Had you ever heard an announcement by a company and wondered "who thought this was a good idea"?
Sometimes it seems like companies don't know their customers at all.
Recently, Wendy’s thought using surge pricing—an already unpopular practice used by rideshare companies—to charge customers more during peak business periods.
While some executives probably saw dollar signs, customers quickly decided where they wouldn't be eating during peak hours. From regular profits to none—what a great idea!
Wendy’s reversed their decision.
Reddit user lushsweet asked:
"Inspired by Wendy’s surge pricing, when were some times where there was such great backlash that a company/person took back what they said/did/were going to do?"
Xbox One
"Microsoft Xbox One was supposed to be always online, but they removed it after fan backlash."
~ Silverblade3
"Honestly, this move was so bad Xbox is still recovering from it. Actually, not JUST the always online thing, but the entire Xbox E3 2013 presentation led to them playing catch up throughout that generation of consoles."
"I think what really did them in was one quote from Don Mattrick. 'We have a product for people who can't access the internet. It's called the Xbox 360'. Sheer arrogance."
"The Xbox One proceeded to have half as many lifetime sales as the PS4. Not that 57 million lifetime sales is a bad number by any means, but I'm sure Microsoft would have liked to be on the same level as Sony like they were in the previous console generation."
~ SirBoggle
Acme Rentals
"There was a car rental company that installed speed monitoring devices on their cars and charged you every time you went over the speed limit."
"Didn't last long."
~ culturebarren
Sonic The Hedgehog
"The Internet bullied Paramount into fixing Sonic for the movies."
~ Hyrophant_sNs
Loblaws
"In Canada, the grocery market is pretty much completely owned by 4 companies which means they try to get away with a lot of bullsh*t since there's virtually no competition."
"One of them, Loblaws, had a longstanding practice of putting 50% off stickers on items that were about to expire or produce that was beaten up. Recently, they decided that they were going to drop this 50% off to 30%."
"I don't think they even announced anything, I'm pretty sure word just got out when employees received the new 30% off stickers."
"The backlash in Canada was absolutely enormous, Loblaws is widely disliked right now for using the lack of competition to gouge grocery prices and this was just another infuriating greedy move from them."
"In light of the backlash the company reversed course and kept the 50% off."
~ brodoswaggins93
Maker's Mark
"At one point when bourbon exploded in popularity—largely due to growth in the SE Asian market—Maker's Mark was faced with not having enough product to meet projected demand, since it takes quite a while to produce."
"They announced they were going to slightly lower the alcohol percentage of their flagship product to 'stretch' the supply."
"This idea went over like a lead balloon and was crushed almost immediately."
~ mickipedic
Cricut
"Cricut is a brand of cutting machine used for a variety of crafting purposes. It's existed in many incarnations, but current machines utilize proprietary Cricut Design Space software in conjunction with a machine and a variety of blade options and accessories to cut complex shapes out of a wide variety of materials."
"They are most commonly used in the crafting world for cutting out vinyl to make custom tshirts, tumbler cups, ornaments, et cetera."
"Users can purchase a Cricut Design Space premium subscription for $10/month which gives them access to a vast library of premade assets such as fonts, shapes, and predesigned projects."
"Since the software is reliant on SVG files, and those can't be created within Cricut Design Space, the subscription works well for non-techie casual crafters who don't know how or don't feel like designing and converting their own SVGs in a separate program."
"If you are savvy enough to make your own SVGs—or if you buy/download them from other sources—you can import them into Cricut Design Space and use them on your Cricut. You just can't create them within Design Space."
"A couple years back, Cricut made the announcement that a paid premium subscription would now be required for all users who want to import more than 10 SVG files into Design Space per month. The majority percentage of Cricut users who create projects to make money were the kind of users who created their own SVGs, and depending on complexity, ONE project could require 10 uploads."
"For all but the most casual users, this was basically Cricut forcing them into a subscription that they didn't need."
"On top of all this, Design Space is absolute garbage software. It's buggy as hell, it's designed for simplicity over efficiency, certain functions barely work at all, so on."
"Since you can't use any other software for Cricut machines, there's no real reason for them to bother to make it good. So they don't."
"The backlash was so instant, so intense, and so immense that Cricut walked their decision back very quickly. However, the whole thing caused a giant mistrust for the brand in general—which was already known for extremely overpriced accessories and terrible software—and Cricut's reputation has been damaged in the crafting community ever since."
~ GaimanitePkat
HM Revenue
"The 'pasty tax'. In the UK, the government tried to introduce higher taxes on hot food from bakeries like sausage rolls, Cornish pasties etc... and the country basically rioted until the government u-turned."
"There were protests outside Downing Street and smear campaigns against food companies seen to be complicit."
"It was a wild time, but quite a proud moment for the country when it was reversed."
"Imagine what we could do if we cared this much about other issues!"
~ dottydaydream
JCPenney
"JCPenney tried a whole tactic of 'We won't have any sales or coupons anymore, our prices will just always be low'."
"Instead, sales tanked, the stock prices dropped into single digits, stores ended up closing left and right, and JCPenney barely exists anymore."
~ N_dixon
"A lot of people liked to think they were getting a deal. 'I got this $65 shirt for $28' kind of thing.
"The people who shopped there often liked to believe the original price reflected the quality, and the sales price reflected their savvy shopping."
"Lowering everything to Target prices destroyed both of these illusions."
~ titianqt
Schlitz
"Through much of the 20th century, the biggest beer brand in the world was Schlitz. Budweiser was a distant second, but gaining ground."
"Schlitz new CEO—son of the longstanding CEO—decided the way to beat Budweiser was to make beer with a shorter brewing time. He ordered the formula changed to corn syrup from malted barley, added a new yeast to cut brewing time."
"Overnight consumers started complaining that the new beer was flat, cloudy and full of flakes of yeast, which turned off the loyal following. They started recalling the beer which left no beer to sell to the marketplace."
"Schlitz plunged from the number one brand to obscurity. Anheuser-Busch could not have come up with a better way to sabotage their competitor."
~ PizzaWall
Dungeons & Dragons
"Dungeons & Dragons is owned by Wizards of the Coast, which is owned by Hasbro."
I'm not sure if it was directly Wizards of the Coast or if it was Hasbro, but they wanted to change the licensing for D&D. This was going to f*ck over thousands of streamers, podcasts, and other types of small companies and start-ups that were doing things related to Dungeons & Dragons."
"The backlash from the community was huge."
"People canceled their D&DBeyond subscriptions on a very large scale—one of the few ways they were making money. Many popular D&D podcasts and streams openly denounced the idea and started to talk about using D&D's biggest competitor instead—Pathfinder."
"They eventually made a half a** statement that did not help and a couple weeks later did a complete back track and apology."
~ gunnie56
Denver, Colorado
"When the Covid lockdowns started hitting, the city of Denver announced that all liquor stores and marijuana dispenseries would be shuttered for the duration."
"Hordes of people scrambled to these shops and formed huge lines to stock up."
"Two hours later, the city announced that NO, those shops would not be forced to close, that they were deemed essential services."
~ The_Ombudsman
Fine Brothers
"When the Fine Brothers announced they were going to trademark the term 'react' in relation to YouTube videos."
~ europon
"Oh, boy. I remember that."
"The apology video was something else."
~ imjusta_bill
Cadbury
"Cadbury announced they were going to change their formula to include palm oil in their chocolate manufacturing process, and there was a huge uproar."
"Lots of people boycotted them or threatened to boycott them if palm oil was used as it's incredibly environmentally damaging."
"Cadbury's walked it back shortly after and never mentioned switching the formula again."
~ TheSnowBunny
Taco Bell
"Taco Bell discontinued cheesy potatoes and the people rioted."
~ forwardaboveallelse
"What kind of business strategy is, 'remove the best selling items'?"
~ Shumatsuu
"Yes! Cheesy potatoes, so glad they are back!"
~ Irishconundrum
"And what about those delicious apple empanadas? Miss them soooo much!"
~ riverroadgal
So, what bad business decisions would you add?
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