Just because big companies are well-established it doesn't mean they always make the right decisions. From chicken delivery chaos to a cringe-worthy treasure hunt that backfired to a faulty server that lead to a massive data loss, click or scroll through to discover the major incidents that cost big businesses a lot of their reputation, and sometimes also a lot of cash.

In 2013, Tesco was just one of several UK supermarkets that was found to be selling burgers contaminated with horse meat, but the firm received the most media attention and the bulk of the public scorn, leading to a drop in sales and a dip in its share price.

The supermarket didn't help matters when its customer care team posted a jokey "We're off to hit the hay" tweet during the height of the scandal, which many people thought made light of the situation, and demonstrated that the company wasn't taking it at all seriously.

In September 2015, the US Environmental Protection Agency discovered that Volkswagen had installed emissions test-duping software in its diesel vehicles, in a push to make them appear less polluting and plug the company's environmentally-friendly credentials. In fact, Volkswagen had been developing and selling cars that produced more than 40 times more emissions that was legal. Volkswagen eventually admitted to installing the 'defeat devices' in millions of vehicles, sparking the ire of the US and European regulators. 

Unsurprisingly, the lawsuits have come in thick and fast. So far, the company has paid out more than €31.3 billion ($36.9bn/£28.4bn) across multiple court cases. But Volkswagen hasn't heard the end of the issue. In May this year, Volkswagen lost a landmark lawsuit in Germany, with the country's civil court ruling that the automaker must pay compensation to a motorist, which sets the tone for how some 60,000 pending cases by other car-owners will be dealt with. In June, Florida and Utah won an appeal against the car-maker that means it could have to pay more billion-dollar fines in those states. While in August, Volkswagen lost its appeal against a UK group action lawsuit, meaning 90,000 owners of its cars could receive compensation by 2022. 

Casting doubt over its technological know-how and quality control processes, Toyota has been forced to issue a number of recalls in recent years, most recently when it recalled millions of Prius and Auris hybrids to fix power problems and 43,000 Yaris cars for bad airbag wiring.

The Japanese firm also recalled millions of vehicles over the summer of 2016, on top of the five million vehicles it recalled in May 2015 due to faulty airbags. And unbelievably that was on top of another three separate recalls made between 2009 and 2010, affecting nine million vehicles.

The app-based taxi service Uber has been beset by PR disaster after PR disaster since its launch in 2011. The firm has been slated for everything from accusations of discriminating against people with disabilities to price-surging during terrorist attacks and natural disasters to failing to run adequate background checks on its drivers and having its customer data hacked. Founder and CEO Travis Kalanick was also filmed arguing with a driver who claimed the firm was bankrupting him. Kalanick was ousted in 2017 and Uber has embarked on a long round of reputation repair.

Things haven't been going so well, however. Shockingly, the ride-hailing company received 5,981 allegations of sexual assault in 2017 and 2018, and in April 2019 the company was sued for $10 million (£7.6m) by a female passenger who had been sexually assaulted by a driver. While this year in California, drivers took to the streets to be demand they be classified as employees, rather than freelancers as they currently are, which would afford them greater protections. After a court battle, Uber won the right to continue to classify its workers as independent contractors in November, overturning a labour ruling in 2019 that gave gig economy workers employee status.