(ไธญๆ็่ซ้ป้้ Chinese Here)
//This article is translate by ChatGPT!!
I really think that EC-Council is a very poor company. Although I have not paid them any money, their actions are truly unappealing = =.
In May of this year, I participated in the free CPENT course offered by Taiwan UUU and successfully completed the CPENT certification after the course ended within one week. Simply put, this certificate claims to be able to rival the OSCP, but in fact, it is less than 1/5 of the OSCP. Over 85% of the exam is brute force cracking.
I think the worst part of this certificate is that although the exam provides a dictionary file for brute force cracking, in the classroom, the instructor explicitly reminded everyone that they need to manually adjust the order of the brute force cracking dictionary file, or it will take forever. Is this really a healthy exam method? I listened to the class myself and manually adjusted the order of the cracking, and all the brute force cracking was completed within 3 minutes.
In addition, I have other friends who didn’t pay attention to this part in class and wasted 7 hours on pure brute force cracking in the exam, which is really terrible. Since I published the article “Deep Analysis of CPENT Exam Experience and Comparison with OSCP”, even UUU’s teacher publicly cursed me in class. Fortunately, there are people I know in the class. For the inside story of that certificate, please go back and read the original article. Today, what I want to share is not the EC’s garbage exam part, but their administrative handling is also very poor.
If the score is over 90% on the CPENT certification, you can earn an additional LPT certification. I completed this certification exam on June 2, 2022, and submitted the report. The following email was received the next day, June 3.
In short, congratulations on passing the certification exam. The letter is asking for my address to send the physical certificate. Up to this point, everything makes sense. I also replied with the necessary information within two hours of receiving the letter.
Six days after the exam, on June 9th, I received a reply letter stating that my physical certificate would arrive in 3-4 weeks. OK, so if we consider four weeks to be approximately one month, then according to this information, I should receive my certificate around July 9th, right?
On June 22nd, approximately three weeks after I received my certification, I received another email from EC-Council, asking me to confirm my home address.
At this point, I began to feel a little strange. Was EC-Council pretending not to have received the previous email? Or was the mailing of the CPENT and LPT certificates handled by different departments? But the letter mentioned both the LPT and CPENT certificates, so maybe there was some problem with the operation? After briefly mentioning this in my reply email, I again provided my address and other information to EC-Council.
Up to this point, do you think everything was over? No, a series of absurd events was just about to begin!!
Two days after I replied, EC-Council wrote back to me, saying that my LPT certificate would take 6-8 weeks to arrive. OK, so if we consider eight weeks to be approximately two months, then in theory I should receive it at the end of August…right?
Next, I received my CPENT certificate on July 6th, sent via DHL. The packaging was a bit cut, but besides that, the certificate case also had knife marks on it. I didn’t really mind, because these things are common with international shipping.
On August 21st, I still hadn’t received any updates about my LPT certificate, so I tried emailing EC-Council again to ask for an update and find out if there was any problem.
Three days later, the official replied to me saying that the package had already been sent out, and the tracking number was “5106534344”. You can check it by yourself!
At that time, I checked the tracking number in the system and found that the package had been sent to Taiwan on August 5th, but was returned. I checked my EZ Way (Customs App) records and confirmed that I had not received any notification of this or any notice of the returned package. I don’t know what happened with the delivery, but EC-Council just gave me the tracking number and left it at that. I’m sure they didn’t even try to check the status of the package with the number, they just gave it to me. As of December 2022, it has been a long time since this happened, so I don’t have the results of the delivery inquiry saved.
After receiving the letter, I immediately replied to EC-Council to let them know that the package had never been received and had been returned. At this time, it was August 24th, about two months and 20 days after I took the certification exam.
After sending this letter, I received no response from EC-Council. Two weeks later, on September 7th, I sent another email asking for an update.
Finally, EC-Council responded to me, saying that they would check on the information and notify me as soon as they had anything. OK, this response seems reasonable, it’s just that it took more than two months to receive it.
Actually, when I received this letter, I thought that it would take them two or three days at most to check the information and no more than a week. After all, the certificate is not really useful to me (I have OSCP & OSWE), I just felt that it was my own thing and I needed to pursue it. So I just waited for them to take their time.
I need to insert something here. On October 18th, I received an invitation to share my thoughts on the certification exam from another sender, but I didn’t have much to say about the poor certificate, so I just let it go and didn’t respond to them.
On November 4th, they tried to contact me again to ask for a response and confirm if I had received their letter. I responded to them and told them that I thought the company was too sucked and refused to be interviewed.
I thought that after saying this, they would reply and ask what happened and try to understand and resolve the issue, but instead, they just stopped responding.
Time flies, the last letter related to the certification delivery was on September 8th, and it has been about 2 months since then. It is October 24th now, and it has been over 4 and a half months since I took the certification exam. Their investigation still has no results, so I sent another letter to ask. At this point, I was a little unhappy, so I emphasized the key dates. I have been waiting for this useless, garbage-broken certificate for over 4 months. If they still need to check, I think they should at least reply and report the progress to me… waiting for two months is a little unreasonable.
After this letter was sent, it was almost a month of silence before I finally received an EZWay customs declaration form on November 21st, telling me that I had a shipment that needed to be declared. The item being declared was listed as “LATHER FLODER & CPENT,” but I’m guessing that’s just a typo and it’s actually from EC Council, since that’s what the letter said. Is that correct?
After I agreed, I thought the drama was finally over and that I would be able to move on with EC without any more issues. However, when I finally received the package, I was instantly frustrated. The first issue was that they had misspelled my name as if they had copied it but missed one of the letters. I was close to losing my sanity.
Additionally, as I began to unpack the package, I started to feel more and more uneasy. In my memory, LPT was a framed certificate, but what I received was a CPENT instead??? This only added to my confusion.
I was so angry that I wrote an angry email to them using red and yellow color. I had waited almost six months for this, and now they were giving me a second CPENT? What the heck was going on here? I was missing the LPT, not another CPENT!!!
I’m guessing that the EC customer service representative could sense my anger based on the tone and color scheme of my email. They promptly replied within two hours, apologizing and double-checking my address and phone number. They said they would send it out within 2-3 business days and provided me with the tracking number.
I also replied with my address within 30 minutes of receiving their confirmation email.
All right… finally, finally, will everything be over in 2-3 business days?
Before long, 8 days had passed without any news of a tracking number. Just as I was preparing to send another email to EC, they sent another email to me, saying they needed me to wait 2-3 more days. I hadn’t asked them to send it within 3 days in the first place; that was their own timeline. Now they were dragging it out even further… EC really wasn’t surprise me at this point.
I couldn’t even get angry anymore, I just found it all so amusing and ridiculous. How could a company that can’t even do this one thing right be trusted with so many units in Taiwan, and why would anyone be willing to pay a protection fee to them?
Okay, I’ll wait 2-3 more days, but then another six days passed… I discussed the whole situation with ChatGPT and asked it to write a letter to EC for me. ChatGPT wrote an amazing scolding letter for me!!!
Hi,
I’m curious about the location of the EC-Council.
Is it located within the arctic circle?
I’m asking because it is currently experiencing a polar night there, so I’m wondering if it is still nighttime for you.
In most countries on earth, six days have already passed since the last time we communicated.
I would appreciate it if you could follow the timezone of most countries and continue counting days accordingly.
Thank you.
Two more days passed, and EC-Council finally responded, stating that they had sent it and provided me with the shipping code. In the email dated December 8th, they claimed to have delivered it, but according to the records from DHL, it wasn’t actually delivered until December 15th, after the scolding letter from ChatGPT had been sent. EC-Council was lying again…
I thought that my love-hate relationship with EC was finally coming to an end… the package was being shipped from India, and, based on my experience, it should take around 4-5 days to arrive. However, something strange happened…
In my experience, when a package enters Taiwan, it goes through customs clearance, and I should receive a notification on my phone through EZWay requiring permission. But this package was stuck at customs for two days…
On the evening of the 19th, I noticed that the status of the package had been updated on DHL’s website.
According to the status update on DHL’s website, my shipment was unable to pass through customs and was being returned to the location it was shipped from.
My certificate was about to be returned again!!! As you may recall, my LPT was already returned once on August 5th (according to the letter dated August 24th). This was going to be the second return. This was really impressive; were they stuffing a bomb in the certificate?
At this point, I had two thoughts in mind. The first was to scold EC again, and the second was to disregard EC and contact DHL directly to find out what happened with the shipment since it was already in Taiwan. I was tired, and this had been dragging on for over half a year. I figured that contacting DHL would at least allow me to communicate with a normal human being instead of a moron, so I contacted DHL’s text-based customer service in Taiwan.
The customer service representative verified my phone number, but I didn’t have the phone number they were asking for.
Okay, it was clear what the problem was. Were the address and phone number that EC-Council asked for in their letter dated November 29th fake??? DHL verified my identity through other means and confirmed that the package was indeed mine. They told me the phone number that was written on the package.
What kind of company makes so many mistakes and delays, with a previous instance of a returned package and almost another return this time? What does this company do besides tying up CEH and other things with Taiwan’s government agencies? Can’t they even copy a phone number correctly, like a first-grade student?
On the evening of the 19th, I re-reported the customs through paper, and DHL immediately accepted and processed it, delivering it to Taipei the next afternoon on the 20th. I am very grateful for DHL’s quick service, it is truly a first-class international courier company. Unlike this self-proclaimed international trash certification company, I almost thought I would have to wait until next year to get this certificate!
A large box, mostly filled with packing material, it turns out the phone number on top was wrong, hilarious.
In addition to the certificate, there is also a letter inside. Naturally, how could EC-Council possibly write an apology letter? The letter simply reminds me to pay the renewal fee in three years, otherwise the certificate will be invalidated. It’s a really meaningless and black certificate…
Finally, I attach the two CPENT certificates and one LPT certificate that I have on hand to end this six-month and 17-day journey with this irresponsible company. I have another friend who has a similar experience, but he received two LPT certificates!
Will I possibly pay the renewal fee in three years? Of course not, it’s ridiculous! In addition to these administrative procedures, please refer to my previous article, “Deep Analysis of CPENT Exam Experience and Comparison with OSCP” for information on where the unexpected shortcomings of this certificate lie.