Why Are Some Companies Hated By Consumers?
Why are some companies hated by consumers while other companies are loved? That sounds like something Harvard Business Review would write about. And indeed, it has. In Companies and the Customers Who Hate Them, Harvard professors Gail McGovern and Youngme Moon said a company is hated when it sets adversarial rules to extract value from its customers, rather than to provide value to them.
Firms taking advantage of customers through such tactics, whether deliberate or unintentional, trigger a backlash: consumers retaliate — with lawsuits, mass defections, and company-specific "hate sites."
I would add that in addition to providing a bad product or service, a company is hated by the consumers when consumers don't have a better choice. If you look at the Worst Companies in America 2009 list at Consumerist, you will see many companies on the list are near monopolies in their market segment. By popular votes, the four Worst Companies in America 2009 were: » Read more …
IRS Taxing Employer Provided BlackBerry or Cell Phone
Does your employer provide you a BlackBerry or cell phone or pay for your wireless service? Do you use that device for personal purpose too? The IRS is considering three ways to tax you for that.
Certain employee benefits, like health care, are not taxable. Personal use of an employer provided BlackBerry or cell phone is not one of them. The IRS published Notice 2009-46 on June 8. It's on pages 13-15 in Internal Revenue Bulletin 2009-23. They are asking for public comments about the three methods it's considering.
1. Minimal Personal Use Method. There are two proposals under this method. Under the first proposal, if the employee can show to the employer that he/she carries another personal cell phone and uses that phone for personal matters, then the employee won't have to pay taxes on the company provided BlackBerry or cell phone. Under the second proposal, there would be a threshold of say X minutes. If the employee can show he/she used the BlackBerry or cell phone for personal purpose for no more than X minutes or he/she used it only for certain exempted types of calls (emergency for example), the employee won't have to pay taxes for such personal use.
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