19 Apr 08 Global Reach of GISOL scam
The injustice of GISOL has reached down to little ole New Zealand and I can only assume that if it has reached here then it is a global menace.
On the 4th March 2008 I signed up for a GISOL hosting account. $7.95 per month for 12 months. I authorised a credit card transaction of US$99.40 on my Mastercard.
5th March and at 9am I received telephone call from the very friendly GISOL representative confirming the plan and the charge – US$99.40. However (uh-oh!) the charge on my business mastercard was rejected. He asked if I had another card I could put the charge on and in my innocence I said yes i would put it on my personal card. Darn!
The friendly representative also said they had a special plan for US$45 which he suggested I use – at no time did he mention the term of the contract, at no time did he say 3 years or 36 months – I would not have signed up to that term because I was looking for a short term so I could trial the hosting service they offer.
Later that day we received an email in the office with the charge and the term on it. I observed a US$1700 transaction on my visa account. I telephoned Visa and asked what I could do to cancel the transaction.
I tried emailing GISOL to cancel the account – there were no replies to any of my emails.
I telephoned the phone number on the website and was informed the only way to get my money back was to cancel the account at cancel.gisol.com. I did more research on GISOL before I took any action and on the 10th March I cancelled my GISOL account.
What more could I do to warn people about this scam, I wondered. Every month I write an email newsletter which I send out to my readers and I also post articles from the newsletter on my website. So I wrote an article to warn others. While I was trying to get my money back it was important to me that others were warned and hopefully prevented from experiencing what so many of us have experienced. You can read the GISOL scam article on my website.
With no senator to write to the US Embassy seemed the right approch so I have written to the US Ambassador to New Zealand outlining the injustice.
The transaction is now under dispute from my bank and I’ll let you know how we get on.
