07 Apr 08 Web complaint registered with Internet Crime Complaint Center

Thank you for filing a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). Your complaint has been successfully submitted.

The IC3’s mission is to serve as a vehicle to receive, develop, and refer criminal complaints regarding the rapidly expanding arena of cyber crime. The IC3 aims to give the victims of cyber crime a convenient and easy-to-use reporting mechanism.

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April 7, 2008

Internet Crime Complaint Center

Dear Sir/Ms

I am a victim of an internet 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 had 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 GISOL had accepted a PayPal subscription payment for $71.40 on February 8, 2008 for an additional year of web hosting. However, GISOL neglected to advise me that GISOL had allowed my site’s domain name to expire on the same day.

I also found that my domain was registered to GISOL, not in my name as I was formely led to believe when I signed up for their service. As a result, GISOL has a lock on my domain name so I cannot simply move my site to another host and GISOL is completely unresponsive to my requests for assistance.

I have sent numerous 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, never answered or connect me to an outsourced technical support representative that claims to know nothing. 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.”

Most of the complaints against GISOL go far beyond dissatisfaction with their services. In my case it is my contention that GISOL committed fraud by accepting payment to host my website even though they had allowed my domain to expire thereby making their offer an empty promise.

I guess I am lucky as many other GISOL customers (there are literally hundreds of similar reports on the web) have been defrauded of thousands of dollars – a thinly disguised but calculated scheme to extort money from customers with “valuable” domain names to insure that GISOL keeps them current. Others. (like myself) without a valuable domain name (and protected by PayPal) are simply defrauded for the renewal fee and then dispatched with the 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. While my immediate monetary losses are relatively small, I have spent hours attempting to contact GISOL. Later, when I finally realized that my attempts were futile and that my domain name was not going to be restored, I was forced to register my site under a different domain name and move it to a new host which cost me additional losses. However, my out of pocket losses pale compared to the goodwill losses suffered because my customers can no longer reach me under my old domain name and my former search position has been forfeited.

If you need additional evidence I strongly advise you to simply search the internet for “GISOL”. You will be surprised at the number of complaints that this search term reveals and the extent of GISOL’s fraudulent conduct.

07 Apr 08 Global Internet Solutions Not a WebAward winner

Continuing the See if you can find Gisol’s “Awards” theme, I came across this post on the Webmarketing Association’s WebAward Blog.

It adds weight to the fact that Gisol are less than honest:

Global Internet Solutions Not a WebAward winner

We want to warn the online community that Global Internet Solutions claims “Global Internet Solutions has won the award from the prestigious Webawards competition”. This is in fact not true. They have never received any awards from the Web Marketing Association.

We have received several complaints regarding Global Internet Solutions and it is apparent from their unethical and illegal use of our logo on their Web site that anyone considering purchasing their services should be warned.

We will continue to pursue legal means to insure only Web sites that have legitimate won a WebAward are able to display the logo on their site.

Follow up note: A day after this posting appeared, our logo along with several others was removed from the site.

Posted by Catherine G on March 6, 2006 02:56 PM