Today we got a very aggressive telemarketer calling our sales line. He called from Nalpeiron and told the person answering the phone that I was expecting his call and was very aggressive. Would not take no for an answer. So I got on the line and listened to him begin his pitch. Of course I've never heard of him or his company before. So when I called him on treating our staff poorly and deceitfully, he came back with some nonsense about me working with someone else there and he was just going off their notes. I asked him to remove us from their list and ended the call.

You'd think that was enough, but no, and this is why I'm bothering to write about it. I almost immediately got an email from him. Not personalized, but the same kind of unsolicited junk I normally get. This email also had no opt-out information on it, putting them in violation of the CAN-SPAM act. Fortunately, the FTC provides an email address to forward these kind of messages to (spam@uce.gov). So kindly add them to your own list of companies that don't respect you or your business.

And just for kicks, I looked up their ISP and forwarded the message to his ISP's tech support.

The folks from Cbeyond never replied, by the way. No surprise.

We have a solicitor problem at C&P. Our building has a very visible "no soliciting" sign in front, but I doubt it's ever given any of them a moment's hesitation. We also don't have a traditional receptionist desk, so people can walk into offices without checking in anywhere. This has been taken advantage of long enough. Starting today, I'm going on the offensive. These folks who intrude on our workplace unwelcome and without anything to give us (I had to throw that in because La Salsa brought us chips & salsa today) are now being called out. Cbeyond, you're up first, and man did your sleazy rep earn it. I would not be surprised in the slightest to see on his resume "selling stereos from the back of a van in the Albertson's parking lot".

So here's the email I sent to their general information, media/PR, national sales, and regional sales addresses. I'm not expecting a reply, but in the interest of fairness, I'll post whatever I get (or at least summarize). Oh, and please don't give these guys your business.

Greetings,

I manage a business in Oceanside, California (near San Diego), and have had an extremely unpleasant experience with your business that I hope someone there would appreciate hearing about. First, I was cold called by your sales staff and though I don't usually field such calls, I explained that we had recently purchased a phone service and that we were happy with our ISP, so we weren't interested.

Apparently this was not sufficient, because we had a visit from a couple of your representatives at our office this week. We have a clear "no soliciting" sign on the building, but this did not dissuade them. They went through multiple unmarked office doors disturbing our staff (several trying to assist our own clients) before they got to me. I asked where they were from and established that they were here without an appointment and were indeed solicitors (which they denied). The one who spoke (the other being silent the whole time) went into a script about a referral program, despite my request he stop the pitch. I told him that we had already spoken on the phone and I explained that we weren't interested. He said that yes, we indeed had spoken and I had made that clear, but they wanted to come by anyway.

I calmly tried to explain that we have a no solicitors policy and at this point they had disturbed at least eight staffers from their tasks. He didn't listen to a word I said and several times just went back to his script. The rep was very rude and refused to leave several times when asked to do so. At no point was I uncivil, but he was impolite and sarcastically yelled back "don't work too hard" upon finally leaving. If this is how your leads are treated, I shudder to think how clients are treated.

My business supplies ad agencies, design firms, pr firms, and marcoms with enterprise software. We have our own sales force, but will never resort to aggressive cold calling and walking in on businesses uninvited and unwelcome. I'm sure you've done your research and found that you get success from it, otherwise you wouldn't do it, but I'm one of those cases that was treated so poorly that not only will my company never do business with yours, but I also intend to include this story in my corporate blog (with readership primarily consisting of IT decision makers).

I'll try not to appear too biased, but this new angle,though more relevant than Gates and Seinfeld doing the buddy thing, is an old tired argument. I guess in this economy and culture of remakes, sequels, and prequels, it seemed like the right time to dust it off and try it again. So much for their attempts to convince us they're hip or the product is superior. Now the message is "we're cheaper."

But what say you, system managers? Am I a shill like others? I think we can all agree that home users and business users are quite different creatures. While our users don't benefit much from the bundled software with a new Mac, it's nice not being obligated to install anti-virus software. I like that I can get a user up and running with a Dell (which we've had few problems with) for ~$300 (shameless plug for the C&P deals page), but we tend to be a Mac-based company, so everyone gets both. I guess we could end that with Parallels/VMWare. One more point for OS X.

Came across this review recently and it made me rethink what we keep in our own fire safe and how others use theirs. Ours is a much older model from Sentry with no data connectivity and it's just about full ( which is a good reminder to me to purge backups more often).

In the event that our automated backup scripts fail, we immediately take manual backups of our most critical databases, burn them, and throw them in the fire safe. Only once or twice do we take disks from there offsite as we already have a good system for our offsite backup.

Thank goodness we've never had a fire, but I am curious how well our safe would hold up. If we lost the contents of it, it wouldn't be the end of the world for us (due to our offsite), but we'd lose some old data that's not part of our current set as well as the raw video from our New User Training Videos (thankfully, they're still as useful as they were the day they were made).

So I'd like to hear from you other system managers. Do you have one or more fire safes? Onsite/offsite? What sorts of contents? And what's your strategy for adding contents and purging out as it fills?

First, our 10.2 upgrade was released last month. For those who haven't already read about it, check out the details here:
http://www.cnp-x.com/upgrade/

Usually we spend more time in-between upgrades, but there was so much we wanted to put into it that it was just too much for an update (and Leopard compatibility required a brand-new install). So in short, it's fully Leopard-compatible, includes a new web time card optimized for the iPhone, and many other enhanced or new features which primarily came from your wishlist submissions. You spoke, we listened. Win-win. Did I forget to mention it's free to anyone with current support? Yeah, it's free.

Second (and this isn't as new, but is worth pointing out). Our corporate homepage has been completely redesigned. CnP-X.com will be a product site for our current version, but the corporate site is the jumping-off point for all of our products and includes new information about the company's history, culture, and innovations. It will also have more job listings both for us (if you're interested in relocating to San Diego and doing some very different work, check it out) and our clients who'd like to post their own open positions.

Check it out:
http://www.clientsandprofits.com

If you're heading to the HOW Conference next week (May 18-21 in Boston), stop by and visit us at booth #517. We'll have some giveaways and announcements to make. And if you have more to discuss, we're available for meetings as well.

After HOW I'll be visiting clients in the UK. If we haven't already spoken to you and you'd like to meet, please contact us as soon as possible.

Telling a user that they've got an IT-related issue is usually received like bad medical test results. Next we usually hear the four of the five stages of grief (almost never acceptance). Denial, anger, bargaining, and depression. It doesn't need to be this way, but for some reason, almost always is. But why? Is dealing with IT that bad? Are we that inaccessible? So difficult to deal with? Are we really this guy?

The toughest cases are those where the company does not have formal IT staff (we talk to a lot of art director/IT guys) or worse, an outside consultant. We've used outside consultants here at C&P for various projects over the years (with varying levels of success), so we understand your pain. High hourly rates, blame-placing, vendor favoritism, and general zealotry come with the territory. But since they're often more cost-effective than learning the needed skill ourselves, we stick with them, as do many creative shops.

Bob Cringely recently wrote a great article about this here. His list of the 10 most frequent lies told by IT consultants at the end of the article is particularly good.

Now we know that there are some great IT consultants out there; we'd like to know more of them! Often agencies ask us for referrals and we don't have too many. We have a good network of C&P consultants to help with training and custom work, but very few who can handle the tech side as well. So we're looking for your help here. If you have a particularly good IT consultant, please let us know about it and we'll see about putting them on the website. You'll do your consultant a favor as well as your fellow C&P users.

ma-ni-ac: noun, informal
"a person exhibiting extreme symptoms of wild behavior, esp. when violent and dangerous : a homicidal maniac."

Is this really the guy you want serving up your bucket of wings and drumsticks?

C&P certainly doesn't look for maniacs, though is very focused on excellent customer service. We're proud to have unusually quick turnaround on email and under one minute average hold times. It can be frustrating dealing with our own vendors, since none are as accessible as we are. And even though we're overstaffed by industry standards for a helpdesk (this is partially how we answer the phone so quickly), that's the way we want it and we're still always looking for more quality staff. Interested in moving to San Diego? Drop us a line.

Unrelated, you may have noticed the blog got a facelift to look like it actually belongs on our site. Thanks to Marcelo from the helpdesk for the excellent work.

I knew arriving ~45 minutes before would not yield a great seat, but I didn't expect this. This shot is three blocks walk from the entrance. I never got in. Not even close. Even the overflow rooms were full. Oh well. At least I got the live feed on my iPhone from macrumorslive.com

Like last year, we are attending, but unlike last year, not exhibiting. While it was nice to meet many of you at the booth, Macworld is more of a consumer show than an industry event and it didn't make a lot of sense for us. Also, I'm attending the MacIT Conference this time (really looking forward to "DNS Demystified"). If anyone wants to meet up for a meal, drink, or brief chat, feel free to call or email.

First it was just Intel-based Macs, now it's everyone (in 10.5).