3 companies I hate

#3: my insurance company and all insurance companies. Mine issued a check to me AND the auto body shop 300 miles away, so that we can both conveniently endorse it in order for me to get my money. Then, they offered to conveniently replace the check if I would fax 2 things to the car place, photocopy everything, and mail them 5 original copies of things. The $4500 I'm getting is steadily diminishing as I pay myself by the hour to deal with this.

#2: Seagate, makers of an external hard drive that's mysteriously incompatible with my computer, yet works about 1 in 5 attempts. Just enough to make me keep trying.

#1: Verizon, and all cell phone companies everywhere. I am in a situation where the cheapest option for me is to pay $15 a month in order to have my phone NOT WORK. If I do this till December, they will voluntarily release their stranglehold on my soul. On top of all the can't-quit tactics, cell phones have horrible sound quality, drop calls routinely, and don't always work on lower floors of buildings, when leaves are on trees, when it is humid, or in my ex-house. My children are NEVER going to believe the hell that we put up between the invention of cell phones and their development to a reliably usable state, which I estimate to be 5-10 years away given current rates of progress.