37 Canceled Companies That Learned The Hard Way What Happens When Customers Walk Away

Just recently, Wasserman talent agency’s CEO got named in the Epstein files. Tons of artists on their roster expressed their feelings about it and threatened to leave. So Wasserman stepped down as the CEO and they rebranded.

Shell in the 90s in Europe. They wanted to dispose of the Brent Spar Oil Platform by just sinking it in the North Sea. I remember their gas stations completely emtpy and finally they had to tow the station on land for disposal.

I started boycotting Ticketscamster and Live Nation 20 years ago and it’s finally paying off … ya’ll can thank me later ….

1980's McDonalds. Successful boycott ended food served in Styrofoam containers.

Public transit in Montgomery, Alabama

EDIT: During the 1950s Civil Rights movement, since not everyone on Reddit is American. My bad. You snide commenters can put your pitchforks down now.

Ever since the honey browser extension has been exposed for its shady business practices, it seems to have been struggling. They’ve lost nearly 50% of all their users and have faced class action lawsuits. Also, some browsers have completely disabled or disallowed their practices of stealing money via changing the affiliate code.

The current boycott of Target over its handling of DEI caused its stock to fall by 33% in 8 months last year. I have not shopped at Target since January 2025.

After Disney pulled Kimmel, viewers revolted. Disney lost a ton of subscribers on its platforms and revenue to its properties.

McDonald’s attributed a $7B dip to protests over Israel funding/Gaza. In that same vein, Starbucks has had declining sales for six consecutive fiscal quarters.

Many people would have heard of the Big4 auditors - PWC, EY, KPMG and Deloitte.

Used to be the Big5 - until the Enron scandal broke (soon followed by the WorldCom scandal) and it was found that their 'independent' audit firm *Arthur Andersen* had been cooking the books.

It's clients started cutting ties with it and in a matter of months a century old firm with nearly 30,000 employees was defunct.

Backcountry.com

Jonathan Nielsen k****d the company by suing people and trying trademark the term “backcountry”. Guy is a masterclass failure turning a massively successful company into dust being on a power trip.

People started boycotting after multiple lawsuits were filed by Nielsen’s regime in 2019. Company was sold in 2024 after a crash course in not f*****g with your clientele.

I mean, no so much a business, but a movie. The initial previews for the first Sonic The Hedgehog movie were so poorly reacted to, that they reanimated and delayed the movie.

And it worked out well for them.

Wendy’s Jr. bacon cheese burger went to like $1.49 or something in 2005 and then got boycotted and they brought that back down to $.99. Such a w for everyone.

Heinz in Canada. French ketchup sales flew off.

Recently Microsoft/xbox lowered the price of game pass subscription from $30 to $22.99. 7 months ago they raised the price from $20 to $30 and the 50% price hike led to an unsurprising amount of people canceling their subscription.

Arguably the Boston Tea Party, which was itself simply one event tied to a much broader boycott of British tea imports as a protest against the new taxes. It was actually boycotts against all British imports that caused the British to roll back all of those taxes--except the tax on tea. Hence the Party.

Sea World after the movie Black Fish.

Kat Von D. People boycotted for Kat Von D herself being a anti-vaxxer and a n**i sympathizer. Brand got renamed before it completely fell off.

Lime Crime. Doe Deere the creator and owner was an awful person, left the company but the company still went under because the name had been tarnished.

EDIT: Apparently Lime Crime is still around! It still lost a lot of its original market space though. .

According to my dad. His boycott of Quiznos has led to their demise.