Business Insider yesterday posted an article titled “The 19 Most Hated Companies In America.” The data was based on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), which releases industry results monthly and updates its national index quarterly.
Facebook was placed at number 10. I was surprised, so I went and double checked the data for myself. It turns out that ACSI has not yet released this year’s ratings for the E-Business category (and the Internet Social Media subcategory that Facebook is in), as well as other categories like Manufacturing/Durable Goods, Manufacturing/Nondurable Goods, and Finance & Insurance. As a result, the data was skewed because some ratings were from 2010 while the rest were from 2011.
I decided to take a look at just the 2010 data, which is the latest available if you want to see ratings from all the companies in the US. Here is the list of the top 10 most hated companies in America in 2010:
- United: 60/100
- Charter Communications: 60/100
- Northwest Airlines: 61/100
- Time Warner Cable: 61/100
- Comcast: 61/100
- Delta: 62/100
- US Airways: 62/100
- MySpace.com: 63/100
- American: 63/100
- Facebook.com: 64/100
The most-hated include large banks, airlines, power and telecom companies. “These are not terribly competitive industries, as the switching barriers for most of them are quite high,” ACSI’s David VanAmburg said in a statement. “In other industries, like the food or clothing sector, the competition is huge. They bend over backwards to make customers happy, because they have to.”
As you can see, Facebook still managed to make the top 10 list, even when I made sure the data was all from the same year. Common complaints about the company include privacy issues, frequent interface changes, and accidental account and/or content removal.
Last year was the first time the ACSI released data for the Internet Social Media category, so there’s no way to see if Facebook did better or worse in 2010 than previous years. I’ll be looking out to see how the social network fares this year when all the 2011 ratings are released.
