Peter Griffin: Hatred of corporations spreads across the internet

They belong to a part of the net born of dark experiences, even darker humour and a whole lot of anger - they're corporate hate websites.

Do a Google search and you'll find a lot of people around the world hate a lot of companies. The stories have a common theme: I had a small complaint, everyone ignored me, I complained some more, they still ignored me, so I built a hate site in revenge.

In this country, you're more likely to badger the head of the Consumers Institute, David Russell, if you've been mistreated by the corporations in your life. If that doesn't work, you might take your grievance to Fair Go and bare all on national TV. In the US, where corporate hate is more entrenched, self-expression is part of the healing - and hating - process.

There was a time during the late-90s grab for internet domain names when companies would reserve their own name with "I hate" before it or "sucks" after it, just to foil hate-site builders. Many sites, however, slipped through the gaps.

Forbes (www.forbes.com) magazine has compiled a list of the best corporate hate sites. They make for hilarious reading.

These sites are skilfully made - right down to the spoof mock-ups of the company's logo.

The most elaborate corporate hate website has to be www.paypalsucks.com Eric Gray started the site because Paypal employees hung up on him twice. He can't even remember what he originally rang to complain about.

The anguished postings in the Paypalsucks forum reveal the extent of the dissatisfaction with one of the internet's biggest payment systems.

Credit card company American Express also gets a beating at www.amexsux.com, where people think up new things to do with their American Express card - like using it to scrape ice off a windscreen.

The website www.walmart-blows.com is a passionate critic of America's biggest retailer.

Then there's the obvious anti-Microsoft gathering points on the web, notably www.ms-eradication.org. The website, which models itself on Microsoft's own site has rebranded with a more fashionable name - Microsuck.

"It's very telling, I think, that so many people find it easy to get stirred up and passionate over hating Microsoft, but comparatively few can be found who have passion or zeal for Microsoft," write the site's creators.

The quirky website www.fordlemon.com documents the frustrations of a man who claims to have bought a 1998 Ford Taurus in Canada that made him sick. Something was wrong with the car's ventilation, it seems. As you scroll through the website a very bad version of Tom Petty's hit I won't back down plays in the background over and over again. You'll quickly move on.

At www.verizonpathetic.com, posters vent on everything from broadband outages to bad customer service. Interestingly, a number of the posters pessimistically claim that Verizon is a good operator in relation to other big American telecoms providers. Is customer service really that bad in the States?

It was a series of unfortunate events during a trip to Hawaii and Japan in 1996 that led Jeremy Cooperstock to form www.untied.com, a site dedicated to running down United Airlines.

But the saddest corporate hate story is that of Keith Kimmel, who runs the www.unitedpackagesmashers.com. Kimmel claims freight company UPS smashed several computer screens that were being delivered to him, ultimately forcing him out of business.

Closer to home, the website www.ihatetelstra.com is still live, but seems to have given up the fight. A section on the website devoted to disgruntled Telecom New Zealand customers has also fizzled out.

New Zealand corporate hate sites are few and far between. However, that may soon change. I've seen enough footage of angry people shouting at the chief executives here lately to know there's a lot of corporate hate out there.

Maybe a couple of power companies will have hate sites devoted to them before too long.

In general, Kiwis seem to prefer to vent their spleen in internet forums and on message boards. Events ticketing company Ticketek is the subject of some pent-up angst at http://halfpie.net/ article/238/ticketek. But it seems that in the world of corporate-hating you need critical mass on your side. When you're a telecommunications or retailing giant with millions of customers it seems inevitable that your staff are going to annoy a few people.

And there'll always be revenge-seekers armed with a computer and a grudge willing show their anger via the web.