I just filed a complaint with the IC3 (which is the FBI related unit regarding internet crime) as well as the National fraud Bureau, the office of the attorney general of California and the district attorney of Los Angeles, because this company must to be shut down !!! more people file, more weight we will have and the autorities will investigate them . I believe it is a one man operated company, they move a lot, the adress where the company is registered is a private residence where a Mr. Lee is living and he never had anything to do with this company. The adress listed on their website (on Santa Monica Bvd) is a virtual office where they only retrieve their mail. All the phone number of this company are unlisted and caller id blocked. I managed to trace few of them with adresses attached to them but, some are disconnected, some have an answering machine on, and some have Madonna music on... The company is hiding and moving from one adress to another one so nobody can trace them (I should say "him", as every single phone contact I had was always with the same person who changes his name everyday to make believe there are 800 employees in the company... Voice recorded proved me it was the same person!!!) They only have 2 server and I believe they are from a very small size. so to keep the flow of money coming in, they eliminate already paid customer to make space for other future victim ! They have a "F" with the BBB , because they have close to 300 complaint against them. when you live outside the country, like myself also, you are more at risk to be their victim. However Here is what happen to me :
13 month ago I sign up for a 30 month package which include a "free domain" and a 1 year automatic domain renewal option. Last month I suddenly couldn't log into my website. I contacted them by email and they responded that my account was into redemtion and that the sales department was going to contact me. Which they did, by phone , the same day. The Gentleman who call me on my foreign cell phone certainly never expected my caller id picking up his number (as it is unlisted and caller id blocked..) but the number came on my screen. He told me that they made sevearl attempt to contact me to inform me that my domain was going to fall in redemtion (which is false, I checked with my email provider and none of GISOL email went throught their system..) and now I will have to pay $399.95 redemtion release fee and $9.95 to renew the domain. I questioned the fee, he told me that GISOL didn't get one penney of tis money and that it goes all to....ICANN !!! I needed my website as it was my professional tool so I call back the next day the number who was on my cell phone to pay. The guy was extremely surprise when he pick up the phone, he was the same than the one I spoke with the day before. He told me that my credit card will reflect two charges : one of $99.95 to the order of allindomain and on of $309.95 to the order of GISOL... and he hung up ! I contacted ICANN to have some explaination, was answered that my domain was registered with allindomain and that their fee was certainly $90 to release and $9.95 to renew, so I assume that GISOL just screewed me from $309.95. I sent an email to sales and admin, to question the fact I was billed that kind of money and the fact that I had a 1 year automatic domain renewal option and that they didn't respected it and let my domain go in redemtion. Their answer was just unprofessional, agressive and threatening: "WE TOLD YOU THAT WE DON"T GET ONE CENTS OF THAT MONEY !!! Do you want us to cancel your account ? Sales departement"
I told them to do not cancel my account, that they didn't responded to my question, therefor I was filing a complaint with the BBB. Next email from them was : "Your account has been suspended. Please contact the admin departement to discuss your suspension" I call the number, the guy made believe he never spoke with me and he didn't knew me, he told me that their system was in upgrading so he couldn't have access to the file, and to call back after 5pm pacific time. I did... their office was closed. I call back the next day, when the guy pick up he reconized my voice , he hung up! itried again it was of the hook, then tried again he hung up again, tried again had an answering machine, thired again few hour later : number has been disconnected. I contacted them,asking to reactivate immediatly and they send me another email saying :"we are whiling to continue working with you if you contact the BBB and tell them tha our issues have been resolved". I did it, I knew I shouldn't had but I really needed my site to work, so I send them the proof of it asking them to reactivate. They answered one week later :" decision have been made by our management to do not provide you service. We strongly recommend you to govern yourself accordingly and to use the service of a lawyer for future correspondance with us." I cannot transfer my domain as I found out they never registered it under my name on the first palce but under their name and that "they were renting it to me"(dixto).End of the story !!! I am disputing the charges on my credit card, as I paid for a service they choose to do not provide less than 24 hour after payment, and I filled complaint to the IC3 (which is the FBI related unit regarding internet crime) as well as the National fraud Bureau, the office of the attorney general of California and the district attorney of Los Angeles, the NFIC, webassure, econsumer,and FTC. I strongly recommend to anyone who's having problem with this company to do the same, as I said above, more there will be people filing, more the authorities will look into and investigate them.

I am definitely up for a class action lawsuit. Listen to this sad sad story below, and beware!

I've been with Gisol since before 2003. As a poor graduate student at the time, they seemed to have the best deal and my trusted and well-respected Web Professor had been the one to recommend them. I in turn became a Professor and have recommended them to my poor students as a first web host. I feel awful now to have exposed them to such a scam.

I've had server issues with them in the past but nothing like what I went through recently in May/June 2007.

I tried to renew one of my web accounts online via their control panel back in March. Their control panel had a glitch and the payment apparently never went through. In May, my site was offline with no notice. I contacted their tech support and spoke with “Shaun.” He told me that I should move that site into my current hosting plan via their control panel. I did as he said, paid $53 to add the second domain name, and all was fixed. The next day my account was suspended and ALL my websites were offline, including a non-profit site I run for needy children, my personal website, and all my class websites I use to teach my University students.

I learned that Gisol said that this action THEIR tech support walked me through was not allowed and that they’d be charging me a $499 violation fee! On top of this, I learned that because I “let” my other account expire, payment was due and a Collection Agency was going to try to collect an additional $399 for that.

After an angry outburst, I nearly dissolved into tears with tech support over the phone. I live outside the US so just calling them costs me money. Amazingly THEY CALLED ME back in one hour. It was “Senior Tech, Shawn Alexander.” He said that the only thing I could do was upgrade to a pre-paid 3 year plan for over $700. Plus there was a $95 “upgrade fee.” He threatened that I could either do this, or pay the violation charges, risk my good credit rating with their Collection Agency, and remain with suspended accounts even though the primary one had already been paid for until May 2008. He told me I’d pay upfront now, but since the violation fees appeared not to be my fault, he’d give me 7 months free and in January I can get a refund. Because I had violation fees against me, this was “already in the system and he could not undo them.” According to Mr. Alexander, his plan for web hosting salvation via an unwanted 3 year prepaid account was the only way...

I asked if I could think about it because I knew of their increasingly poor reputation and recent F rating at the BBB. (The last time I had checked 6 months or so before it was a B.) He told me I had to decide NOW because “they charge violation fees on Fridays and if I waited, the Collection Agency would be after me.” He said that since I live outside the US, they would then have to go after my husband who is living in the US. Also, “The Collection Agency can’t be paid with credit cards so therefore my checking account details were needed.”

I KNEW I shouldn’t have given them this info over the phone but Mr. Alexander tried to placate my fears by giving me his badge number, his personal phone # (which is the same tech support number you can find on their website) and personal email (admin@gisol.com) that no one ever answers. He said that I’d only be charged once and that to abuse this information “(laughs) would be illegal!” Furthermore he stated, “This call is being recorded and a transcript will be available in my control panel. (Of course it never was.) He also explained, “The reason we have an F with the BBB is because we decided not to become a member.”

Argh. I knew I was being bamboozled, but they used my tired mind (in my time zone it was nearly midnight), scare tactics of a collection agency, and a lack of time to think it over all to hook me in.

They did provide the service and as I have transferred now all my domains to GoDaddy and set up hosting with them, I am only using Gisol's crappy service as backup. I plan to eventually cancel. I’m sure that if I try to get the supposedly promised refund in January it will never happen. In other news, one of my domain names is being held hostage by them. They will let me have it if I pay $500. I won’t pay! Thank goodness my other two more important domains were registered with other companies.

I plan to change my checking account info and eventually cancel my Gisol account. I’m trying to look at this as some kind of annoying unexpected car payment and move on with my life, but I am angry. How many other people are they scamming?

Class action! Class action! Class action!

If you like problems go to GISOL ! Otherwise stay fare away from GISOL ! Bad and not reliable servers, bad uptime, servers always down for days, zero customer support, sending email not possible, crashed data bases on the server, webstatistics dosn't work and so on. Endless problems every day with everything. GISOL is the worste hosting company I ever had in the last 12 years ! Stay fare away from GISOL !

After two a year of endless problems, I finally realized GISOL has zero customer support. I have a list of emails I sent them about the same issue going back 9 months. Email is horrible and a lot of major domains particularly aol and so forth completely block any email sent from the GISOL domains.
Most of my customers could not receive our email. Being new to the whole online buisiness i did not realize the damage this did to our reputation and revenue.
They automatically rebilled my credit card and i could not contact them to recover that money.
Phone calls are directed to India who tell you to email GISOL. Emails go unanswered. When I tried to dispute the charge with my credit card company, I enterted a 6 month protracted fight.
GISOL is a STRONG AVOID if you are looking for hosting...

I had been hosting with Global Internet Solutions (GISOL) for nearly two years. During this time I had several lengthy tech support issues. One issue resulted after they performed an upgrade (according to their on-line chat rep.) After the upgrade my site quit working. Their tech support insisted the problem was on my end. After a few weeks, I threatened to cancel and it was fixed within a few hours. The most recent issue started in April 2007 when I needed a quick hosting solution for a project at work. I decided to create the account with GISOL. On Friday (20 April 07) I completed the on-line registration and received an automated confirmation from sales.

On Saturday, 21 April, I received a call on my Cell phone about the site. The jest of the conversation was that since I was already a GISOL customer, I could not create a new account and would have to upgrade my existing account. I explained to the sales agent that the one I already had was for personal use and the new one was for work. He continued to explain the advantages of upgrading. I told him again these accounts needed to be separate. After he persisted, I told him to forget the new order if I could not keep them separate. He then (almost bragging) informed me that my personal site had been suspended pending upgrade and it would remain suspended until I upgraded. I told him I would not be upgrading and he informed me the site would remain suspended.

When I arrived home about an hour later I confirmed my site had been suspended. I then sent the email (see left 'email') requesting resolution and a call regarding the matter. This went unanswered.

I sent a follow-up email on Monday when I was unable to reach the sales department most of the morning. This email asked about the lack of response.

I made three attempts to contact sales during normal business hours Pacific Daylight Time. I finally contacted the tech support line and was unable to get assistance (other than the same telephone number to the sales department I had already been trying).

After a couple of more tries and letting the phone ring for a considerable length each time, someone answered the phone. I then went over the entire issue again. Same results, they wanted me to renew for 3 years and was even offering a ‘special unadvertised rate’. I advised I just wanted to either create the new account independently or cancel the order and get my personal web site back online (unsuspended). He confirmed once again, my account would remain suspended and I was not entitled to any refund for the remainder of my term (4 months). I even restated what he said to be sure I understood correctly, and he confirmed I did.

I went to the Better Business Bureau (BBB) site and looked up the company. On the site, there was an email address for bbb@gisol.com that was said to go to the VP of GISOL. I forwarded a copy of the email above and recapped the issue. This too went unanswered.

I filed a complaint through the BBB website on approximately 24 April and requested a copy of my report be sent to my personal email address but have yet to receive it. BBB did say allow at least 7 days, but I thought that was for GISOL to respond so I am hoping I still get it.

Finally, I sent two emails to be sure there was no question of the resolution sought. One, through the BBB@gisol.com and the other to the Admin@gisol.com both were worded:
" I am requesting one of two actions:
1. Restore my service that is already paid for ([my account ID omitted for privacy]) or
2. Refund four months of service."

Again no response.

-----------

On 2 May I received an email from ‘no-reply@gisol.com’ . This was a generic auto reply saying:

“Dear Michael Sansone,
Thank you for choosing GISOL, Inc..
You have signed up for the following plan: Premium 2007-01-05 FBS (Win)
We will activate your account as soon as we verify your billing information.
You will be notified by E-Mail after the verification. Then, you will be able to access your account through the Control Panel.
If you have any problems or questions, please contact our technical support at:
troubletickets@mygisol.com”


I sent an email to ‘sales@gisol.com’ trying to find out which account this was for and got no response.

On 3 May, I used the on-line chat but ‘Stanley’ was no help. He told me to send an email to sales@gisol.com’ (which I already had)

On 15 May, since I hadn’t heard from the BBB, I sent a follow-up email. They replied the following morning, with my complaint ID.

On 21 May, I checked the BBB status and GISOL still has not responded to the BBB complaint, my guess is they are waiting for August, when my contract will be up. No surprise here!

I had existing account that was going to expire in a few months.I signed up with gisol.com with linux unlimited plan for another 2 years at 7,95 a month, they called me the next day saying they upgrading the package to $12,95 and month and charging me for 3 years total $466.
I tried to tell him that i don't want and I want to stay with what i have now, so they canceled my existing account and told me it's to late and I tried to resolve the problem so they closed my new account and never refunded the money.
They never released my domain name,saying it's only good if you hosting with them.

I contacted them to cancel the plan cause I belived in what they post on their website " Anytime Money Back Guarantee " That is a false they don't refund money.They say they will credit you the money so you don't leave them.

BUT this is what they say "
" Anytime Money Back Guarantee" All of our virtual web hosting packages come with an Anytime Money Back Guarantee.This means that you may cancel your web hosting package at any time and receive _*credit*_ for the unused portion of your account _*minus
promotional fees*_, if any, will be deducted from the amount of
your _*credit*_. This means that the $466.20 that you have submitted for the payment of your account will be pro-rated according to our policies and provided as company credit to be used for additional or alternate services with GISOL, Inc.

It means nobody is getting they money back.

Do not go there they have customer service in a different country that hardly speaks English and take 3 weeks to fix every problem!!

Gisol is criminal company.....
I pay web hosting 6 march 2007 105 $ on gisol.com account with paypal but I never receved their service.......
Paypal must check your seller because gisol.com is criminal seller.....
Gisol.com is steal my money...I must call police and tell police how gisol.com steal my money....

I pay 105.35$ on gisol account but I never receved my hosting service
My case is:
Case ID: PP-261-163-016
Transaction Date: Mar 6, 2007
Transaction Amount: -$105.35 USD
Seller's Email: paypal@gisol.com
Seller's Name: GISOL, Inc.
My email is info@apartmen-garden.com so please people do not buy web hosting on gisol.com because gisol.com steal your money......and If you knew some good web hosting please tell me because I neeed web hosting........

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.

I have had extreme troubles with GISOL.com and I have been brought in to try and solve an issue for my client. Failing that, we have had to purchase the same domain with a slight amendment and use the GISOL CP to perform domain redirects and MX redirect until July when it will expire. Lets hope the domain is released and we can repurchase it. By the way, I have scoured the internet for reviews, probably out of 200 I have read, NONE are positive. Should be expecting a public review on GISOL similar to RegisterFly's problem and de-accreditation, released soon in the SiteProNews newsletter... Lets hope GISOL finally get what they are well and truly over due.

For those interested, the problem I have had is the release of the domain name purchased through GISOL.com although my client was invoiced for it and has payed subsequent renewal fees. My client has had continual problems with server issues with GISOL throughout there hosting time with them. GISOL fail to response to support requests and the online support technical department refer ALL technical issues (ie, nameserver changes and domain release EEP auth codes) to the sales department.
My client wanted to transfer the domain away from GISOL especially after receiving my news of GISOL after reading, what must be more than 200 bad reports; my client was told the hosting account could not support this (obviously they have no idea) and an upgrade to another account, 36 months in advance, total of $ 466 is required (dont worry, we didnt actually do that). Even tried contacting alldomains.com whom GISOL use to register domains and apparently they cannot do anything about it because they have an agreement with GISOL stating they will not make any domain amendments unless approved by GISOL (now that sucks) - could they be a GISOL partner???

STAY WELL AWAY!

Other than that, I wish you good luck finding a decent web host.