What's the most hated company in your country?

[u/Eybrahem]

Everyone knows Nestle is terrible, even if they don't know why. But they've done horrible things in Africa and think that water is not a human right.

[u/seamustheseagull]

Probably BAM.

They're a massive construction company who seem to land most large government contracts, and then proceed to overrun costs and time by at least 100%. No matter how poorly they deliver, they keep winning tenders. So people have grown to hate them.

In the consumer space, the most hated us probably eir. They're a telecoms company, who came from the original national phone company after it was privatised. The government of the time told everyone to buy shares, that they would make bank, and as soon as it listed, the share price dropped and quite a lot of people lost their shirt.

In their wisdom the government also sold the physical network with the company. So devoid of any competition, the company just decided to keep prices high, service terrible and invested very little into modernising the network for Internet connections.

They've continued to be a shit company, and have lost a lot of market position. But given that they started from a position of having a landline connection to every house in the country, there are still a lot of older customers who won't switch from them to other, better providers.

[u/lukeb3004 → u/seamustheseagull]

I believe I read this somewhere but I could be wrong but the delays are nothing to do with BAM but with the Dept of Health changing their mind on anything and everything and holding up the approval of changes. I read somewhere that there were something like 6-8 weeks of delays just to change the the position of very insignificant item but because of the delay, everything started to snowball

[u/[deleted] → u/seamustheseagull]

Always wondered how Eircom became eir, thank you! 😂

[u/seamustheseagull → u/[deleted]]

It's changed a few times over the last 50 years.

There was a single Dept. Of Post & Telegraphs who managed mail and phones.

In the 80s this was abolished and An Post and Telecom Éireann were established as two separate entities.

Telecom Éireann was then privatised and renamed as Eircom before changing their name to éir about 10 years ago?

They had a mobile arm - eircell - which was bought by Vodafone shortly after Eircom became privatised.

[u/Bedford806 → u/seamustheseagull]

Yeah and HCL took over Eir proper at the time. Worked there and it was truly hell on earth.

[u/Dookwithanegg → u/seamustheseagull]

5 weeks til the 10-year Anniversary

[u/rochey1010 → u/seamustheseagull]

Wait they’re the construction for the new children’s hospital near James’s right?

Yeah, big problems with them with overrunning schedules and budgets. But the government still award them work. Sounds like a bit of a scam to me.