These 55 Shady Industries Should Be Avoided, According To People Online

"Nestle. They use child labor, steal the freshwater reserves from small villages in South Africa promising to give them better access to it then privatize it and attempt to sell it back to them as bottled water at a price they cant afford. Not to mention I believe they used some water sources rural villages needed for drinking water and used it to pump their wastewater. Then hide behind their lawyers to let them get away with it."

"Health insurance. In the commercials, it is all about caring for your health and stuff. But if you ever get a serious illness, they will do anything to avoid paying for your treatment. Source: my mother got breast cancer and her health insurance made a business decision to let her die rather than pay the 40,000$ for her treatment. They made that decision and then hired lawyers to make it happen. My mom got to fight them in court while going through chemo. She made it, by mortgaging the house. She told me the insurance company caused her more stress than the prospect of dying."

Reddit user said:
"Sunglass industry."

Reddit user replied:
"Punny business, but, yes, it's true. I'll use Oakley as an example because it's [literally] close to home. Oakley has not been the same since they were bought out. Oakley was a great company to work for with great bonuses, swag, and extremely high company morale. Their HQ is one of the coolest buildings you could find and the people were always happy to work for a legendary company that really treated their employees right. Oakley knew their customers well, but at the end of the day, it's still a business. And Luxottica wanted that business. Luxottica bought them out in the end, but not through Oakley's own will.

You see, Luxottica owns nearly all the major glasses brands and the stores that carry them. They are one step short of a full monopoly of the entire global eyewear industry. Luxottica wanted Oakley, so they took Oakley off all the shelves of every major glasses retailer until Oakley could do nothing but give in. Squeezed dry until they had to be bought at a nicer price for Luxottica."

spicedpumpkins said:
"I have no proof of this but the high-end ART industry.

I 100% believe most of it is just to launder money."

bombayblue replied:
"It’s more than laundering money it’s a way to store wealth that doesn’t involve bank accounts.

If you live in a country with a corrupt dictatorship that can order the bank to seize your assets from the bank a physical asset you can move and hold on to is actually much more valuable."

NoHaxJussSnax said:
"I used to work as a mechanic and I damn well know somethings they overcharge the customer for way too much. One time a girl came into my shop maybe late 20's you could tell she had no idea about cars. Well, there was some snow the last few weeks and she brought her car in because her roof concaved in on top of where the snow sat so now there's a bowl-like spot on her car roof. So she asked us if we could somehow fix it so my manager came up and told her he'll take a look so she goes and sits in the lobby area. My manager opens the car door and looks at the roof for 3 seconds before slamming his fist up into the roof of the car pushing the collapsed roof back to normal he kept the car in the shop for an hour and spent maybe 10 minutes rubbing the dents out he charged her 700$ for a good punch. Glad I'm not in that industry anymore."

dangaz0n3 replied:
"I went to a local mechanic who tried to tell me that I had oil leaking from my then 12-year-old car. I'm 100% convinced that they sprayed some oil onto the undercarriage of my car to make it look like I had a leak. I'd never seen any other evidence that my car had been leaking oil so I stopped going to them after that one time."

"The nonprofit world, unfortunately. Most people at the top are in it to make a name for themselves and don’t usually care about the mission of the organization."

"Pet industry. Basement puppy mills and dogs that are so inbred they can hardly breathe. There are plenty of ethical breeders out there (and some unlicensed breeders are ethical even if in a legal grey zone) but the conditions of some of the so-called puppy mills can be really bad. Sometimes when breeds are mixed and the pup gets the recessive genes the breeders weren’t looking for.. they straight up euthanize it because they know it won’t sell. Not to mention how many “purebreds” are actually not pure at all... and are sold as is. Shady."

ThatAndANickel said:
"Pharmaceutical industry. To wit - 1. Controlled by multinational corporations, but prices differ radically from country to country. 2. A much stronger financial incentive for a treatment (continuing need for a prescription) than a cure (one dose and you are done.) 3. Advertising! How is that a legitimate basis for selecting medication!

I could go on, but that's a decent start."

Reddit user replied:
"Big pharma scientist here. (1.) Drug prices are a negotiation between the company and the buyer. Other countries will act as 'de facto buyers' (for ex, the NHS in the UK) and can get better deals. This is not the case in the USA, as government healthcare (Medicaid, medicare, etc) is forbidden by law (thank you Congress) from negotiating and health insurers are not of big enough scale. This often also requires price controls to regulate. (2.) Human disease is very complicated and rarely is there a cure for any complex genetic or acquired disease. (3) I have no comments on this... I'm not a fan of ads on tv either."

"This will probably get buried, but glitter.

A manager of one of the biggest glitter manufacturers, Glitterx, said in a 2018 interview that most of the glitter they make goes to one buyer for a single industrial use. When asked who the buyer was and why they need so much glitter, she said “Oh, I definitely can’t disclose that.” When asked why she said, “Because they don’t want anybody to know it’s glitter.”

Ever since this interview people have been trying to guess what company or industry secretly uses most of the world’s glitter and why they want to keep that use under wraps."

"The cemetery industry.

Cemeteries charge premium prices for "choice locations" and hefty fees for opening and closing graves (the national average cost of opening and closing a grave is $1,240 - or significantly more, depending on location)."

"Airbnb is shady and ruins affordable housing. "The average annual revenue for an Airbnb host falls at $9,570, but the median revenue is $3,300. What accounts for this astoundingly different $6,270 gap? A closer look at revenue by percentile shows the highest earning hosts (less than .03% of hosts surveyed) made over $1 million through their combined listings, and 98% of hosts made less than $100k."

Most people who use Airbnb are doing it as a side income but the top 1% who use it, massively abuse the system and destroy housing prices."

"Almond milk industry the process of harvesting to make almond milk is really bad for the environment and there are a lot better dairy-free options."

"Cruise ships. I was told I was having a minimum of one day off every week and work normal hours (8-10h/day) with good pay and good pre-paid tips. I ended up working 30 days in a row, Ewell over 400 hours, for $1600 with tips included. The company I was working for was called Scenic Cruises (the ship was called MS Scenic Crystal), which was an Australian company working over a Swiss company going under a Maltese flag, sailing in Central Europe. That’s how I understood it anyways, they deliberately did this so they could break international laws, I counted at least 5 that they broke. Biggest scam company I ever worked for. I resigned after my first month. The police boarded the ship every once in a while because they knew this but they couldn’t do s**t because they had no jurisdiction over the ship. I was forced to work with a 39 Celsius fever. I really wanna f**k this company up but I literally have no idea how. And hiring an international lawyer or whatever is too expensive."

link2Dpazt said:
"Barbers. They’ll cut your hair, knowing it’s inevitable you’ll be back. Forever in their grasp, a never-ending circle, filling their pockets."

Calebhuduck replied:
"Wow, I never thought of it that way. Plus I’m paying them to take something from me."

"Mental health facilities... A lot of people trust today's mental health facilities, but from my experience, they're quite flawed. Staff can be judgemental and condescending and downright cruel. A family member of mine was institutionalized for a while, I say with full certainty she was healthier before she went in than coming out. The places I've seen are most definitely for profit. They had no intentions of having her "fixed" and released. Also, sloppy. She was given the wrong people's meds several times. She was also prescribed dangerous combinations that wound up having her sent to the ER. Really stupid mistakes were made over and over."

theseapug said:
"Avocado farms. Most of the farms in Central America are taken over by the cartel because of how much money is in selling avocados."

TaterTotJim replied:
"I understand that the cartels are more interested in extorting farmers and merchants than maintaining the farms themselves, but your point is still very true."

theseapug replied:
"Yes, that is true. They tell the farmers that the land is now the cartel's and they must pay off a ridiculous debt to get it back."

xanadustolemyskates said:
"Law - corrupt AF."

tweakingforjesus replied:
"The way the legal system works is crazy. My brush with the system involved a relative's car collision. They ended up pleading down to a charge that was physically impossible (too fast for conditions while she had been stopped for 30 seconds). The attorney called it "legal fiction". It makes me question what I see on other people's records.

The system is less "Law and Order" and more "Better Call Saul"."

"Goodwill.

I know this is a question of industry & not a company, but hear me out.

They claim to be a not-for-profit organization, yet they sell clothes for a higher price than your locally owned thrift stores. Their CEOs (Usually every state has its own Goodwill "franchise") make 6-digit figures.

Just recently, the Goodwill of Central Oklahoma CEO made a video asking for the community to donate so that they could basically afford to pay their employees.

Dude, use your massive salary & pay your employees. Cut your prices so those that you claim to be there to help can actually afford your stuff!"

"More people died last year over vanilla in Madagascar than cocaine in South America. They’ve even coined the term “vanilla murder”. Farmers hire armed mercenaries to guard their crops against thieves near harvest time, and if one is caught... well... let’s just say it’s in response to all the farmers that were killed by thieves for the same reason.

this article is a fairly light read on the subject without anything too graphic. But there’s a great deal of information about it floating around. Along with some pretty disturbing accounts."

"The plastic industry. They focus on telling the individual to recycle as a way to address/fix the global trash crisis. The real focus should be on companies that mass produce plastic and label it as “recyclable” but recycling companies cannot actually recycle the materials. It costs too much to recycle certain materials and no one is willing to buy them."