Under no circumstances should anyone ever install any software from Babylon. I tried at the beginning of September, 2011, and not only did it insinuate itself uninvited into both my browsers, it proved impossible to remove. The remove tool didn't work. Various Web sites I looked at had thousands of complaints about the impossibility of removing it, along with suggestions for how to remove it; none of the ones I tried worked. It kept coming back! The only thing that finally saved me was Windows system restore. A company that would produce software this malevolent should never again be trusted, in my view.

United Parcel Service has, at least in the Chicago area and for delivery of films, become rather unreliable in recent years. They have lost several films I know of, including one of mine in I believe 1999, the last print that I had that was made with the old Kodachrome process (7387 print stock), and thus irreplaceable. They delivered it to the wrong address and then would only send investigators during the day, when no one was at home at that residence. Even though they claimed someone signed my name, which sounds like a crime to me, they weren't very aggressive about investigating. After about a year they did pay my insurance claim.

Addr.com Web hosting. I signed up with this inexpensive company in the fall of 2000, and it quickly turned into an embarrassing disaster. I learned from this that one should never use a Web hosting company that doesn't run backup email servers. Not being able to reach tech support during their outage was also horrible. To their credit, they did give me a full refund of the fee I paid, not charging me for the period of time I used.

American Ceramics magazine asked me to write a review in 1998. Payment was to be $75 on publication. Then, before the issue with my review appeared, they asked me to write another, which I did. After a long delay, both issues appeared, but I was never paid. On three separate occasions, the publisher promised me prompt payment. In 1999, he was going to send a check "tomorrow." In 2001, he told me he could send me half of the money now, or the whole $150 in ten days. I told him it was fine to wait. But I didn't receive the money in ten days, or in ten months either. And actually, I probably would have written at least one of the reviews if they'd said, "We'll try to pay you, but we're not sure when or if." Instead, they just wind up acting in a dishonest manner.
    Several years later, when they wanted me to write another review, at my insistence they then paid for the two unpaid ones and the third one too.