Corporate Hall of Shame

This page is my left-handed tribute to companies on and off the Internet who have earned a place on my blacklist due to shady, underhanded, disreputable, uncaring and insensitive or just plain offensive and obnoxious business dealings or behavior on or off the Internet.

Offense: One of the worst of the spammers on the Internet:

Premier Services... for an absolutely riveting exposee of the shoddy and disreputable things that this company (and its principal, a woman apparently named Rodona Garst) have reputedly been involved in, go and check out this look behind the scenes at her operation. If you think for a moment that spammers are just "legitimate businesspeople" trying to earn an honest living through Internet marketing, then you owe it to yourself to learn more about this one. (Please don't forget to use the BACK button on your browser to come back here after you're done!)

Offense: Sending bulky and annoying HTML-burdened E-mail to customers instead of plain ASCII text, even after numerous nice requests to cease and desist:

beyond.com, mailings apparently sponsored by:
- xerox.com (Xerox Corp, Palo Alto CA),
- turbotax.com (Intuit, Mountain View, CA),
- wordperfect.com (Corel Corporation, Ottawa Ontario, Canada),
- avery.com (Avery Dennison, Anaheim CA),
drugstore.com,
fogdog.com,
staples.com,
iprint.com
- and their apparent advertising associate and partner in this abuse, flonetwork.com
e-centives.com, mailings apparently sponsored by:
- valueamerica.com,
- giftcertificates.com,
- smarterkids.com (Virtual Entertainment, Needham, MA),
- customdisc.com,
- outpost.com (Cyberian Outpost, Inc., Kent, CT),
- deltathree.com (Delta Three Ltd, Jerusalem, Israel),
- overstock.com (The Haverford Group, Salt Lake City, UT),
- petsmart.com

It's beyond imagination why and how these companies, instead of using their online activities to build and deepen their relationship with their customers, instead use it to alienate and offend them.

Offense: Being at the root of an offensive arrangement to compile a centralized database of personal interests, purchases, and online explorations... and combined with personally identifiable data supplied by other cooperating (thoroughly despicable) E-merchants, to which it was given for a totally separate reason... and which detailed personal information in turn is sold to or used by E-mail marketers and direct [junk] mailers:

doubleclick.com (under investigation by the FTC; legal action formerly announced to be in the works by attorney generals of at least two states so far based on this behavior), and which apparently is in association with (and which should know better) companies including:
- hp.com (Hewlett-Packard),
- aj.com (AskJeeves search engine)

For a further discussion of how DoubleClick continues to engage in highly unethical and dubious behavior (don't some companies ever learn!!!??), click here.

Offense: Abusive rent increases and refusing to renew the leases of well-behaved responsible renters so the company can make absurd and idiotic changes to the apartments... resulting in major headache and expense to people thus forced to move away from their home:

Crest Asset Management, Dallas Texas (click here for details)

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