01 Apr 08 Copy of email to LA District Attorney regarding Gisol

Below is a copy of an email that I sent to the LA District Attorney regarding GISOL.

Head Deputy
High Technology Crime Division
Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office
201 N. Figueroa Street, Suite 1200
Los Angeles, CA. 90012

Dear Sir

I am a victim of a high technology crime perpetrated by Global Internet Solutions (GISOL). According to GISOL’s website, GISOL’s postal address is:

GISOL, Inc.
7336 Santa Monica Blvd.
Suite #30
Los Angeles, CA 90046

GISOL has been hosting my website for a couple of years. Since availability of the site seemed OK, I never asked for support so I was not aware of any problems until March 25, 2008 when my site suddenly became unavailable.

I contacted GISOL tech support the same day via their website’s support ticket feature and was told that “Your domain is expired its in a redemption period you need to wait till the redemption period gets over …and also you need to e-mail this issue to admin[at]gisol[dot]com“.

I checked my records and found that I had authorized a payment of $71.40 on February 8, 2008 to GISOL for an additional year of web hosting but a search of the web revealed that GISOL had allowed my domain to expire on February 2, 2008.

I also found that my domain is registered to GISOL, not in my name as I was led to believe. As a result, GISOL has a lock on my domain name so I cannot simply move my site to another host without GISOL’s assistance.

I have sent several emails to GISOL admin with no response. I have called all the phone numbers on their website plus others that I found on the web but the numbers are either disconnected or never answered. I have generated additional tech support tickets only to receive the same advice to wait for GISOL admin to get back to me.

The BBB gives GISOL an F rating per the following review: “Complaints allege unauthorized credit card charges, dissatisfaction with services, and difficulty implementing cancellation and refund policies. Most complainants are unsatisfied with the company’s response and most complaints go unanswered.”

But some of the complaints against GISOL go far beyond dissatisfaction with their services. It is my contention that GISOL actively commits fraud – in my case by accepting payment to host my website even though they had allowed my domain to expire thereby making their offer an empty promise.

Based on the facts presented here and similar experiences by other GISOL customers (there are literally hundreds of similar reports of fraud on the web), I further contend that this is a calculated extortion scheme by GISOL to force customers with “marketable” domain names to “buy them back” at an onerous price or to renew their hosting contracts at an exorbitant rate.

Others, (like myself) without a marketable domain name are simply defrauded for the renewal fee with the forced expectation that we will go away to make room for more lucrative “customers”.

It is depressing to learn that Global Internet Solutions has been committing such fraud on unwary consumers for several years. I would like to believe that justice will eventually prevail but how many more consumers will GISOL be allowed to injure before they are finally shutdown.

Jesse Xxxxx
(address supplied)