My wife is boycotting Burger King and has been for the last 8 years. Of course, that means that I boycott Burger King too. We haven't been in one voluntarily since the day my wife got a badly burned chicken sandwich and an employee refused to take it back or make her another one.

We were "forced" to stop at a Burger King by a real estate agent we were using once. Not surprisingly, we will never use that agent again either. First of all, she didn't even bother to ask us if we like Burger King. Secondly, is that where you want to take customers who are thinking of making a several hundred thousand dollar purchase through your business? But I digress.

The point is that our boycott of Burger King is meaningless in the company's eyes. As Kelly Mooney notes in The Ten Demandments, our boycott is "invisible."

Back in the day, there wasn't much you could do. You could leave a nasty comment card that would likely wind up in the trash. You could call or write the company, but that takes effort and the results, based on experience, are likely to be less than satisfying.

But several articles have emerged recently that have reminded me how things have changed. The aforementioned Kelly Mooney's own blog references a new Forbes report on the top corporate hate sites. A very entertaining read. Warning: You may waste a lot of time reading other people's gripes about companies that you don't even frequent. They are just that interesting sometimes.

I also ran across an article on the Lawler's Rule blog that talks about the "Long Tail" and using search engines to reach a niche with regard to your complaints about a specific company. The concept of the Long Tail has been circulating a lot recently. In fact, Seth Godin's blog has referenced the concept at least three times this month alone (reference 1, reference 2, reference 3)

Chris Anderson, Wired Editor-In-Chief and author of the Long Tail article, is creating a book on the topic. His own blog (on the way to a book) is filled with insights about how the mass market is turning into a million little niches. Download Chris' Change This manifesto for a very good immersion into the subject.

I guess this is sort of like the difference between being a little fish in a big pond versus being a big fish in a little pond. If a "YourCompanySucks.com" web site gets a better Google ranking than your own corporate web site, heaven help you. The little pond has a way of getting bigger....quickly.

The take home message? You can't afford to allow bad experiences to flourish in your company. Customers have a bigger arsenal to fight back with than they ever had before. If you allow bad experiences to thrive, the long tail will whip around and beat you senseless.