What is the biggest corporate heel turn that you know? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 year ago by DrBob@lemmy.ca to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I was thinking about this after listening to Marc Andreassen blather on about how he doesn't trust government as a repository of trusted keys and other functions. He advocates for private companies to perform critical functions. Standard libertarian stuff in many respects.

The problem of course is that corporations lack accountability. They can shift terms and conditions or corporate purpose and there is little meaningful recourse except to stop using them. I can think of small examples that don't widely resonate (Mountain Equipment Co-op I'm thinking of you 🤬) but are there big examples that I'm missing?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] CandleTiger@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago

What did MEC do? I never heard of them before last month when I bought a backpack while visiting Canada.

[-] CountVon@sh.itjust.works 21 points 1 year ago

MEC used to be the Canadian equivalent to REI. The "C" in MEC stood for "cooperative," as in cooperative corporation. Members are supposed to be part-owners and have a say in how the business is run. Despite that, in 2020 the MEC board sold the company to a US firm without consulting the member-owners.

[-] wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

And ever since then it has enshitified. Their Merino used to be affordable and 100% Merino. Then it went to Merino/Nylon blend, which is passable, at least nylon adds strength. And now it's like 60~70% polyester and more expensive then it used to be. It's literally the same as Uniqlo "Merino"

[-] DrBob@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

Shit it's worse than that. They broke the cooperative so owners like me got no consideration in the deal. The groundwork had been laid for years - slowly freezing enthusiasts out of the board in favour of people with retail experience. The next phase was changing product mix to increase sale volumes over the best equipment for your sport.

I noticed it several years ago when I went to talk about paddles and the kid there said he hadn't been trained on that area yet. And I was like "trained? Don't you paddle?" And the kid said he'd bought a bike after he started working there but didn't really have a sport.

[-] mp3@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

Wait, what the fuck!?

this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023

65 points (93.3% liked)

Asklemmy

43885 readers

930 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS