31 Mar 08 An example of an anti-gisol comment – please join the fight!
If you are passionate about getting Gisol shutdown, please leave comments against them in as many places as you can.
There is a new Google service where you can search blogs for the word(s) of your choice.
I encourage EVERYONE who is reading this web site to use the service, and leave comments you feel appropriate.
The following is an example of a comment on a blog at ICANN.org:
[This comment was removed shortly after posting]
Submitted by report-gisol.com on Mon, 2008-03-31 23:14.
Gisol is a fraudulent company, preying on unsuspecting customers.
First of all, CANCEL the credit card you used to pay for Gisol’s services. I suggest forgetting about your domain names. Register a domain very similar and copy all your files over with a different host. If you get time, please look at my anti-gisol site and leave your experiences there…
31 Mar 08 Worst Webhost in the US still extorts freely
From USChallengeCoins.com:
Many webmasters are familiar with one of the worst webhost in the world, GISOL.com. This is the company new webmasters go to because of great rates and the most bang for your buck. GISOL or Global Internet Solutions goes by a few common names such as GHSOL, and MYGISOL. This small wonder of a company derives from Los Angeles, CA and is listed via a virtual office to lay very low key from unhappy webmasters and to protect them from unwanted visitors. What a lot of people in the U.S. don’t understand is the thousands of people that have been swindled by this company and the Federal Government has allowed this to go on for years.
When looking to get a website up you want to do it economically and quick and GISOL is the seemingly place to do it for 4 million people. They suck you in by running the 24 hour count down to the special to entice you into spontaneously purchase a $230 package that will get your ecommerce or blog rolling. In fact if you can actually get through their complicated policy agreement that changes on a daily basis without notification you will find that they own any creative idea you buy through them and will not let you leave with it. They retain all rights to your URL, data, and the ability to bill you as they see fit without consent.
One company they got was Small Wood Graphics (Veteran Owned and Operated), which own sites like Military Challenge Coin .net (now US Challenge Coins.com), Just-Tees.com, TcofAugusta.com, Challenge Coin Society.com, and about 15 other high ranking websites in the U.S. When GISOL found out that they had a gold mine of websites with revenue and traffic on their servers they came up with a phony reason to terminate the account. Once the account was terminated they proceeded to let the owner know that a quick payment of $1,400.00 will clear everything up and get the traffic rolling again. They spent at least 15 minutes talking about a high APR rate on a credit card is not a big deal and how they were missing a ton of traffic while the company was suspended.
After talking to the same guy 4 different times throughout the day nothing was done unless a credit card number was given. GISOL uses many techniques to wear down the victim in hopes to take your money and never return service. Fact remains they have multiple IC3 complaints, an F rating for the BBB, and many complaints in the State Attorney’s Office. This is bad news for any person wishing to use them for service.
In 2007 the rates at which webmasters have been targeted for extortion, misuse of fraudulent charges, and mistreatment under common web host guidelines have been up by 75%. Currently a potential Class Action Lawsuit is gearing up to remove GISOL from providing services that are well below par and stealing many American’s intellectual property and hopes of internet success. They claim to hold over 120,000,000 web addresses that they have stolen from innocent victims after it was too late to realize they themselves register the names through tucows and only lease it to you. This is to ensure you have so much invested that you will undoubtedly pay to keep it.
If you’re in the market for a web host save your money, dignity, and creative ideas by looking for a host that will give you the rights to the name you register, won’t charge you without your consent and is willing to go above the common guidelines that 99% of hosts offer. Many people that have agreed to a $8/month charge find themselves later on with a bill that amounts to almost $900 against their credit card. When they go to find out what happened they are only left with no answer, hang ups, and abuse by the “customer service” representative on the other end.
Americans need to be vigilant about web hosting services and do a lot of research before they buy.
31 Mar 08 I was ripped off by Gisol
I just want to mention I was ripped off. I never off set the costs with my clients so it was money straight out of my pocket!
I also had issues accessing MY data from a database hosted through gisol after they cancelled one of my accounts. I had to pay for a new subscription for a whole year to get access, script the data and then close the account (which took an hour or so). Then never saw the money for the refund!!
I just hope we can stop this happening to others
cheers
29 Mar 08 I already buy domain and host from GISOL (Global Internet Solutions)
Dear Sirs,
I already buy domain and host from GISOL company (Global Internet Solutions, inc.), that was on Jan 2004, and below is their full details, and you can see their website http://www.gisol.com
Postal Address:
GISOL, Inc.
7336 Santa Monica Blvd.
Suite #30
Los Angeles, CA 90046
Toll Free: + 1 (866) 244-7925
Phone: + 1 (323) 924-5915, (323) 852-9059
web: http://www.gisol.com
Email: admin[at]gisol[dot]com
Before two months, they don’t notify me about the expiration of my domain, and my domain go inactive, I try many times to contact them (by email, phone, online chatting) to renew my domain before delete it, but no one answer me.
On March 25, 2008; my domain go to another broker company, and I buy it from them on US$50.
My business with my clients go through emails by this domain; so-my business go down because of this matter for 2 months period.
And now, I have another domain with them; I believe that they will do the same thing with it; because I try to renew the domain for two years before the expiration, and it will be expired on April 12, 2008, but they didn’t reply to my emails regarding this matter.
In addition, I try to transfer the domain to another provider, but they reject the transfer, so-I am afraid of what will happen with my business, all my communications go through my domain by email.
Please let me know what I have to do? I await your kind reply on my email.
Kind regards,
Mohammed issa
27 Mar 08 Global Internet Solutions is fraud!!!! Stay away from Gisol!
Hi,
Im in the UK and have a very similar story to everyone here. After a year of very bad hosting they conned me into signing up again after holding my web site hostage and offering the cheap rate with rebate carrot. I stupidly gave em my card details and they charged me over $1000! Bit different to the $49.95 they told me. I can’t beleive they are getting away with it! What is up with the law in the states? Please tell everyone about Global Internet Solutions and the fraud they are getting away with. Ive reported them. I managed to get my money back from my card. Not sure if they got it back from gisol. I found your site on yahoo. Hope you don’t mind me leaving my web address here. Im done with gisol and got my money back to so im not bothered. http://www.fodderfinder.co.uk. Good luck.
Ps: I’m with the same host as you so although we both got ripped off hopefully great minds think alike this time!
26 Mar 08 I have been screwed by gisol big time.
Hello,
Well this is the 1st time I have been screwed with gisol. I have been with gisol for 3 years. My credit card expired and I decided not to update it with gisol so I left it like that for a year or so. I decided to sign up with them again on December 23rd, 2007 with a new login not the old account. I did the Electronic Signature and after I registred it said a person from gisol would call me to veirfy the account and to get my secuirty card number. I have the screenshots of everything as I registred because I smelled something fishy. I signed up for a 95$ a year plan for 1 year. The guy calls me up and tells me they are having a special for christmas for 49.95$ so I thaught it was a great deal and so I told him ok that he can upgrade it to that. 2 Days later I decided to check my bank account to see how much they charged me.
| DATE | NAME | WITHDRAW | BALANCE |
| 12/25/07 | GLOBAL INTERNET SOLUTIO 800-6188851 CA Date 12/24/07 | $2,293.55 | $498.15 |
So yeah… How is that possible? I called them and asked. They said I agreed to pay that much and that I agreed to sign up for 3 years with 49.95$ a month for their unlimited plan which came out to 2,293.55…
Ok does anyone else see a problem here???? Unlimited plan says 95$ for a year so what is this how many plans do they have? Only 2 thats right only 2 that you can sign up for.
I have a whole folder of pictures and e-mails from them. I fought this with my bank and my bank decided not to belive me…. I complained to BBB and California Law but they both got papers from gisol that my bank got which was saying “I agree to pay 2,293.55….” and they put my signature on bottom of it. They can’t put my signature where ever they want… But apparently they did and my bank and BBB were stupid enough not to match the signatures and see that they are EXACTLY same. I am sorry but how easy is it to sign you name Electronicly and make it perfect like the last one??? I don’t think its possible
They sent a bunch of papers to my bank saying that I am still using their hosting… Uhh no I took all the domains to a different host 2 days after this happened so thats not possible.
They took my Electronic Signature and put it on 3 different spots of papers making up what ever they wanted. They wrote that I agree to pay that much and put my signature under it…. I never signed that.
I don’t know what to do further on, I just kinda gave up. I would take it to the court but not sure if it’s really worth it.
Anyone have any suggestions???
Thanks!
23 Mar 08 Better Business Bureau (LABBB) F Rated Report for Global Internet Solutions
The following are excerpts from the LABBB (Better Business Bureau). As of the date of the post, there have been 437 complaints in the previous 36 months.
The highest rating assigned to a company is AAA; the lowest is F. Between those two ratings are nine others in order from higher to lower. The ratings are defined as follows:
F – We strongly question the company’s reliability for reasons such as that they have failed to respond to complaints, their advertising is grossly misleading, they are not in compliance with the law’s licensing or registration requirements, their complaints contain especially serious allegations, or the company’s industry is known for its fraudulent business practices.
Complaint Experience
Complainants allege that the company failed to provide the promised service, that customer service was lacking or unavailable, that the company failed to respond to emails or technical support tickets. Some customers complained that the service was slow or did not operate at all.
The company generally failed to respond to the specific complaint allegations, but in some cases did state that if the customer requested a refund they did supply one in accordance with the contract.
Government Actions
We know of no government action taken against this company.
Advertising Review
The company advertises their services for a low monthly fee with the representation that the offer expires within hours based on a count-down time clock displayed on their website. We believe that this company’s advertising is misleading. According to the BBB Code of Advertising, time limit sales should be adhered to, in other words, after the stated time period is over the offer should revert to its regular price. However, our observation is that the price has not changed or does not materially change.
On January 16, 2007, we wrote the company and requested that they substantiate the fact that the price they are selling at is in fact a sale price and not their regular price or to modify their advertising. The company responded by stating, in part, that: “When our special expires it is up to our Marketing department to either change some aspect of the special offer whether it be the amount of disk space, bandwidth, sub-domains, or any of the other hundred features that come with a hosting account. Sometimes depending on the response of the special offer they may decide to renew it for another day or numerous days. The package does expire daily but is renewed by them if the response to the package is good. The price that is crossed out is the regular price of the package.”
The company’s response was not sufficient to resolve our concerns nor did it substantiate that the price is a sales price.
Other Considerations
We know of no other matter or practice relating to this company that may assist you in your consideration of this company.
20 Mar 08 Gisol email addresses – any more?
The following is a list of email addresses you can contact GISOL on:
- admin[at]gisol[dot]com” href=”mailto:admin@gisol.com” target=”_blank”><a href="mailto:admin@gisol.com">admin[at]gisol[dot]com (this is the one they ask you to send everything to – you probably won’t get a reply)
- troubletickets[at]gisol[dot]com” href=”mailto:troubletickets@gisol.com” target=”_blank”><a href="mailto:troubletickets@gisol.com">troubletickets[at]gisol[dot]com (you probably will get a reply although it will be pretty useless – outsourced to India)
- sales[at]gisol[dot]com” href=”mailto:sales@gisol.com” target=”_blank”><a href="mailto:sales@gisol.com">sales[at]gisol[dot]com (you will probably get a reply if you want their services)
- orders[at]gisol[dot]com” href=”mailto:orders@gisol.com” target=”_blank”><a href="mailto:orders@gisol.com">orders[at]gisol[dot]com (as above)
- refunds[at]gisol[dot]com” href=”mailto:refunds@gisol.com” target=”_blank”><a href="mailto:refunds@gisol.com">refunds[at]gisol[dot]com (you may get a reply, but I imagine you won’t get one)
- legal[at]gisol[dot]com” href=”mailto:legal@gisol.com” target=”_blank”><a href="mailto:legal@gisol.com">legal[at]gisol[dot]com (legal dept – who knows if you will get a reply – it is monitored)
- global[at]gisol[dot]com” href=”mailto:global@gisol.com” target=”_blank”><a href="mailto:global@gisol.com">global[at]gisol[dot]com (the head honcho’s? this got a response from them)
- domains[at]gisol[dot]com” href=”mailto:domains@gisol.com” target=”_blank”><a href="mailto:domains@gisol.com">domains[at]gisol[dot]com (as listed on whois records for domain names at gisol – probably won’t get a response)
- noc[at]gisol[dot]com” href=”mailto:noc@gisol.com” target=”_blank”><a href="mailto:noc@gisol.com">noc[at]gisol[dot]com (dunno – mentioned on another site)
Any others for Global Internet Solutions? Please leave a comment below (or use our contact form), detailing where you got the email address from, and what response you got. Thanks.
19 Mar 08 Better Business Bureau and American Express been looking?
Looking through Report-Gisol.com’s web visitor stats, I came across the following two entries. Does this mean that the Better Business Bureau and American Express have been looking at the site? I guess they are not public ISPs….
19 Mar 08 Tips for sorting out Gisol problems
The following is a list of things to do when dealing with Gisol (Global Internet Solutions). It may change from time to time as I think of more things. Anyone with any other tips, please leave a comment at the bottom…
- Keep a record or diary of everything.
- Record all telephone conversations if possible.
- Keep all emails and correspondence.
- Cancel your card immediately.
- Contact your bank or credit card issuer immediately. Start a dispute/chargeback.
- Do not sign anything on-line.
- Do not cancel your account at cancel.gisol.com until you have got your money back. There is absolutely no point. All you are doing is saying you agree to not chargeback. You will not get a refund from them. It is at management discretion, and guess what?
- If you are contacted by Gisol, listen to what they are saying, then tell them you need time to think about it. Don’t be pressurised by time limits etc they are telling you. They will all be false. If necessary, just put the phone down on them.
- Do not sign for a letter from Gisol. We don’t know …['comment']… why they send these, but they send it for a reason. All that is in the envelope is a receipt for the amount they charged your card. If you have already, don’t worry.
- Take screen shots of and save all webpages relating to your account ie billing records etc
- Take screen shots of and save all webpages that you are directed to by Gisol ie SignatureLink etc.
- To take screen shots: press [PrtScr] and paste into an image editing program then save.
- If Gisol owns your domain and it’s in Grace period or Redemption period, let it run through the process and be deleted. Use the “backorder” services of Snapnames and GoDaddy to get your domains back the instant they are deleted and ready to be re-registered. There can be a wait of up to 2 months before you will get them back. See my redemption guide.
- If you really need your domains, don’t let Gisol know. They will hold it hostage.
- If you can get into your account, back up all your data as soon as you can.
- Register a similar name, or the same name with a different TLD ie .us .org .net etc. Use this while you are waiting to get yours back.
- If your bank or CC issuer sides with Gisol the first time, dispute the evidence and send yours back.
- Consult a lawyer (if you can afford it).
- Leave your story here, on other websites like this, and review sites. See Links.
- Report them to as many places as you can. See Report them!
- Contact as many companies who have dealt with Gisol in your case as you can. Visa International, Mastercard, SignatureLink, the registrar of your domain etc.
- Don’t be too upset, good things may come out of this in the end!
Any more? Leave a comment below….
19 Mar 08 Robbed Also
I signed up for a year’s service in March of ‘07 with Gisol for $73 per year. My website was disabled in November of ‘07 and when I called, I didn’t realize that I already had paid for service through March, but I was told that my account had expired and my credit card was expired. I gave them my updated credit card information, signed the “terms of service” contract. I then had the same experience as most of you and was suppossedly upgraded to the “umlimited” package and charged 1,798.20 to my Discover card after clearly being told that I would be charged less than what I was paying now. I disputed with my credit card and Gisol sent them a bunch of fraudulent documentation. The kicker was that they took my signature from the “terms of service” agreement and cut and paste it into a receipt document saying that I authorized them to charge 1,798.20. The signatures clearly look exactly the same. They didn’t even bother to change the time-stamp indicating that I had signed both documents at the exact same second! I sent a well-documented package to Discover clearly detailing this fact, citing web pages that show how Gisol has done this to others, copies of a few testimonies similar to mine and copies of my BBB and IC3 complaints. I recieved word back that I provided no new information, this was a “he said, she said” dispute and they always rule in favor of the merchant in these cases. They suggested I take legal avenues to get my money back. They said they don’t have a fraud department, just a dispute department, and this department seems to be a total joke. If any of you have Discover, get rid of them. They clearly don’t stand up for their customers, citing, “The merchant is our customer too.” Go with proven companies such as American Express who stand up for their customers. It’s funny that even the Discover card agent told me that American Express was the only company that made a “legal” decision based on evidence you provide. That’s clearly not true based on others who had cards with Visa, MC and even small banks that had chargebacks that were upheld. I will be contacting California’s Attorney General’s office but I’m not very hopeful. I received some advice from Caveat to continue trying with Discover, but everytime I’ve spoken to them, I’ve gotten the same runaround. I guess those are my only options left. Anybody have any other ideas?
19 Mar 08 I’m afraid that I may have been scammed in a similar way.
I’m afraid that I may have been scammed in a similar way. I am very distraught over it as well. I cancelled my account with Gisol with the intention of transferring my web hosting to GoDaddy. They called me on the phone and told me that I’m already set to have my account renewed and will be charged no matter what because I did not give them 30 days notice before the automatic renewal. So I was convinced to stay with the for 1 more year and they convinced me to do the business plan instead of the personal plan I had originally signed up for, by saying that it would be $49.95 per year with unlimited space. I went for it and gave them my credit card information. They said my credit card was denied, so I gave them my debit card information, thinking it was only going to be $49.95. I find out that I’m being charged $49.95 per month for 36 months with a total of $1798.20. I don’t even have that much money, so now I’m about negative $1200. The person I talked to on the phone did not elude to this charge at all.
This all comes at a bad time because I just recently found out that my mother is very sick and may not have much longer to live, and I’m only 27 years old! I want to fly home to Oklahoma as much as possible so I can see her before she dies, and so I can’t afford to just lose about $1800 all of a sudden. I can’t even sleep tonight because I can’t stop thinking about this loss. I contacted my bank and they said that it is still pending, so maybe I can convince Gisol to not go though with the charge. But after reading some of these posts, that doesn’t look hopeful. How could I be so stupid. Does anyone else have Bank of America and have had any luck blocking such a ridiculous charge?
18 Mar 08 “AboutUs.org/Gisol.com” – Was it you?
A little happiness for a change:
I’ve just come across Gisol on AboutUs.org Wiki. I think someone may be having a laugh at Gisol’s expense. Also, they have edited it under Report-Gisol’s name. Either they are trying to get us in trouble or trying to publicise our site. If you wish to use our name, please ask first.
Please feel free to admit it if it was you! Ha ha.
Just incase it’s been corrected, here’s a screen capture (click to enlarge):
Looks like the lovely people at Gisol have been keeping their eyes on us. Shortly after posting this, Gisol’s AboutUs page changed back…
18 Mar 08 Attorney General of CA contact. Letter transcript.
As posted on Raoul’s page:
Kris says:
Just received a letter from the Attorney General’s Office in California stating they are contacting GISOL. If you have not already done so, I urge you all to contact the AG Office. There are now 431 complaints against GISOL at the BBB.
You can file a complaint on-line at:
http://ag.ca.gov/contact/index.phpI have asked the BBB for copies of all complaints against GISOL and was told that the Attorney General’s Office would have to ask for them. Please mention the “F” rating for deceptive business practices as stated by the Better Business Bureau and the number of complaints they have received.
Thank you,
KrisComment — March 17, 2008 @ 10:41 pm
Letter transcript below:
15 Mar 08 Gisol robbed $1078 from my account. Please help
gisol cheated and robbed $1078.20 from my account late last year prior to our 2-year contract expired. They went a step further by deleting or removing my website from their hosting since then. So they got our money but with no hosting service… Please help out.
