Sorry, You Can't Buy Our Products
from the we-reserve-the-right-to-refuse-service-to-anyone dept
It seems like there must be more to this story, but a Network World columnist recites the story of his attempt to buy and test an email security appliance from vendor CipherTrust, where they refused to let him buy. Obviously, the company has the right to refuse to sell to anyone, but the story does seem fairly strange. The company first made him jump through a variety of hoops including asking him to first sign up for their partner program. So he just went to a reseller to buy the $5,000 box that way... and the reseller came back to tell him that CipherTrust refused to sell him a box, with no explanation at all. That seems like an odd way to treat a buyer who is clearly willing to pay for the product at the official price.
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I know I would never buy a product w/o reading an objective review and I suspect many echo my sentiment.
By not allowing him to review the product and replacing his review w/ PR speak isn't a good way to win business. People are so use to being able to gather information that they won't consider a product they can't really evaluate
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Re:
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He said he was "locked out" by their tech team though?
He planned to purchase this to test for another consumer, one of his clients. I don't understand why a company would refuse a sell unless there were major problems the previous time...maybe whatever caused the "lock-out"?
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Re: Locked Out
(__/)
(0.o) This is Bunny. Copy and paste Bunny into your
(")_(") signature to help him gain World Domination.
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Refused to let me buy...
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Re: Refused to let me buy...
There must have been a misunderstanding regarding this, NSIcom sells their JVM in blocks of 40 units, and not in blocks of 1000 units as you said.
We will be happy to sell you our leading Java Virtual Machine !
Regards,
Christine
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Smells like vaporware
Marketing puts out to press release product with what looks like a real ready to buy item.
Then guage the interest; if lots of hits, then go back to Engineering with a must build, already sold 500,5k,500k,5M units! gotta, gotta, gotta have!
Wait a few months and then you will get a Rev1 part.
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Re: Smells like vaporware
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PHB?
Either that or they are having a problem that they are afraid of having Network World find out about and publish. Either way, it looks like the smart move would be to avoid there products for the time being.
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Re: PHB?
http://www.networkworld.com/best/2006/022706messaging.html
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Re: Re: PHB?
http://www.networkworld.com/best/2006/022706messaging.html
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Companies Work to Their Best interest...
I found it strange but that was their choice.
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Smells more like meow mix
http://www.opus1.com/www/rj.html
I'm siding with Ciphertrust on this one. Guess thier new revs something people are sneaking around after..meow.
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Re: Smells more like meow mix
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sounds like a pissy reporter to me
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Re: sounds like a pissy reporter to me
I should note that the above comment comes from someone *at* CipherTrust.
I said at the beginning of the post it sounds like there was more to this story than what was being told, meaning it would be great if someone at CipherTrust came and told their side of the story. However, hiding behind an anonymous post disparaging the author wasn't quite what I expected.
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Re: sounds like a pissy reporter to me
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Total conflict of interest
Why would they then refuse to sell him a product a year later? Sounds like the company was on to something
The author "recommends" products as a consultant to customers. I would be fascinated to know if he has a relationship with vendors that compete with CipherTrust. I would bet my W2 that if he came clean we would find out that he does and I bet CipherTrust is aware of this.
Come clean Mr. Snyder -- do you or any of your affiliates have a business relationship with anyone that competes with CipherTrust? I would include family members as affiliates. Have you ever made money from one of their competitors?
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Re: Total conflict of interest
Why would they then refuse to sell him a product a year later? Sounds like the company was on to something
The author "recommends" products as a consultant to customers. I would be fascinated to know if he has a relationship with vendors that compete with CipherTrust. I would bet my W2 that if he came clean we would find out that he does and I bet CipherTrust is aware of this.
Come clean Mr. Snyder -- do you or any of your affiliates have a business relationship with anyone that competes with CipherTrust? I would include family members as affiliates. Have you ever made money from one of their competitors?
Again, the above comment comes from someone *at* CipherTrust, though they don't admit it.
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Total conflict of interest
Why would they then refuse to sell him a product a year later? Sounds like the company was on to something
The author "recommends" products as a consultant to customers. I would be fascinated to know if he has a relationship with vendors that compete with CipherTrust. I would bet my W2 that if he came clean we would find out that he does and I bet CipherTrust is aware of this.
Come clean Mr. Snyder -- do you or any of your affiliates have a business relationship with anyone that competes with CipherTrust? I would include family members as affiliates. Have you ever made money from one of their competitors?
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Total conflict of interest
Why would they then refuse to sell him a product a year later? Sounds like the company was on to something
The author "recommends" products as a consultant to customers. I would be fascinated to know if he has a relationship with vendors that compete with CipherTrust. I would bet my W2 that if he came clean we would find out that he does and I bet CipherTrust is aware of this.
Come clean Mr. Snyder -- do you or any of your affiliates have a business relationship with anyone that competes with CipherTrust? I would include family members as affiliates. Have you ever made money from one of their competitors?
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history repeats
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Re: history repeats
I seriously doubt this to be true. Of course, if this secretive and anonymous poster from an anonymous former company has secret information that he's suddenly sharing (but not giving any details), I can't directly refute it. But the odds are much higher that this is someone offering up a malicious lie. Of course, if there were some details, maybe one could judge the post.
Interesting, to me, is the strategy I observe on this forum of Ciphertrust supporters using mudslinging and smear campaigns to support their point. I'd ask anyone reading this to consider whether this behavior by "Ciphertrust fanboys" is in concert with what I reported in my column---and what this might imply.
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CipherTrust is suspicious
From what I can see, CipherTrust fears anyone knowing anything substantial about their boxes, competitor or not. If you think your competitor *cannot* get a hold of your box, you are fooling yourself. And you look foolish following your current line of PR.
For a security company to basically promote and follow a policy of security by obscurity and then make anonymous accusations about someone's professional integrity is morally reprehensible at the very least.
Companies that follow these strategies, are scared of close examinations of their products, and refuse be accountable, are usually either scams (see Gizmondo and the Phantom console) or have poor products sold aggressively. Both types are best avoided and CipherTrust seems to nicely fit the mold nicely.
Oh, and apparently you've never heard of the Streisand effect.
Chris.
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Not fair
In either case as I have pointed out at the other post on this site about this issue, I am a satisfied Ironmail customer and have been for about two years, both with the product and the service. Before we bought the product we also talked to a few folks who were using it, as is the norm, and they were very satisfied with it too.
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Maybe
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CipherTrust Position
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Re: CipherTrust Position
Come on, wouldn’t the "standard business practice" "that any company should follow" be to have a robust product that you are confident enough to throw at anyone, friend or foe, without fear of it breaking; then go to market and sell as many as you can?
One wonders which approach will generate the most "good press", the pussy-hating employee's comments or the "company position" so eloquently deployed by the SVP of 'Bovine Faeceology'.
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Re: CipherTrust Position
Since it seems CipherTrust products may not be reviewed a great deal in the future, they have unwittingly placed their competitors at a great advantage.
Way to go, Team!!
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Re: history repeats
You know.. at the very core of this whole thing, it boils down to the fact that if Ciphertrust had contacted My Snyder OR this forum with a very simple statement, none of this would have been an issue. I would certainly not hold it against a company to state, "We feel that Mr So&so is currently doing business with a competitor, and that it is not currently in our best interest to release a product into his posession at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and will certainly look into the issue if the request is indeed valid and the client is willing to sign non-disclosure and non-comete agreements."
Of course, such agreements do not offer complete protection, but the explaination and show of mature willingness to re-review the issue based on WHATEVER your criteria are go some distance with myself, and I believe most users.
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CipherTrust Support
1. They didn't want anyone other than their techs (at $1500/day plus travel) installing and configuring it.
2. I tried in VAIN to get a system restore CD from them and could not (even though it's referenced in the product documentation) to meet our 4 hour DR window
3. Disaster Recovery on this unit is abysmal
That's apart from the general day-to-day headaches of configuration changes.
All that being said, the product works. Don't touch it, hope to hell it doesn't get messed up and pray you NEVER need support on it, and it works just dandy thank you!
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CipherTrust
CipherTrust obviously needs to be hit multiple times with a cluebat.
For the company to have so little confidence in their product that they'll
only sell to select customer is just ridiculous.
And then to call that 'business best practice' is simply laughable.
I'll actively avoid any product from or with this company from now on.
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This story brings back some memories!
Where do I start?
We 'Alpha'd' (I wouldn't even say "Beta" based on the outcome) the CipherTrust box at Air2Web on our production email server... Not by choice (We knew it was probably going to end in tears, and we pushed back...), it was forced on us by upper management. CipherTrust was a sister company (Same investor/s) to A2W. Needless to say the 'black box' that CipherTrust brought in to install wound up crashing our production email server and left us scrambling around for a day and a half trying to unscrew it.
Prior to the test, we tried to get information on how the box worked (Interfaces, ports, etc...) in regards to Exchange and they wouldn't tell us; which I felt was odd since we are owned and managed by the same ppl...
Based on that experience, I was pretty sure that company was another dot-bomb, but I was pleasantly surprised to read about their later successes. In fact, based upon what I've read, they seem to be more successfull than Air2Web.
Ahhhh the Good Ole' Days! :)
I can laugh about it now, but I was very upset with them CipherTrust boys when they wadded up my exchange server!
;^)
Don't get me wrong, I wish them and A2W the best, but it seems like in some cases, they don't understand that there is a way of doing things properly. I agree with some of the prior comments that a degree of transparency is expected by all parties, and if any *company* thinks that their cloak and daggar antics are somehow preventing their competition from understanding or obtaining their product, they are very wrong. The competition is probably laughing at you while you trample current and future customer relationships with ultimately futile behavior.
By all accounts the product works well, and I'm glad to hear that they ultimately got it right (The product itself). I saw where it had won some awards. I am also an end user of the product at my current employer, and from my current 'end user' perspective, it seems to be working very well and is easy to use.
My $.02
:)
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