Assuming the staff could all be re-employed elsewhere which business would you kill off? Mine, the Crapphone Whorehouse. I looked at buying a PAYG phone there. Not only do they want you to top up by £10 if you want to buy the phone for the price advertised but if you pay by cash they expect a £20 surcharge! Well they can go and do one!

£10 top up is standard from suppliers AFAIK.

For me…the business that employs me!

Barclays, but they appear to be doing quite well on their own without my negative vibes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20164795

@ohnohesback – so no surcharge if you pay by debit card I assume ? £20 is a rip off but businesses are generally charged by their bank for handling/depositing cash.

Any bank, but specifically the Natwest. They couldn’t give a flying **** about customer service. In fact, they seem to revel in their lack of a service ethic

Oh hang on a minute…. They did go bust, didn’t they? Or was that a dream? Yeah, it must have been a dream. They went bust, but then we all got together and threw loads and loads and loads of money at them, without any conditions attached, and they were all ok in the end. Yeah… I definitely must have dreamt that. Phew……

Funnily enough, Woolworths and Comet were at the top of my list. DSG are there too.

Motorway service station companies are next. They only exist because of our stupid service station franchise laws. Bulldoze the buildings and open the sites up to developers. Talk about a captive market – you could invest heavily and still make a killing.

BAE Systems.

But they don’t like me either.

Daily Mail

Crapphone Whorehouse

I went to school with their CEO. Nothing against him personally but despite never having chosen to do business with them I seem to have given them an awful lot of money. I seem to have a knack of identifying the next business they’ll buy out and signing up to them. 2-3 months into the contract CW buys them up and for the rest of the 12/24 months goes to them. It grates a little, if Everything Everywhere gets swallowed up by them between now and xmas then thats probably entirely my fault.

Bulldoze the buildings and open the sites up to developers

I hope to god you’re not including Forton in that rather rash sweeping statement!

Brookbank canoes – they took well over £1000 from us, and took 8 months to NOT order the boat we paid for…and then took three attempts to write the cheque to the right name for a refund…

Santander, woeful customer service. They can’t even let me close the account I have with them.

Next. Morrisons’.

Jolly, I’ve got that coming up…why won’t they let you close the account?! Just incompetence on their part?

definitely a few under-capitalised banks should have gone under in the Great Capitalist Catharsis of 2009 that never happened. All we’ve ended up doing is the UK banking equivalent of The Greenspan Put

Other than that I’d happily see ITV go to the wall 🙂

Next. Morrisons’.

Nope … both very successfull.

I went to school with their CEO.

He’s done pretty well out of his time working for Charles Dunstone….

Not Morrisons – they have the best beer and cider selection of all the supermarkets.

Paying for a PAYG phone cash? You got a re-up you need to organise or something?

I think I could live without News Corp.

W H Smith.

Going by what’s written on here….all bikeshops.

I sometimes wonder how any of those seedy adult book/video store places are still in business since the Internet happened. 🙂

Store 21, or any place that sells leopard print chavette wear.

Yodel. Hopefully it’s not far away either!

As Binners says– the Banking system as run by the ‘market’ did fail- but was bailed out in the interests of capitalism, good ol gordon brown– he led the way for the fat cats to survive and prosper.

Truth is many businesses have a cornered market, the level playing field spiel is just that– it doesn’t exist in a capitalist system, just pr guff.

The whole system is a fraud, but then you knew that already……

It’s a level playing field insofar as the pitch is level and the goals are the same size. However, if you put Chelsea against Hereford Utd, it’s still technically level…

Facebook

It’s a level playing field insofar as the pitch is level and the goals are the same size. However, if you put Chelsea against Hereford Utd, it’s still technically level…

I’m liking this alot. I’m going to see how many times I can slip it into conversations today.

bailed out in the interests of capitalism

not true. It was bailed out in the interests of political survival and stability.

The interests of “capitalism” would have been better served by allowing failure.

Stoner +1

oxymoron^^

Stoners right. What happened with the banks was the polar opposite of capitalism. But then the bankers, like business leaders and politicians, are only capitalists when it serves their interests.

These same people were telling us, ad bloody nauseum, that there is no place for the state to ‘interfere’ in the workings of the free market

What we have now is socialism for the banks, capitalism for the rest of us

what oxymoron?

EDIT, if you mean that capitalism requires failure it’s not an oxymoron.

capitalism requires the correct pricing of risk and return to invested capital to efficiently allocate that capital. By not allowing failure in the capital market it leads to the over-valuation of assets. Which is why asset owners have accrued so much wealth even during the recession while those who rely on growth in income (essentially the “workers”) do not see the same kind of growth in “wealth”.

The major energy suppliers hopefully, then they will need to be re-nationalised and run for the greater good of the people rather than the major shareholders.

Yeah, like that’ll happen….

Any business that thinks they are ‘owed’ an income.
Any business that blames poor performance on ‘the market’

Stoner – Member

bailed out in the interests of capitalism

not true. It was bailed out in the interests of political survival and stability.

The interests of “capitalism” would have been better served by allowing failure.

Exactly.

Virgin, British Gas, all tobacco firms and the UCI.

Amstrad
Bose
Sky

BT
A useless shower who never fail to disappoint and who thanks to Openzone are basically impossible to avoid.

The Fopster – Member
BT
A useless shower who never fail to disappoint and who thanks to Openzone are basically impossible to avoid.

All day every day this ^^^^

I hate BT with every fibre of my being.
They are the epitome of clusterf**k.
It is hard to think of any other business that is so dreadful and is still in business!

They suspended the line/broadband to our office having failed to take payment via the direct debit (and admitted it was their error) we set up after they lost the payment before that, even though it is clearly on the bank statement and confirmed by the bank which was after they suspended account due to them billing the wrong company, following their inability to install the super fast and easy simultaneous phone and broadband easy option, taking 4 weeks to resolve the problem and leaving us working from home for a month, for which we were generously compensated the grand sum of £75 in an exemplary demonstration of customer service…

And breathe!