter after Johnson began to implement his plans, and the company continued to lose sales at a rapid rate.
Customers defected in droves as a sign of their dissatisfaction with the new retail model laid out by Johnson. And with its stock falling more than 40% since Johnson joined, shareholder are also livid with the company, which has also completely eliminated its dividend. Durban Capital’s retail analyst Steve Kernkraut recently said, “It’s been a disaster, and it probably will continue to be a disaster. They’ve made every misstep you could imagine.”
2. Dish Network
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Dish’s remarkably poor customer service ratings show up in more than one survey. Customers knock its record in both the ACSI and in the MSN Money/Zogby poll. In the latter, it makes the “hall of shame” as one of the 10 worst-rated companies. Dish further alienated itself from its customers last May when it dropped several channels, including AMC.
Among the shows that went off the satellite service were the highly popular “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad.”
Employee ratings of their experiences at the company are as terrible of those of its customers. In a recent BusinessWeek story titled “The Meanest Company in America,” former and current employees called the environment created by the company’s founder as a “culture of condescension and distrust.” Glassdoor’s employee rating for Dish is among the worst in its entire survey that covers thousands of companies. Dish recently made an offer to buy broadband provider Clearwire, which would expand the satellite TV company’s broadband presence.
3. T-Mobile USA
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Last year, plans were in the works for AT&T Inc. to buy the U.S. branch of this struggling wireless carrier from its parent company, Deutsche Telekom. In December, AT&T cancelled those plans after the Justice Department sued to block the acquisition, saying the deal would “substantially lessen competition” in the industry.
It appears that Deutsche Telekom is is now stuck with what is increasingly becoming the black sheep of the big four U.S. carriers. T-Mobile’s 4G network in the U.S. lags the other three carriers, and customer satisfaction is tied with AT&T mobility as the worst among wireless carriers, according to the ACSI. T-Mobile also rated as one of the worst in customer service according to MSN/Zogby’s annual poll.
T-Mobile plans to improve its position through a marriage with smaller wireless company MetroPCS. It also plans to finally offer its customers the iconic iPhone. The fact of the matter is that these changes may be too little, too late. The company had an extraordinary net loss of 1,558,000 subscribers in the first three quarters of last year, out of the roughly 33 million it had at the end of 2011. During the same time, AT&T and Verizon Wireless continued to gain customers.
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