The past year's seemingly never-ending series of blunders by consumer companies -- Bank of America's debit card fee, Netflix splitting its DVD and streaming services and hiking prices, and Verizon Wireless's online payment fee among them -- may be testing the idea that all publicity is good publicity.
"In this day and age, I don't think it is," said Chris Cakebread, an advertising professor at Boston University. "It's amazing. There's just these waves of animosity, it's really hard to control. It gets perpetuated by Twitter and Facebook."
In September, Bank of America announced a new $5 monthly fee for the use of debit cards. The move set off protests, including the Occupy Wall Street movement and organized account-closing campaigns. By the end of November, B of A reversed course.
"It was so far reaching and broad based in terms of its effect," Cakebread said. "And changing banks is something consumers least like to do."
Netflix irked customers with a poorly explained price hike in September, followed by a split-up of its popular DVD-by-mail and emerging online movie streaming services that was eventually scrapped. Despite the killing of "Qwikster" and repeated apologies by CEO Reed Hastings, more than 800,000 subscribers ditched Netflix.
All year long, the hits kept coming: Hewlett-Packard announced the spin-off of its PC unit, then reversed course after hiring a new CEO. AT&T and T-Mobile dropped their proposed $39 billion merger in the face of stiff antitrust opposition, triggering a $4 billion payment from AT&T to T-Mobile parent Deutsch Telekom.
Earlier this month, home improvement retailer Lowe's and travel search site Kayak drew criticism after they pulled their ads from the TLC reality TV show "All-American Muslim." The moves followed a fringe conservative group's call for a boycott of the advertisers.
Then last week Verizon Wireless nearly repeated Bank of America's history by announcing a new $2 "convenience fee" for customers who make "single bill payments" with credit or debit cards.
The outrage from customers was swift, and Verizon Wireless scrapped the fee the next day.
