Google

Any mainstream VPN service that is heavily promoted on YouTube.

If their marketing budget is that bloated, then they may be charging too much.

Any of those door to door window sales companies. Really anyone that comes to my door unsolicited.

They're never going to be worth the interaction.

Anything that signs me up for email or text ads without me explicitly opting in

I used to have Liberty Mutual for my car insurance. Then that stupid ass commercial came on, with that obnoxious, one-word jingle: “Liberty Liberty Liberty… Liberty!”.

I turned off auto-renew and switched to another company (and it was cheaper).

Is that petty? Yes. Do I regret it? Nope.

I switched away from GoDaddy when they started running the ads with the scantily clad women. When I first signed up with them their CEO or whatever was talking about how they wouldn’t run ads on TV like so many other companies of the .com era (to give you an idea how long ago this was), because word of mouth kept them growing and a minimal marketing budget let them keep prices low. Then a few years later they debuted with a Super Bowl ad featuring a woman in a string bikini dancing and a message to go to their website for the “uncensored” version. It felt demeaning, had nothing to do with their actual product or what had made them a good company in the early days, and made me embarrassed to be their customer, as if I chose them to be a domain registrar in hopes of seeing some not-really smutty pictures like one could find in Maxim.

I will NEVER buy Charmin brand toilet paper unless I am in dire need. I hate those cartoon bears with a fervor bordering on psychosis.

Anything advertised on youtube or a local sports radio station.

I've heard a lot of stuff on grapevine about various online services and how cool they are.

And then I visit the home page and it says "Powered by AI. You can be more productive with us. Because we have AI. Did we mention we have AI?"

And I'm, like, well, this service may or may not use AI in a meaningful way, but one thing is certain - they're probably hiking the price, if not now, then soon. Sorry guys, I'm sitting this tech hype cycle out.

Many local used car salesmen.

Capitol one. Not a fan of Kevin Heart, but then they bought Discover which I used so they came for me in the end.