competing with the downline??

i received a call from the insurance company that i trusted my well-being to.. and got a funny surprise.. it was outright soliciting to top up on my current plan..

while the sales pitch was to be expected, i was a bit shocked that the head company is actually direct-calling its customers who were already being served by their field agents to push sales.. if i were an agent, i would be pretty unhappy with the situation.. how could the head company, which i worked for is actually competing directly with me too..

in essence, the head company has by-passed the goodwill and effort on the agents part to promote a sale to the customer.. in my opinion, this is just unethical.. if the product was handed over to the agent in charge and subsequently presented to me, then i would have less of an issue, but to by-pass the agent and at the same time mentioning his name in the hope of invoking any sort of kin-ship and relationship is a bit.. unseemly..

or perhaps i hold too high a standard.. since the economic crisis, everyone is trying to survive and these companies do need to still make those above-normal profits to be able to generate the cashflow to reward their top managements or top agents or whatever..

or am i being too cynical.. i don't feel comfortable about this..