2019 January, my startup was contacted by Peter Adrian from Frost & Sullivan that my company is being nominated to be apart of their Best Practice Award process. After confirming that the being part of the award was going to be FREE, I devoted my time in exchanging emails and phone calls with Peter Adrian for MONTHS. I believed him as my basic Google search showed that Frost & Sullivan was a well-known global company with a good reputation, so I was pleasantly surprised and at first, happy to have been contacted first.Upon finding out that weve won the Best Practice Award, I spent my own and my teams precious time editing their own report paper for publishing to their internal group. I was not allowed to have a copy unless I joined their online group which of course you have to pay a subscription fee for.Then, even more warning signs started to appear. After the announcement of our winner status, I was contact by Roger Frigstad who started to mention options of various packages and attending an award ceremony in Texas in mid September.I was told I couldnt talk about the award with anyone outside of my company unless I paid licensing fee ranging from $20-50K. I could not understand at the time why a well-known company offering prestigious awards would see the need to convince me of the value and prestige of the award.It comes to be that from subsequent conversation Roger that Id have to buy a “copyright” to the award to speak about out achievement. When probing further, I discovered that one actually has to pay for the award ceremony as well. Not only do we have to license the award to speak or post about it, we have to pay our own award ceremony. To even obtain an award plaque via mail (and not attend the award ceremony), Id still have to purchase a licensing package.There was no way around receiving this award UNLESS I invested some sort of money into this. I had a very negative reaction to this, and was extremely disappointed that such company had an okay reputation and revenue.When I reacted surprised as to why Id need to pay, I was then assured that the payment is not for the award itself, but rather for the right to ‘license the copyright’ to the award.The disillusionment culminated in the actual awards banquet held in honor of the recipients give you the impression that the actual award is handed out even if the ‘copyright’ has not been paid for, in which youd be fooled to attend the event and given no award or award plaque. As it turns out, only ‘paid’ awards are handed out (or, as Frost & Sullivan staff members prefer to call them, “licensed” awards).Frost & Sullivan is a scam and I hope with this, no one falls for their phony awards.

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