How stupid are you..?

Here is my victim's tale of GISOL.com hell:

It was the peak of the Dot Com Boom. I had a valuable domain name and million dollar investors.

I knew absolutely nothing about web hosting (that was then) and relied completely on their rep "Adam". He answered in one ring...

We spoke for about 40 minutes, maybe more. "Adam" was extremely helpful, and answered all my questions. I gave my credit card, and that was the last time they answered the telephone - period.

Without going into all the details (my experience equaled or exceeded any of the volume of trash reviews of GISOL found all over the Web), the result was that my investors were so unimpressed by my inability to even publish my site that they just walked away. Then the bubble burst and my golden ticket was lost forever when 9/11 and the economy took their toll.

I credit the physical distance between GISOL and myself for not being in jail today.

What really happened? Virtually every single nasty problem described on this site and a half dozen others ALL happened to me.

The one and only shining review found on some website was pathetically obvious that it was "Adam" or one of his conspirators contradicting the 75 or more lowest-possible-ratings reviews.

I don't recollect the exact words, but the FBI made it clear to me that I should just walk away. Maybe they are part of the Russian Mob!?!

Now for the hard-to-believe details of their operation:

I don't know how they operate now, but all indications point to the exact same everything as my experiences from about five years ago.

When "Adam" kept evangelizing their services, he was really just telling me everything I wanted to hear like a bobblehead doll in the back window of a car.

Once he got my credit card number, every single call in all cases and without exception were routed to a holding queue that lasted for about an hour before just clicking off.

I called from a friends' house one time innocently thinking I was just having phone problems or whatever on my earlier attempts to get through to the tech support he so fiercely promoted; they answered on the first ring. I gave someone my name and domain; he had the exact same voice, Russian accent and tone, etc. as "Adam"; he put me on hold, and never returned. Calling back = on hold for a long time before I just gave up. I'm sure it would have disconnected after an hour anyway.

Then I tried form a payphone. They don't accept payphone calls.

Back home, I was unable to get through again. When I was at my friends' house the next day, I tried again and could not get through. Of course. STICK WITH ME HERE… ARE YOU FOLLOWING THIS?

Then something dawned on me - what if I try again from a completely new telephone number. Guess what?

Ring - Ring - "Hello, Global Internet Solutions. How may I help you?"

I laughed and hung up and repeated the process from several other phones with the exact same result. I had someone call them from my telephone number at the exact same time as I called from a "clean number."

Suspicions confirmed! They answered from the new telephone number, but not my original line. Get it? Do you understand their simple strategies and techniques?

I began investigating in earnest just who I was dealing with.

Some startling results:

----- There is a main Russian man hidden behind the scenes - I think "Adam's: father.

----- "Adam" is really several personas. He changes his voice and name, pretending to be other staff members. That is why I put quotes on the name "Adam." I did what "Adam" did and I am sure still does - I pretended to be different people and changed my voice a little just like him. I told him I was one of the GISOL staff, and he started talking in Russian. On another call, he mixed me up with someone else being on hold and told me some sort of cock-and-bull story that contradicted the story he had just told me about outages while posing as a different customer.

----- I Googled their address and found a sympathetic neighbor who walked across the street to an apartment building, and he told me that all he saw through the window was a telephone sitting on the floor of an empty apartment.

----- There is or was a real company that had the name "Global Internet Solutions" located only three or four blocks at most away from GISOL. Would anyone believe that it was a coincidence? A principal there told me that they began receiving incessant complaints and threats from GISOL victims months earlier, but were unable to do anything about it because of something to do with the use of initials, etc. I don't remember all the details, but they were being ruined in slow motion unlike most of us victims.

----- Check their claimed awards - How pathetic - There is no link to the award pages themselves. Most people would not pay much attention, taking it at face value, but just look for yourself.
- Award #0 (2001 ~ 3) = CNET AWARD - Back then, they blatantly published the logo of CNET right on their home page claiming to be a partner and major award winner from them. Dan Miller, a senior executive at CNET responded to my "incredulous inquiries" and said "GISOL is using our logo against our wishes."
- Award #1: Check webhostdir.com, the issuer of a "WEBHOST DIRECTORY AWARD" claimed by GISOL - Google the term GISOL on their website and find only negative comment and paid-for advertising on their website by GISOL. Who is webhostdir.com any way. It could easily be GISOL or a partner for all we know.
- Award #2: The same award as #1 but most only glance, thinking it is another award.
- Award #3: webhostmagazine.com? According to Google, the term GISOL does not appear anywhere on their website - call them and ask. Then ask them to sue GISOL if they don't remove the logo and false claims. http://www.webhostmagazine.com/bg/shared.asp
- Award #4: ISPCheck Guaranteed! According to Google, the term GISOL does not appear anywhere on their website - Please, please call them and ask. And ask them to sue. www.communitech.net/corporate/accolades/ispcheck/

----- GISOL's poor Better Business Bureau rating page on the BBB's website. They give the company an "F" rating. Humorously, one of their emails is bbb@gisol.com.
http://www.labbb.org/BBBWeb/Forms/Business/CompanyReportPage_Expository.aspx?CompanyID=13133176

Here is the George Orwellian doubletalk they offered for my multi-week outage which lasted for the duration of my investor road show which was three months in the making…
ME:
I have a critical need to upload my site this second. No response from you, and none of your phones work.
Can you please email me with instructions to reactivate my site a.s.a.p?
I must do it right this instant, and MUST NOT WAIT until tomorrow or face loosing hundreds of thousands of dollars in financing.
GISOL RESPONSE:
"The account migration is temporarily postponed until further notice. We are still waiting for all of the customers on server #### to prepare for the migration and create their email accounts and settings on the new server. We want to make sure the migration is a smooth process for everyone and we are taking steps to prevent any downtime. You will be contacted by email informing you when the migration will take place. Meanwhile, your account will remain active on both servers."
THIS PARAGRAPH WAS THEIR ONLY RESPONSE - THEY HUNG UP ON ME AND BLOCKED ALL CALLS FROM EVERY NUMBER I USED CALLED FROM ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
My website was down for weeks because some unknown entities supposedly had to take time to prepare to migrate to some other server, none of which was in any way related to my website or hosting server.

Worse yet, I bet their server outage records today if any reflect no downtime at all back then.

That was my queue to leave, but it was too late for me. Hopefully, it is not too late for you!

Since then, I moved hosting accounts and have made as many as a hundred websites. I won't use this forum to market myself but I use Verio web hosting, a hosting service more than acceptable for all of my clients if not for Fortune 500 businesses. They have physical offices you can visit, with staff members using real first and last names. Their online payment services are very secure. My server has never gone down.

You would have to be one stupid f##cking moron to provide trashy GISOL with your credit card, OR trust them for anything resembling a for-profit business website. Pardon my French, but I am trying to save you’re a world of hurt.

I feel confident that when and if they were investigated by any police entity, they would just disappear after charging their massive volume of victim's still-active credit card accounts to the max.

How are you going to sue someone who won't provide a true first name, let alone last name, let alone a real name of someone hiding somewhere in the deepest, darkest depths of the Internet or the Third World or Russia or various states of the former Soviet Union..?

They are literally invisible and anonymous. Their IP phone lines can easily and freely forward to anywhere on Earth, including Kazakhstan or North Korea or even Iraq… how would you ever know? Scofflaws like this illustrate the inherent risk of doing business on the World Wide Web! Exactly WHO are you doing business with??? When forced, "Adam" gave me several generic, non-Russian last names such as Roberts, Smith and Johnson.

If you have already given them your card, don't hesitate for one second to get a new credit card number, and move to a new server regardless of cost - you will never see the money again anyway.

I was lucky - I only did hosting, not registration with them so they could not extort money or take my domain. They kept trying to bill my card, I think several times per month for over two years after transferring away.

I wonder how many people are too stupid, scared or otherwise to not pay for GISOL's extortion and threats like the following example:
It is necessary that you go to your control panel with in the next 72
hours and make adjustments which will able us to collect your outstanding balance.
If this is not done, we will take whatever further action is necessary to collect payment.
I went to a new telephone to reach a live person and said was in the neighborhood and wanted to drop off a check before it was too late. They CATEGORICALLY REFUSED TO PROVIDE A PHYSICAL LOCATION / ADDRESS.

Google the term "NosePilot" and see what happened to some kid who signed up for the unlimited account - a few months later, GISOL sued him for tens of thousands of dollars for going over the limit on his unlimited bandwidth account after his animations got public recognition and lots of views (and bandwidth).

After I fought with them over bandwidth issues, they changed their pages and policies after the fact to better match their unethical position, and tried to charge me when I got huge website traffic.

These scumbags will do or say anything to get your money.

We GISOL victims should push all of our LOCAL law enforcement agencies to prosecute them for false advertising, breech of contract, wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud, raqueteering and all other possible criminal charges. The problem is that most of the victims are suffering too small of losses to warrant these actions individually. Everyone really needs to ban together for a class action lawsuit - or a combined effort to bring this trash to their knees.

If every single one of us were to call the GISOL neighborhood police department, the collective pressure might lead somewhere.

Good luck!

And again… now that you have read all of this, and all of the other reviews and comments regarding the trashy anonymous boiler room that is GISOL.com, are you really even considering giving them your credit card number?

Wow!!!

How stupid can you possibly be..?




A personal note to "Adam" Johnson, or whatever alias you are using these days if you are reading this:
You and your criminal partners are truly an example of feces personified.