J.C. Penney

The retailer’s nosedive really began in November 2011, when Ron Johnson, the one-time retail chief for Apple, became CEO and quickly changed the company’s pricing policy. According to 24/7 Wall St., sales in the first full quarter after the pricing change fell 20 percent and continued dropping, customers fled the store, the stock price fell 40 percent and J.C. Penney angered investors by eliminating its dividend. Johnson remains as CEO.

Dish’s customer-service ratings are “remarkably poor,” according to 24/7 Wall St., and that’s in more than one survey. In a move that further aggravated customers, the company in May 2012 dropped several channels, including AMC, which offers such popular programs as “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad.”

The U.S. Justice Department essentially put a spike in AT&T’s plans to buy the No. 4 wireless carrier in the country, saying the deal would have hurt competition in the wildly competitive space. Now T-Mobile—owned by Deutsche Telekom—is back on its own, with a 4G network that is smaller than its three larger rivals’, and its customer-satisfaction rating remains low. The company is hoping such moves as buying MetroPCS and offering Apple’s iPhone will change things around, but it still continues to bleed customers.

The social networking giant has consistently ticked off users with its various policy changes that many believe only compromises their privacy and abuses their personal information. Then there was Facebook’s high-profile IPO in 2012, where a combination of offering too many shares at too high a price—along with concerns about how the company would increase their revenues—helped drive down the stock price from a starting point of $35 to less than $20. The folks at 24/7 Wall St. point out: “According to the ACSI [American Customer Satisfaction Index], Facebook is one of the most strongly disliked American companies, beaten out only by three public utilities companies.”

The company already was starting from behind simply by being a high-profile financial services firm during the recession. Citigroup then canned Vikram Pandit, the CEO who guided the firm through the crisis, and fired thousands of workers. His successor, Michael Corbat, then said he wanted to cut 11,000 more. Investors have been hit as well, with the mishandled sale of Citi’s Smith Barney causing a $2.9 billion write-down and the slow recovery of the firm’s stock in relation to its competitors, according to 24/7 Wall St.

RIM is really hoping that this month’s launch of the much-delayed BlackBerry 10 is a hit, because the company continues to fall farther and farther behind Apple, Samsung and others in the red-hot mobile device business. Once the dominant mobile phone maker, RIM has been unable to come up with devices that consumers want to buy. It has suffered through several service blackouts and had to take an $845 million write-down on unsold units. RIM also has shed thousands of jobs, and has seen its stock price fall by 80 percent over the last two years, according to 24/7 Wall St.

According to 24/7 Wall St., the airline has alienated everyone, from investors and customers to pilots, employees and suppliers. Shareholders were essentially wiped out when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2011, and more recently has been able to reduce its financial obligations to airplane manufacturers and those holding the company’s debt. American is fighting with pilots over pay, has laid off thousands of workers and has angered passengers who complain of poor treatment by employees.

Nokia, like RIM, is another established mobile phone maker that has fallen on hard times because it hasn’t kept up with Apple, Samsung and others. After missing the opportunity offered with the rise of smartphones, Nokia executives ditched its Symbian OS in favor of Microsoft’s Windows Phone and are hoping that its new Lumia phones will help revive the company. According to 24/7 Wall St., the company’s stock has fallen 60 percent over two years.

The company, which oversees retailers Sears and Kmart, has burned through five CEOs in seven years, its shares have dropped 60 percent, all while such rivals as Walmart and Target have surged ahead. According to 24/7 Wall St., its ASCI rating is lower than all other retailers except for Walmart, and employees of both Sears and Kmart say they don’t have good experiences at the stores.

HP CEO Meg Whitman said it will take a couple of years to turn around the tech industry icon, which has seen destructive executive turnover. When Whitman was hired in 2011, she became the vendor’s third CEO in a year. HP’s management has struggled with questionable acquisitions, most recently the $11.3 billion deal for software maker Autonomy. Former Autonomy executives are under investigation for fraud on claims that they allegedly misrepresented the company’s value in the runup to the acquisition by HP, which had to take an $8.8 billion charge less than two years after the deal. All this has caused HP’s stock price to drop more than 40 percent over the past year. As part of Whitman’s turnaround plans, the company is cutting 27,000 jobs.