It depends on you and your company's ethical take. Personally, if a vendor is providing anything of value to me, I might as well be taking cash from them. This includes sporting events or concerts, meals, golf, xmas gifts, whatever. If you work for a company that the vendor wants badly for the money or the credential, vendors are going to throw all of these things your way. I keep it simple: if we need to do business, I have a perfectly good conference room and we can do it there.
One area that's more fuzzy is free passes to user events, i.e., a DreamForce or Oracle World. We clear these per our process and are fine to accept them because we were going to spend money on sending someone anyway. We saved the company money. Also: it was never indirect between individuals, it was company to company.
One area that's more fuzzy is free passes to user events, i.e., a DreamForce or Oracle World. We clear these per our process and are fine to accept them because we were going to spend money on sending someone anyway. We saved the company money. Also: it was never indirect between individuals, it was company to company.