7 times customers turned on the companies they once loved

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia

According to a report issued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Martha Stewart was charged with insider trading based on her sale of thousands of shares of ImClone stock shortly before the company announced a new cancer treatment had been rejected by the FDA in 2001.

Stewart was convicted and hit with a five-month jail term and a $30,000 fine, ABC News reported. But the financial losses didn’t stop there. In 2004, Stewart owned 60% of Martha Stewart Omnimedia. ABC News reported that her company’s value dropped 50% after Stewart’s insider trading scandal, netting the founder’s personal loss at more than $325 million in company holdings.

Today, Town & Country estimates Stewart’s net worth at $300 million, down from about $1 billion in 2000 — though this is likely also a reflection of the decline of the magazine industry as a whole.

BP

In the spring of 2010, a deadly blowout at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig led to one of the worst petroleum spills in history. Nearly 210 million gallons of oil poured into the Gulf of Mexico, CNN reported.

Then-CEO of BP Tony Hayward drew criticism during the disaster by telling The Today Show, "I'd like my life back."

Eleven people and hundreds (if not thousands) of animals lost their lives to this disaster that BP was responsible for as operator of the oil rig at the time. Hayward later apologized for the insensitive remark and promised that BP's priority was to restore the lives of people living in the Gulf region.

2018 estimates say the total cost of the spill to BP is expected to reach $65 billion, according to Reuters.

A study published in 2014 in Harvard Business Review examined the effects of the spill on BP's sales. The researchers found that initially, sales dropped by 3.6% after the spill, as customers "punished" the company for the disaster. However, this effect peaked in August of that year, about four months after the leak began.

Ratners

Back in the late 20th century, there were hundreds of Ratners jewelry shops spread throughout Great Britain and the US, according to The Guardian. It was a multimillion-dollar jewelry chain, until Ratners' CEO made a fatal comment about the quality of his company's products.

During a speech at a conference in 1991, Gerald Ratner made a joke that one of his own company's products was "total crap," the Birmingham Post reported.

A year after the 1991 speech took place, Ratners had shut down 330 locations, fired more than 2,000 employees, and watched its profits plummet, according to the Independent. Eventually Ratners replaced its founder and changed its name to Signet Group, BBC reported.

Wells Fargo

In 2016, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) fined Wells Fargo Bank $100 million for illegally opening unauthorized accounts in consumers' names so its employees could meet sales goals and earn bonuses.

The bank also had to pay an additional $85 million in fines to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the City and County of Los Angeles.

The result of the practice was about two million fraudulent accounts. Consumers were hit with fees on accounts they had never authorized and didn't even know they had.

In the months following the scandal, Fortune reported that customers opened 35% fewer bank accounts at Wells Fargo and that the company received 42% fewer applications for credit cards as it did at the same time the previous year.

Electronic Arts (EA)

In the gaming world, Electronic Arts, also known as EA, earned two "Worst Company in America" titles in 2012 and 2013, Consumerist reported.

According to USA Today, EA has a reputation for buying small game companies to get a particular title and then running them out of business.

When EA released an early access of "Star Wars Battlefront II," consumers were unhappy to find out that unlocking popular material required over dozens of hours of playing and pricey in-game purchases.

When the company responded to players' outrage about the blocked characters on Reddit and defended the decision, the message became the most downvoted comment in the site's history, according to TechCrunch.

After the controversy, the company's stock value plummeted by $3 billion, The Motley Fool reported. It more than recovered in the next few months, however.

Chipotle

After a decade of growth that saw Chipotle become one of the most beloved fast-casual chains in America, in 2016, the company suffered its first annual decline in sales since its IPO after an E. coli outbreak the previous year scared away customers, according to Fortune.

A case of norovirus at one Chipotle location two years later, as well as reports of rodents at another store, added to the negative press. A March 2018 report by UBS Evidence Labs found that 26% of respondents said that they were eating at Chipotle less because of concerns about food safety, as Business Insider previously reported.

However, in April 2018, Chipotle reported an increase in sales under the guidance of a new CEO, Markets Insider reported. In July 2018, the company recorded an additional uptick in sales, which they credited to their new queso recipe and menu price increases, Business Insider reported.

It hasn't been all smooth sailing for the company this year, however. In late July, 2018, a Chipotle restaurant in Ohio was temporarily closed after reports of customer food poisoning. It only affected one store, but almost 650 people were sickened, Business Insider reported.

United Airlines

In the spring of 2017, a video went viral showing a security guard forcibly removing a man from an overbooked United Airlines flight, as Business Insider previously reported.

Dr. David Dao was selected for "re-accommodation" but protested, saying he had patients to see the next morning. He was then dragged from the plane and apparently injured in the process.

In the days that followed, CNN reported that the company's value plummeted by approximately $1 billion. According to another CNN report, many customers took to social media to post images of their chopped-up United Airlines credit cards.