Re: Cogent sales reps who actually respond

[Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>]

> On Sep 22, 2019, at 06:02 , Darin Steffl <darin.steffl () mnwifi com> wrote:
>
> It may be unethical to pull emails from ARIN listings but their sales guys have a job to do and quotas to meet.

It’s not just unethical. It violates the ToS/AUP for Whois which is clearly attached to the results from each whois 
query.

Also, I suspect that given the volume and rate of Cogent SPAM, they are subscribed to bulk whois and/or one or more of 
ARIN’s update feeds. Subscribing to those requires signing a contract agreeing to the ToS/AUP.

I encourage anyone who is fed up with Cogent SPAM to forward copies of it with as much evidence as you have to show 
that the information must have been obtained via WHOIS to compliance () arin net.

The more evidence ARIN receives, the more likely it is that they can take effective action.

> Don't get mad at the sales reps, maybe think a little higher up the food chain. Each rep I've had has been very fair 
> and respectful. If I don't need anything new, I tell them to followup with me in 6 months and they do. At most they 
> send me a 2 sentence email to see if I need anything. That's something a good rep should do to make sure they're 
> always in the back of your mind and easy to reach. 

Why on earth not? They’re doing something unethical _AND_ against the ToS for the service they are using  in order to 
obtain the information. 

I get angry with the Sales representatives as well as higher up the food chain all the way to the top of Cogent 
management.

I’ve repeatedly told them to never contact me again and yet every time I register anything with ARIN on behalf of one 
of my clients, I get more Cogent SPAM.

> Also, just because you don't like their sales process doesn't mean their network is bad. We've had them for 3 years 
> and never had a single outage. The very few times we did call them for routing questions, they picked up the phone 
> immediately and knew what to do. 

On the other hand, just because their sales representatives and management are proven to behave unethically (at best) 
and well known to violate terms of contracts that are inconvenient to them DOES mean that I do not want to do business 
with them.

> That already makes them better than some companies that cost 5 times as much. At cogent pricing, you should receive 
> the worst support but it's damn good right along with HE support. Both are the most affordable transit providers but 
> offer the best support. The more expensive guys should get their crap together. 

Even if they ran the best network on the planet with the best customer service I’d ever experienced (they don’t in my 
experience and my experience differs greatly from yours), I still prefer not to do business with companies I KNOW are 
unethical and untrustworthy. If you enjoy the customer experience of doing business with unethical companies, then by 
all means, continue along. OTOH, if you want to see this behavior stop, the best thing you can do is vote with your 
dollars the way capitalism and the free market is supposed to work.

If you reward unethical behavior, you get more unethical behavior.

Owen


> On Sun, Sep 22, 2019, 7:54 AM Tim Burke <tb () tburke us <mailto:tb () tburke us>> wrote:
> That is just The Cogent Way™, unfortunately. I just had (yet another) Cogent rep spam me using an email address that 
> is _only_ used as an ARIN contact, trying to sell me bandwidth. When I called him out on it, with compliance () arin 
> net <mailto:compliance () arin net> CCed, he backpedaled and claimed to obtain my information from Google. 
>
> Gotta love these awful bottom feeding companies. 
>
> On Thu, Sep 19, 2019, at 10:05 AM, Dmitry Sherman wrote:
> > Cogent are spamming seriously, they call me from different phone number in Frankfurt and USA in holidays or at night.
> >
> > -- 
> > Dmitry Sherman
> > Interhost Networks Ltd
> > Dmitry () interhost net <mailto:Dmitry () interhost net>
> > Mobile: +972-54-3181182
> > Office: +972-74-7029881
> > Web: www.interhost.co.il <http://www.interhost.co.il/>
> >
> > On 17/09/2019, 3:25, "NANOG on behalf of Michel Py" <nanog-bounces () nanog org <mailto:nanog-bounces () nanog org> 
> > on behalf of michel.py () tsisemi com <mailto:michel.py () tsisemi com>> wrote:
> >
> >     > If you don’t like Cogent - explain.
> >     
> >     Besides the peering issues, they can't stop spamming. If after 20 attempts on the phone you have not picked up, 
> > they start to send email.
> >     They abuse whois. They are one of the primary reasons few people put their real phone number in whois.
> >     
> >     And I have never talked to that level of incompetence. Tell their sales droids that you want a link over RFC 
> > 1149, or that you need BGT (instead of BGP), they will tell you no problem.
> >     Don't even try to ask anything about communities or RPKI; they can't tell the difference between a router and a 
> > connected coffee pot. If you must deal with them, record everything.
> >     
> >     If someone has a cheap Asterisk trick so when the caller ID says COGENT it goes directly to Lenny I'll take it.
> >     
> >     Michel
> >     
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