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?
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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.
It’s cheaper too, over here at least. I need to pay 18 euros to get what I want, and it isn’t uncommon to be treated disrespectfully.
Whereas a really good fish and chips is like 11 euros here and you can have a fun little chat with the owner or whatever.
LG, Nestlé, Coke-Cola, Amazon, TikTok, Temu, any big brand bank, ASUS, Johnson Outdoors brands (jetboil, scuba pro)
Edit:forgot Tyson foods and Hormel. Their fucking over chicken farmers.
Why ASUS? I used to have one of their routers but aside from that I don’t know much about them.
I’m a big privacy and FOSS advocate so my list is kinda long, but the main ones are:
-> Google (I use GrapheneOS)
-> TikTok
-> Tesla (too much data collection)
-> Microsoft (self explanatory, however for some things I need to keep an w10 LTSC VM configured)
-> Adobe (same reasons as Michaelsoft)
-> OpenAI (same reasons as Michaelsoft, but I do use it inside a vm in no-account mode for some work related things)
-> Uber (oh man that app is digital herpes)
-> Spotify
-> Facebook/Meta
-> Dropbox
-> Whatsapp
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.
Do you have a recommendation for me as an online shopper?
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.
Shopify has kind of saved the day there, making it easier for individual companies to set up a web presence easily. Personally I like shopping from sites who do that
Broadcom
Tesla
Not really answering the question but I’ve completely stopped buying anything that requires USB micro B. I can’t fucking stand that connector. USB C costs a negligible amount more and I’ve yet to have a single port or cable fail irreparably after using it for the best part of a decade.
An actual answer to the question? I’m done with Microsoft and Nvidia. I’d love to add Google to the list but I’m still largely entrenched in their ecosystem.
- Apple
- Meta (but actually it effectively avoids me, I not much avoid it)
- 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.
Most of Nestlé, of Lactalis…
Oh yeah fuck Nestle.
Many store-brand foods because they’re made with half garbage.
HP - their printers and subscription models pissed me off so much that I want nothing to do with them.
Apple - 'nuff said
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.
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As greedy as you think they might have been, without them, a lot of smaller bands would have just washed up. People work really hard to make music, shouldn’t they get paid for it?
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Streaming services didn’t exist when this court case happened. Many artists were already suing Napster, but weren’t famous enough to get publicity. Someone released an unfinished edit of “I disappear” which is what triggered Metallica to get involved. Dr Dre also jumped into the suit but I’ve never heard anyone talk about boycotting his music or the music he produced.
Coca-Cola, Apple, Samsung, HP.
My alternatives are none (water & coffee only), Android (OnePlus specifically for phones), LG/Toshiba for consumer electronics, Brother for printers and Dell or Lenovo for laptops.
Edit: Oh yeah and Tesla, not only because of Musk, I simply don’t want to drive a tablet on wheels. I’m going for low-tech cars only. Some barebones Kia, Hyundai or Dacia.
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.
☝️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
Samsung appliances or Samsung smart anything. SSDs are tolerable but I’d rather find someone else.
HP printers but they are especially bad so all HP.
Any device that requires a cloud connection, account, or specific app to work. Hard no.
I have a home PC with motherboard issues that is my multimedia machine. I played around on IBM networks when I was a kid. Fuck printers. And yeah fuck this forced cloud shit. I remember this was a thread.
Nodding my head with samsung. HP comes up and I’m ohhhh how did I forget them!
I find they do slip by you unless you’re thinking of printers. I’m trying to remind myself in more situations. I doubt I’ll ever want an HP computer with or without the reminder but I’d like to make sure.
