Excerpted from WSJ, “How to Handle ‘IHateYourCompany.com’,” Sep 5, 2008
In recent years, disgruntled consumers have launched hundreds of Web sites to air their grievances — from starbucked.com and ihatestarbucks.com to boycottwalmart.org and againstthewal.com.
…The Internet has become a mecca for disgruntled consumers, creating new challenges for companies accustomed to controlling their message tightly. While companies can’t pull down a negative YouTube video or erase a critical Twitter post, they have more power when it comes to domain names.
That doesn’t mean, however, that they should snap up every domain with a vaguely negative-sounding name and then let them gather dust, according to Internet-strategy consultants. Rather, companies should register or buy just the sites that get the most traffic…
Once they are in control of these domains, companies … (can) use them as a vehicle to solicit feedback from customers. Otherwise, angry customers will … simply find another site on which to complain about the company…
While some of the gripe sites that remain in the hands of critics have fizzled, others have grown bigger. Take BankofAmericaSucks.com, which was started by (a) former Bank of America customer … after a dispute with the bank over a car loan. It now is home to thousands of postings, and it calls itself the “Official Bank of America consumer opinion site.”
Consumers continue to post complaints on the site…The site is mentioned in numerous blogs and newspaper articles, and appears among the top 15 results on a Google search for “Bank of America.”
Edit by SAC
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Note: In 2005, Forbes created a list of the 9 angriest corporate hate sites. These sites targeted: KB Homes, PayPal, Allstate Insurance, Microsoft, American Express, Wal-Mart, Verizon, United Airlines and UPS. While an updated list has not been published it is clear that consumers continue to organize complaints and fuel their hate online.
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Full article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122057760688302147.html?mod=2_1567_topbox
The Homa Files 
September 5, 2008 at 11:55 am |
“Companies should register or buy just the sites that get the most traffic, says Josh Bourne, managing partner of FairWinds Partners, the Internet strategy consulting firm that conducted the study.”
a) How do you register domains that get the most traffic, when by definition, registering means that the domain doesn’t yet exist and thus has zero traffic?
b) What do you encourage when you buy a site from someone who hates your product? If a company bought me out after building up a site, I’d just start another one the next day. Sounds like an easy way to make money and hurt a company, which is exactly what disgruntled consumers who start these sites want.
“Internet Strategy Consultant” is so 1999.
The really interesting story here is that the CEO of Fairwinds used to work for wsj.com, which is most likely how this fluff piece got placed in the paper.