Yahoo had a list of 15 worst companies for customer satisfaction. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-15-most-disliked-companies-in-america.html I wondered how the CEOs of these companies ranked in pay. I found a list of the top 500 highest-paid CEOs at "Gravity Defying CEO Pay". h
Matching the two lists, I found the following selection:
Time Warner 6th worst, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, 62nd highest, 19.79 million annual pay, 10.3
Comcast, 4th worst, Brian L. Roberts, 70th highest, 18.77 million annual pay, 17.5
Century Link, 11th worst, Glen F. Post III, 121st highest, 13.74 million annual pay, 1.25
Delta Airlines, 10th worst, Richard H. Anderson, 130th highest, 13.17 million annual pay, 1.37
Aetna, 13th worst, Mark T. Bertolini, 329th highest, 4.76 million annual pay, 0.37
United Airlines, 5th worst, Jeffrey A. Smisek, 346th highest, 4.36 million annual pay, 0.87
American Airlines, 8th worst, Thomas W. Horton, 482nd highest, 1.25 million annual pay, 0.16
Bank of America, 15th worst, Brian T. Moynihan, 447th highest, 2.26 million annual pay, 0.15
Charter Communications, 3rd worst, Thomas M. Rutledge, 460th highest, 2.00 million annual pay, 0.67
The final figure in the above list is the annual pay divided by the Forbes ranking on worst customer service. Notice how the top two highly paid CEO have the worst ranking. To be fair, I haven't ranked those companies with good or excellent service. But could these CEOs executive excessive salaries be partly because they aren't involved in "free market" capitalism? How much competition do phone and cable companies have? How much real competition do airlines have? I am thankful that there are still local banks to provide competition for the mega-banks.
Who was at the bottom of the highest paid list? Larry Page of Google with zero salary. However, he does have over 16 billion dollars worth of Google shares out of nearly 192 billion of capitalization. Many of us have a love-hate relationship with Google, how many of us can go a day without using some Google service?
Should anybody get nearly 20 million dollars for making a lot of people unhappy? Should anybody get even 1.25 million dollars for poor service?
Where do I get good service? From locally-owned businesses - BAM Style, Minnesota Surplus, Denny's Lawn and Garden, and many others. Some of the owners may be millionaires, but that is their net worth, not their annual salary. And I get to talk directly with the owners. Do you think Glen F. Post at 13.17 million per year would talk to me about Century Link's customer service? See "Who is worth more, the CEO with rigid rules or the employee giving excellent service?"
