say i run a webhost
and i have a list of all domains hosted by XYZ hosting company.
is it ok to contact them one by one and offer them a better package?
you know there is tools now to know domains hosted by XYZ company.
or its something bad todo? even if XYZ did the same to you in the past (i feel)

I don't see any problem with such marketing.
However, you have to know that XYZ or any other firm may do the same to you...

This is highly unethical. Surely there are better marketing approaches you can take.

If it involved whois information, which I guess it does, isn't that an abuse of the whois servers?

I am not sure that the type of customers who would signup with you after that are the ones that you want.

People that switch that easily will not provide a solid source of income for your company as they will likely find a better deal else where.

Also its illigal and considered spamming.

Originally posted by Velostream
This is highly unethical. Surely there are better marketing approaches you can take.

Don't you receive a markating calls that offer you to change your Instrnat provider, cable company or mobile phone company? When you think a little, you see that it is a common tool of markating.

Originally posted by igalst
Don't you receive a markating calls that offer you to change your Instrnat provider, cable company or mobile phone company? When you think a little, you see that it is a common tool of markating.
Do they potential obtian those contacts by illegal/dubious means or are they simply cold calling everyone ?

Unethical IMO, I wouldn't do it.

Personally, I want to sleep at night knowing my customers are happy and not being cheated in any way. I'd like them to have an experience as good as I would expect from a host and more.

The way I see it if you're marketing to a list of businesses that you obtained from legitimate sources like leads databases such as infousa, D&B or other research sources and they happen to already be hosted, that's completely fine (assuming you're sending snail mail, NOT email - unsolicited email = spam). This is just trying to capture market share from competitors, it's common practice, done all the time.

BUT, if you're obtaining a list of clients through whois databases and other DNS tools, that is unethical and I believe illegal. You are not allowed to use whois information to market products to people. And if you're sending them emails that is SPAM - also illegal.

All the ways I can think of to obtain a list of sites hosted by a competitor and market to them are unethical. Unfortunately this is hard to enforce and it's really up to your own ethical standards.

Originally posted by ph23man
The way I see it if you're marketing to a list of businesses that you obtained from legitimate sources like leads databases such as infousa, D&B or other research sources and they happen to already be hosted, that's completely fine (assuming you're sending snail mail, NOT email - unsolicited email = spam). This is just trying to capture market share from competitors, it's common practice, done all the time.

BUT, if you're obtaining a list of clients through whois databases and other DNS tools, that is unethical and I believe illegal. You are not allowed to use whois information to market products to people. And if you're sending them emails that is SPAM - also illegal.

All the ways I can think of to obtain a list of sites hosted by a competitor and market to them are unethical. Unfortunately this is hard to enforce and it's really up to your own ethical standards.

If someone is caught doing this, what can/should be done?

Originally posted by Velostream
This is highly unethical. Surely there are better marketing approaches you can take.

I agree... think if that was done to you,would it be right them?

there are several ways to get clients without deliberately going to the door of competition

curious... where did you get this list?

I don't see any problem to that other than bad karma.

Even big corporations are "guilty" of that.
I called up AT&T on my Cingular phone the other day and within 2 hrs I had a Cingular customer service representative give me a call to ask me if I am happy with their service and if there is any problem.
They are spying on their customers, a breach of privacy I believe.

OK, this is not a very good analogy on the privacy aspect I admit , just something for you to think about. :D

Originally posted by igalst
Don't you receive a markating calls that offer you to change your Instrnat provider, cable company or mobile phone company? When you think a little, you see that it is a common tool of markating.

No I don't because I'm on the Do Not Call list. But, even if they were to call, that doesn't make it right, and I would be sure not to purchase services from that soliciting company.

That would be somewhat unethical, but fair game. I personally don't like people telling me my current deal isn't good enough. I (and many others) research and make decisions and to have someone tell me what I chose is crap would tick me off. :P

It doesn't matter if your contact method is E-mail or snail mail; it doesn't matter if larger companies have done this and are doing this; and it doesn't matter that someone has done this to you before. You did not get that list of customers via legal means. Those customers most likely did not grant you explicit permissions to use their data this way. This makes your advertisements unsolicited, ergo, spams. There's no grey area in this.

Now, whether spamming is illegal may be questionable, depending on your location and several other factors; but whether spamming is noble ... would be a much simpler question.

Glad that you asked on WHT first. And I hope that you will make the noble choice. :)

This kind of harrassment is one of those things that makes our current economical structures and their effect on society that much more unbearable. I might be one of a few but I'm sure not the only one who hates all such people, gets instantly annoyed when contacted by such a person or company and has the only reaction to it "no way I'm ever going to buy their manure". Spam is something most people agree upon to be an impertinence, but I put regular snail mail, advertising prospects, people ringing at my door, telemarketers who phone my number etc. into the same category - they are all vermin. Over the years, my attitude grew more and more negative to them, especially that they don't care about privacy, decency or anything else... years ago when telemarketers called I tried to be polite and decent, listening to their crap at first and telling them in a nice way that thank you, I'm not interested... but they were sometimes so cheeky and demanding that my blood pressure went up and these last couple of years as soon as I picked up the phone, I knew from the first 1-2 sentences they are telemarketers, firmly said "Thank you, I'm not interested" and put down the phone again. Good thing is that I found out about a year or two ago there is a service that lets me block all unknown caller IDs, i.e. either I see a phone number on the display when the phone rings, or it doesn't ring at all. 95% of telemarketers use hidden IDs so nowadays I get close to zero calls. But I still get snail mail spam even though I've got a big "ads undesired" sticker on my letterbox, and you know how the situation with e-mail is... this vermin is everywhere and the only way to stop this crap is that you not only behave hostilely (or at least strongly dismissive and completely cold) towards them, but also, even more important, you yourself never resort to this practices, no matter what. Yes it's only once in a year that you need something very badly and spamming or harrassment of some kind looks good for you, but before you do that, even if your ethics won't stop from it, don't do it because of your own interest: there are hundreds and thousands of people you are in contact with every year, and millions who can reach you without even knowing you. Imagine every one of them submits to the urge only once in a year, heck only once in a lifetime and you'll get an impossibly high number of spam you might get every single minute of your life if everyone would stay before the same choice and would do it "just this one time". The only reason you can live your life at all is that most of them never do this... don't be one of the creeps! Actually there is a bit of a good news in all these numbers if you think about it... comparing the possible amount of harrassment you get and the real amount, you'll see that the vast majority of the people are better than to do this crap. Meaning this vermin is a very small minority, so if you even consider using their unsolicited practices you actually classify yourself as the lowest of the low. Is this really worth the possible profits?

LOL sorry for the long rant/preaching. ;)

Originally posted by igalst
Don't you receive a markating calls that offer you to change your Instrnat provider, cable company or mobile phone company? When you think a little, you see that it is a common tool of markating.
Ahh, yes, but they don't usually target one particular company. It's a little diff.

This isn't kindergarten anymore, there is not Tit for Tat in this industry. If they did it to you, it's wrong. Hopefully your clients reported them for spamming, otherwise there is no other recourse one can take other than being the bigger person. Any unwanted e-mail or unwanted phone call are equally annoying, and if they do generate a sale wants stopping them from moving when the next E-mail or Phone call comes?

Unethical, but not illegal ;)

Originally posted by will7
Unethical, but not illegal ;)
No, but would you want all *YOUR* hosting customers stolen out from under you?

huh, legal or illegal it does not matter and those kind of things can be done only by people whom not awared from the word "honor" yet..
Even any customers wont care of those kind of offers

It is unpleasant but it is definitely not illegal or else all the telemarketers would be behid bars by now.
All I can say is that what goes around comes around.
Those companies will only manage to convince the price centered and unloyal customers to switch over. The moment those customers see a better deal elsewhere, they will switch to yet another host in the blink of an eye.

Originally posted by globalwebbrands
No, but would you want all *YOUR* hosting customers stolen out from under you?

No, I most definitely would not! I wasn't condoning doing it, I think business ethics are important and should be followed. I was merely saying that it is perfectly legal to do this.

I say that again: I am not condoning, nor recommending doing this!!!.

Customer that will come to you, is the one who seek cheapest solution. You may be happy for short term, however when your competitor offer cheaper price .... prepare to recieve cancelation emails.

Find quality customers. :)

Taking a certain company's customers is not only highly unethical but also illegal in many countries.

It's a apethetic sign of desparation when a company has to resirt to this in my view...

Originally posted by thomas.smith
Taking a certain company's customers is not only highly unethical but also illegal in many countries.

Thomas is right, I believe targeting a SPECIFIC company's customers can be illegal in some places depending on how you do it. However, target marketing using various forms of data mining is typically not illegal and in the business world it's usually not unethical. The data industry is enormous, and they probably have a lot of info about you. It's when companies abuse that data that it becomes unethical.

For example, you could buy a list of hosting prospects who currently subscribe to various hosting services. You could send them a postcard advertising your hosting service. Yes it's junkmail and maybe they didn't want it, but it doesn't make you unethical--especially if you believe you have a service they could benefit from. It's called marketing.

Typically, you can even target the direct consumers of a competitor. For example, last year Comcast made a huge national campaign to get people to switch over from Dish Network by offering $400 credit for anyone who traded in their dish. Again, that's not unethical. It's called competition.

On the other hand, you could buy a list of people who have over $20k of debt due to medical bills. Then you could send a door-to-door salesman to pressure them into a debt consolidation program that really doesn't save them any money. That's unethical because you're taking advantage of someone's unfortunate situation. It's called a scam.

I'm not saying I advocate any particular use of info for marketing...just that it's a big issue up for debate right now. I predict that the security v. privacy platform will continue to rise to the forefront of attention over the next decade as we see more and more of our private info get pulled into marketing campaigns, etc.

Here's a new twist for you...

What if the company lists their customers on their site with all of their web address links?

In my opinion you are asking for trouble if you do that... You are askign for your clients to be taken from you...

>In my opinion you are asking for trouble if you do that... You are
>askign for your clients to be taken from you...

That doesn't give you the right to take their customers. It is about the same as when you lay your wallet down next to you on a bench in the park. Does that give anyone the right to steal it ?

what if i dont target special company?

say i contact all local hosted clients by ANY company and offer them something they will benefit from because i know i'm giving them better service than the current hosting company they are hosted with?

is that unethical too?

It's still unsolicited advertising which is just another word for spam (which can never be ethical).

As long as we don't live in the same area -- sure, go right ahead and do it! :smokin:

Seriously though, I'm not sure if it's illegal in your area. But I know there are places in the world where if it's unsolicited, it's illegal. Illegal or not it's still annoying at best. I say, if people want that kind of information, let them come to WHT and do a search! ;) Don't spoon feed every potential customer and pretend that all of them want that piece of information, because you can't be sure that's true.

Just my NT$2.00, and yeah, I'm an idealist. :)

I am not sure I would worry about the Ethical Part. But, I would be more concern about being added to their spam or filtering appz.

Originally posted by D4C
say i run a webhost
and i have a list of all domains hosted by XYZ hosting company.
is it ok to contact them one by one and offer them a better package?
you know there is tools now to know domains hosted by XYZ company.
or its something bad todo? even if XYZ did the same to you in the past (i feel)
How do you know these customers will even come with you:
A better price will not necessarily make them move over.

This is what is called a backdoor tactic and i would advice against it!:rolleyes:

Originally posted by D4C
say i run a webhost
and i have a list of all domains hosted by XYZ hosting company.
is it ok to contact them one by one and offer them a better package?
you know there is tools now to know domains hosted by XYZ company.
or its something bad todo? even if XYZ did the same to you in the past (i feel)

Its called :spam:

Originally posted by Velostream
This is highly unethical. Surely there are better marketing approaches you can take.

why is it unethical?

Originally posted by PBFerrigan
I am not sure that the type of customers who would signup with you after that are the ones that you want.

People that switch that easily will not provide a solid source of income for your company as they will likely find a better deal else where.

Also its illigal and considered spamming.

1. there is no law against contacting someone elses clients. all the long distance ppl do it. lots of industries do it. so what.

2. do you know the definition of spamming?

2. do you know the definition of spamming?

I think most people would consider an email spam if it was received from someone they don't have a business or personal relationship with or if they haven't agreed to receive such advertising emails.

Usually the definition that applies to your business is the one your upstream sets.

spam = unsolicited commercial e-mail

Any kind of advertising you didn't ask for to be delivered into your mailbox is spam (both e-mail and snail mail).

Originally posted by LaurenStephens.com
why is it unethical?

Well, its against the law to phish whois data.