Hated for it? Hahaha. That's truly sad. One point: it's in the NU tier. Flareon has wonderful physical attack stats, but fails to have a movepool to support such. If anyone's giving you heat for hating on a rather pathetic pokemon, they're not worth your time or you can blast back and ask for them to try and win with a team in the DPtHGSS metagame with a Flareon, oh god, lol. Manaphy, Garchomp, and Latias are suspects right now and might all hang with OU for a while, so Flareon certainly isn't going to be doing anyone any favors.
It'd have potential if it wasn't so overlooked movepool and tutor-wise. But oh well~