Companies you don't like to buy from, and why

[DB]

Yes indeed. If you haven't already found it, the YouTube channel run by Louis Rossmann of Rossmann Repair Group might be of interest to you.

Louis Rossmann

I teach Macbook component level logic board repair from a common sense, everyman's perspective. I try to make it seem viable, and entertaining. I also go ove...

www.youtube.com

Aye, aware of it - component level repairs of that sort of circuitry is a bit beyond my soldering skills!

Main point is though that in most laptops the Storage can easily be replaced, along with the RAM (although some have followed Apple's lead on this). Apple laptops are also designed to be exxceptionally difficult to dismantle without damage. I can replace the battery in pretty much any Dell laptop in about five minutes with a small phillips screwdriver. With Apple, proprietary screws, glue, and other general awkwardness makes this ridiclously difficult.

 

[Tetchytyke]

From another thread, but...

Other than six quid, I could never tell the difference between WCPC and Ginsters, owned by the same company. And I'd rather lick the contents of my cat's litter tray than eat a Ginsters pasty- there's probably more meat in the litter tray too.

My wife, who is Cornish, grew up in the Tamar Valley, and used to work at the Ginsters factory, considers the very mention of "Mingsters" to be swearing

 

[61653 HTAFC]

From another thread, but...

I note that Gregg's was mentioned in the preceding posts, and they're my nomination. Vile pastries which are lukewarm if you're lucky, and a business model that follows the Starbucks "Crowd out the competition" tactic but at least Starbucks' product is decent quality if rather expensive.

 

[C J Snarzell]

They openly despise each other. Goes back to when Ashley asked for a meeting with Whelan about opening stores in the north selling football shirts and Whelan said “there’s a club up here, son, and you’re not in it”.

That's Whelan all over - he hates healthy competition and is totally selfish, arrogant, obnoxious and devious. Mind you, that's the personality trait of a lot of professional footballers who go on a power trip with the fame & fortune. Wayne Rooney is an example - although he's not got the intellect to launch a business career.

CJ

 

[Bletchleyite]

And it's extremely difficult to repair. The computers are the worst - even replacing a laptop battery is a load of hassle, and all the major components are soldered to the motherboard so if any of them fail it's probably a write-off due to the sky-high repair costs and their strict control of who can buy parts. For a number of years the laptops also had the most flimsy, fault-prone and unrepairable keyboards I've ever come across.

The primary reason is the utterly extortionate price.

 

[37424]

Mr Dyson and Mr Ineos. Both Brexit supporters that are not being overly supportive of the UK of late with Mr Ineos (Jim Ratcliffe) moving to Monaco and deciding to build his updated Defender in France instead of Wales. Always strikes me a Strange business decision to take a stance on Brexit because your just going to alienate roughly half your customer base one way or the other. Now maybe you can argue they are doing what's best for their business and best for themselves but if your a Brexit supporter and you do something which look's negative for the UK it certainly doesn't look very good.

Mr Weatherspoon not only a Brexit Supporter but also appears to be in the nasty man category along with Mike Ashley.

Curry/PC World. Poor customer service, I would certainly never use them to buy computer equipment or TV's I did by a cooker of them recently and they were OK but then fortunately I haven't had any problems with the cooker.

 

[birchesgreen]

I find they last, my Macbook is still fine after 8 years of daily use. I've only replaced it as its too slow for Photoshop now.

Now Google hardware i am not so enamoured with and probably wouldn't buy again.

 

[BBF3]

Amazon and Wetherspoons for the reasons outlined by others above.

Amazon I will use as the absolute last resort if it's something I really want and I really can't get it elsewhere.

Wetherspoons used to be last resort but the Brexit propaganda and treatment of his staff during lockdown were the final straw. I hadn't been in a Wetherspoons ages before anyway but I'm not setting foot in one again.

 

[xotGD]

I note that Gregg's was mentioned in the preceding posts, and they're my nomination. Vile pastries which are lukewarm if you're lucky, and a business model that follows the Starbucks "Crowd out the competition" tactic but at least Starbucks' product is decent quality if rather expensive.

Remember the 'pasty tax'? You don't pay VAT on a Greggs takeaway as it is not heated food - if your pasty is hot this is because it has come straight out of the oven. You'd have to pay 20% more for a guaranteed hot pasty. Food of the gods in my eyes anyway!

 

[OuterDistant]

Despite having an Amazon account since 1999, I only use it now to break the back of Christmas shopping each year.

I buy virtually everything online these days, but mainly from small businesses via eBay. Amazon has fallen out of favour because of:

• Their dubious labour practices
• Questionable tax status
• Use of dark UX patterns to trick you into having Prime / their credit card / etc.
• Their search results being clogged up with crap from dodgy third party sellers

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Remember the 'pasty tax'? You don't pay VAT on a Greggs takeaway as it is not heated food - if your pasty is hot this is because it has come straight out of the oven. You'd have to pay 20% more for a guaranteed hot pasty. Food of the gods in my eyes anyway!

My experience of Greggs is that even before the "pasty tax" the temperature of any item from there was ambient at best. Meanwhile Pound Bakery could sell me TWO piping hot pasties which were far tastier, for a quid.

Greggs has been absolute **** for as long as I can remember. I'm convinced it only exists to provide (barely) edible pacifiers for overweight toddlers.

 

[DB]

I find they last, my Macbook is still fine after 8 years of daily use. I've only replaced it as its too slow for Photoshop now.

They used to last - Apple used to make decent (if expensive) laptops which used standard largely standard components and were straightforward to repair. Over the past few years theyv'e gone more and more down the route of proprietary, flimsy and difficult to repair.

 

[birchesgreen]

They used to last - Apple used to make decent (if expensive) laptops which used standard largely standard components and were straightforward to repair. Over the past few years theyv'e gone more and more down the route of proprietary, flimsy and difficult to repair.

Yes i've heard about some recent woes, can't be worse than the brand new HP laptop i was given for WFH in March though thats already falling apart!

My new mac is a mini though so the laptop issues won't affect me there...

 

[DB]

My new mac is a mini though so the laptop issues won't affect me there...

Some of them apply, although not to the same extent as with laptops.

 

[D841 Roebuck]

I refuse to knowingly buy anything from the USA, due to its Neo-Nazi government. This includes going to Aldi or Lidl, rather than the Walmart subsidiary Asda.

On the other hand, and having regard to what friends of mine who work there have said (despite the headlines, Tim Martin paid his furloughed staff based on the average hours they actually previously worked rather than what their contract stated) I'm happy to continue to use J D Wetherspoons.

I will not, however, download the "NHS" track and trace app, since it is not an NHS product, and produced by a company I have no confidence in to wire a plug correctly. I don't want Malware on my Huawei...

 

[Bletchleyite]

I also know someone who works at 'Spoons and he said the news articles weren't entirely true either, and he was happy with what they did.

 

[nlogax]

I refuse to knowingly buy anything from the USA, due to its Neo-Nazi government. This includes going to Aldi or Lidl, rather than the Walmart subsidiary Asda.

Refusing to buy from companies because of bad government is problematic. Almost every government screws up, has a level of corruption or has major problems. Have you seen the state of the British government in recent years? If we applied that standard to every company outside of the US we'd be living off twigs and berries and generating our own electricity with homemade exercise bikes.

I will not, however, download the "NHS" track and trace app, since it is not an NHS product, and produced by a company I have no confidence in to wire a plug correctly. I don't want Malware on my Huawei...

It is the NHS (specifically NHSX, their new digital transformation arm) who developed the app, in conjunction with an existing Apple / Google framework designed to maintain compatibility with a large majority of the world's Android and iOS-based devices. If you really wanted to be consistent re. aligning your produce purchases to the standards of the home government of the manufacturer then I suggest you send your phone off to be recycled.

 

[WelshBluebird]

I refuse to knowingly buy anything from the USA, due to its Neo-Nazi government. This includes going to Aldi or Lidl, rather than the Walmart subsidiary Asda.

I mean good luck with that! I wonder what OS you are using to type that reply!

On the other hand, and having regard to what friends of mine who work there have said (despite the headlines, Tim Martin paid his furloughed staff based on the average hours they actually previously worked rather than what their contract stated) I'm happy to continue to use J D Wetherspoons.

It was a little more complex than that (my partner works for them). Yes they were furloughed but initially they were told they would not be paid a penny until Spoons got the money from the government and were told they could get another job if they needed to because of that. That could have meant several weeks or longer without getting paid. You are right that they were furloughed rather than sacked though and a lot of the public reaction was misinformed. However that very same misinformed public reaction meant that the staff did end up getting paid weekly as they should have been rather than whenever Spoons got the money from the government - so it still meant that staff got treated better than what they otherwise would have been.

In terms of what Spoons are generally like as an employer, from my partners experience, ignoring the whole Brexit mess, it basically depends on the pub manager. Some are great, some are awful. At the one she works at - it is common to not know the rota much more than a few days before the week it is for (despite official policy being 2 weeks in advance) and even then it isn't unheard of for some changes to be made during the week without people being made aware leading to some to miss shifts they didn't even know they were due to work!

I will not, however, download the "NHS" track and trace app, since it is not an NHS product, and produced by a company I have no confidence in to wire a plug correctly. I don't want Malware on my Huawei...

I appreciate that some people don't want to download the app - however to label it malware is just 100% false.
Add to that what nlogax above has said about its development, and the fact the app is open source so you can look at the code yourself if you are so inclined (or people like myself who code for a living can look at it if you are not technically competent enough to).

 

[Tetchytyke]

Always strikes me a Strange business decision to take a stance on Brexit because your just going to alienate roughly half your customer base one way or the other.

Given that multi-billionaire Jim Ratcliffe shafted his staff at Grangemouth out of their pensions, I don't think he cares about anyone but himself. He strikes me as a bit of a sociopath, to be quite honest.

Funnily enough that's one social injustice that Lewis Hamilton has been very quiet about.

I can't ever imagine having cause to buy anything from Ineos, but I was delighted to see Team Ineos bomb so badly at the Tour de France.

 

[SteveM70]

Funnily enough that's one social injustice that Lewis Hamilton has been very quiet about.

I find it hard to take lectures - however worthy the theme - from a tax exile who appeared on Children In Need asking us to donate.

 

[37424]

Given that multi-billionaire Jim Ratcliffe shafted his staff at Grangemouth out of their pensions, I don't think he cares about anyone but himself. He strikes me as a bit of a sociopath, to be quite honest.

Funnily enough that's one social injustice that Lewis Hamilton has been very quiet about.

I can't ever imagine having cause to buy anything from Ineos, but I was delighted to see Team Ineos bomb so badly at the Tour de France.

Given his main business you would unlikely to be an end user of his products anyway but there are probably in some products you buy.

Obviously his foray into SUV manufacture the customers will be with end users, whether shifting manufacture to France will have any impact remains to be seen, although we are fairly unpatriotic when come to buying British goods,

A lot of people don't really care about what the person at the top is like, I'm always of the view that most very successful Business people are extremely ruthless people until proved otherwise

I think to be fair to Hamilton F1 teams have a multitude of sponsors and you could probably find some reason not to drive for all of them if you wanted to and I doubt he has much influence on who the sponsors are.

 

[Tetchytyke]

I'm always of the view that most very successful Business people are extremely ruthless people until proved otherwise

Nobody got to be a multi-billionaire by being cuddly. But even in that field Ratcliffe appears to be particularly unpleasant. Even leaving aside the Br*xit hypocrisy he seems particularly unpleasant. I'm sure he couldn't care less.

 

[NorthOxonian]

I also know someone who works at 'Spoons and he said the news articles weren't entirely true either, and he was happy with what they did.

Yes, that's very much the impression I got from the people I know who work there. Having said that, I completely understand the political objections to the place - unusually for this forum I'm firmly pro-Brexit, but even I find the constant propaganda a bit grating!

 

[SteveM70]

Obviously his foray into SUV manufacture the customers will be with end users, whether shifting manufacture to France will have any impact remains to be seen, although we are fairly unpatriotic when come to buying British goods, and a lot of people don't really care about what the person at the top is like, I'm always of the view that most very successful are extremely ruthless people until proved otherwise

Even leaving aside the Br*xit hypocrisy he seems particularly unpleasant.

It also seems pretty hypocritical to bugger off into tax exile and then draw heavily on “Britishness” for the name and branding of his car

 

[87electric]

Somebody mentioned NPOWER a few days ago. I shiver when I hear that name. An 18 month battle ensued after I was given a quarterly utility bill estimate at £1500. I mean, c'mon, for a quarter? I live on my own. Eventually after itemising every kilowatt for them they conceded defeat and realised the account was someone else's. No apology after bailiff and court threats either.

 

[squizzler]

Maybe not relevant the thread, because you don't actually buy from them (you sell your soul to them, and cheaply at that), but I nominate Mark Zuckerbergs crummy website. I left facebook in Spring 2018 in favour of a proper Social Network - Railforums UK. The only problem is that I have subsequently joined clubs who think Whats App is an acceptable instant messenger for mobiles - it isn't, use Signal instead, given the chance.

I also try to avoid Geoff Bezos' mail order outfit. If there ever were a better candidate for nationalisation and being run for the benefit of everybody, name it.

Apple stuff is so nice and their software is so user freindly, but this is soured somewhat by the firm turning itself from maker of the best microcomputers into just another silicon valley robber baron.

 

[py_megapixel]

I left facebook in Spring 2018 in favour of a proper Social Network - Railforums UK.

Never used Facebook myself. I find their business model to be rather repulsive.
In what I would probably consider an act of minor hypocrisy, I do use Google's web services where no viable alternative exists (i.e. smartphones, video sharing, and various other things like that) but I generally prefer to avoid them where I can - for example, I use the Firefox browser rather than Chrome.

 

[Darandio]

I will not, however, download the "NHS" track and trace app, since it is not an NHS product, and produced by a company I have no confidence in to wire a plug correctly. I don't want Malware on my Huawei...

I wondered what that ground rumble was this morning, I thought it was an earthquake but it turns out the irony meter exploded.

"I don't want Malware on my Huawei..."

 

[Tetchytyke]

It also seems pretty hypocritical to bugger off into tax exile and then draw heavily on “Britishness” for the name and branding of his car

He loves Britain so much he lives in Monte Carlo

I generally prefer to avoid them where I can - for example, I use the Firefox browser rather than Chrome.

In terms of operating systems they're all bad, but I always think Google are a bit more honest than Apple. I do use Firefox and DuckDuckGo mind.

I do use Facebook. The trouble with such a dominant organisation is that they have the data anyway, at least this way I get some control on it. I abandoned Twitter a couple of years ago because it is basically just a breeding ground for Nazis.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Apple stuff is so nice and their software is so user freindly, but this is soured somewhat by the firm turning itself from maker of the best microcomputers into just another silicon valley robber baron.

I'm no great fan of MacOS, it's old-fashioned and clunky to use. But iOS/iPadOS are decent and so is the hardware. The fundamental issue with Apple kit is that all of it is priced about a third higher than it should be. Maybe we need an AppleCard to knock that back off?