Call me juvenile all you like, it doesn't bother me... :-) Being one of the younger folks in this industry, it's definitely not the first time. If you like Cogent, that's great, but don't attack me just because I think their sales reps are shady. 

I can assure you that the reps that were harassing me weren't just given a list of leads, they went out of their way to look through ARIN's new allocation list and spam the living crap out of people. With that said, I am a man of ethics and morals, and will do whatever I can to ensure that I do not do business with companies that employ people that engage in unethical tactics.  

I've had no other bandwidth provider engage in Cogent's tactics, including the three that I currently do business with, and have an extremely positive relationship with. 

On Sun, Sep 22, 2019, at 11:20 AM, Darin Steffl wrote:
Tim,

The reps themselves have not been unethical. They've not lied or been dishonest to me in the sales process at all. Comparing them to a shady used car salesman is not a fair comparison. 

They are likely given a list of leads and need to make so many cold calls to show they're trying to make sales. 

That's not to say some reps will do unethical things vs other reps like ours who were nothing but honest, good people. 

I think it's juvenile to avoid a company solely on reps reaching out to sell to you. That's their job. If their network and support is good and their cost is attractive, get over your petty reasons for avoiding them. You're stuck on one point and hold a grudge because "their sales process is shady". 

I've seen shady companies and cogent isn't one of them. Take CenturyLink where they quote a small business $100 for internet and phone but the bill is actually $197 after all the hidden fees and tax. That's shady. Cogent has never done that. They bill you exactly what's in the contract and not a penny more. 

Zayo adds hidden fees and BS reasons for why they collect them and there's no way out of it. Again, not a problem with cogent or Hurricane. 


On Sun, Sep 22, 2019, 9:53 AM Dmitry Sherman <dmitry@interhost.net> wrote:
They are not that cheap... 

Best regards,
Dmitry Sherman
Interhost Networks
Mob: 054-3181182
Sent from Steve's creature 


On 22 Sep 2019, at 16:49, Tim Burke <tb@tburke.us> wrote:

Ethical business practices are quite important to me... I don't care how their pricing is, if every one of their sales reps is on-par with a used car salesman, I want nothing to do with them. No other carrier I deal with acts in this fashion. 

If you're OK with cheap bandwidth sold by car sales rejects, that's fine... but I am most certainly not interested.

On Sun, Sep 22, 2019, at 8:02 AM, Darin Steffl wrote:
It may be unethical to pull emails from ARIN listings but their sales guys have a job to do and quotas to meet.

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. 

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. 

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. 

On Sun, Sep 22, 2019, 7:54 AM Tim Burke <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 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
Mobile: +972-54-3181182
Office: +972-74-7029881

On 17/09/2019, 3:25, "NANOG on behalf of Michel Py" <nanog-bounces@nanog.org on behalf of 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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