There is an old saying that if something seems too good to be true it probably is.  Well, the same thing definitely applies to webhosting companies.  I had a few bad experiences with cheap webhosting companies a couple years back.  The worst experience, by far, was with a company called Global Internet Solutions (or GISOL) back in 2003.  I thought it was over when I finally got my money back.  However, I am still seeing the negative effects of GISOL four years later through the eyes of other people who are in the same boat now as I was four years ago.

At first when I was dealing with GISOL I figured I could just get a refund and everything would be fine.  However, it was literally impossible to get anyone on the phone and I had a lot of trouble getting them to respond to my trouble tickets.  The more I tried to deal with GISOL the more I realized it seemed like it was a company out to rip people off instead of just a company with bad customer service.  I ended up doing a bunch of legwork to try to find someone at the company I could talk to.  I eventually found GISOL in the California Information Retrieval and Certification (IRC) database.  I also filed a report with the Los Angeles BBB which didn’t help me much personally.  In fact, they have 4 different Company IDs listed in the Los Angeles BBB and they all have “F” ratings.  They are listed there as Best Internet Services, G I S, GISOL, Inc., and Global Internet Solutions.

It was in the middle of trying to get my money back that I realized the problem was bigger than just me and it was probably happening to others as well.  They didn’t seem to just have bad customer services, they seemed out to rip people off.  It was at this time that I decided to start a website to warn people about the company in the hopes that other people would find it before they got into trouble.  In the spirit of the aolsucks.org website I decided to name it gisolsucks.com.  Every now and then someone would e-mail me or call me and tell me their personal horror story of dealing with GISOL.

I had thought about taking the website down over the past few years because I didn’t want to take the time to maintain it but always ended up deciding to leave it up in its current form.  It was the occasional e-mails I would receive from previous customers of GISOL that made me realize it really was helping people in some small way.  Within the past week or so I got a call from a previous customer of theirs who wanted to start a class action lawsuit against GISOL.  He created a website and forum for other previous customers to come together as a group to share horror stories and put together a solid case against GISOL.  If you are a previous client of GISOL you should visit their class action website at gisolclassaction.com.

This is where the story gets even more interesting.  This past Sunday (07/22/07), only a few days after hearing about a possible class action lawsuit against GISOL, I received a phone call at 10:54pm from someone who claimed to work for my webhosting company (the Caller ID was blocked).  They said that they received a court order to take down gisolsucks.com and they called me as a courtesy instead of disabling my accounts.  They mentioned something about a class action lawsuit and that taking the anti-GISOL websites down was part of the conditions of the settlement.  I asked if they could send me more information on the settlement or court order but they didn’t seem to have anything they could send me.  This seemed suspicious to me at the time but I took the site down anyway because I figured I was better off safe than sorry.  I made sure I had a good backup of the site first just in case.  I contacted my webhosting company today to confirm that the person who called me on Sunday was actually an employee of theirs and to have a copy of the court order faxed to me.  They said that they wouldn’t have called on a weekend, the Caller ID shouldn’t have been blocked, and that they would have opened a trouble ticket for it.  I thanked them for the information and decided to put the website back up to continue warning people about GISOL’s malicious business practices.

I haven’t had any “skin in the game” since I got my money refunded to me in 2004.  I am currently partnered with a couple reputable companies and am providing my clients with decent webhosting services for a reasonable fee.  However, I really hate to see others go through what I went through (or worse).  If I can help at least a few people with my gisolsucks.com website then the extra hassle of keeping it up will be well worth it.  I’ve heard many horror stories in the past few years about GISOL and it really frustrates me to know there are companies out there like that.

More Information:

• http://www.gisolsucks.com (My website detailing my personal experience with GISOL.  It is down right now but should be back up sometime tomorrow.)
• Caveat Emptor: Global Internet Solutions (GISol)
• Digg - Beware of GISOL (Global Internet Solutions)
• Web Hosting Reviews: GISOL
• http://www.gisol.ca/ - Another victim of GISOL

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 at 6:23 pm and is filed under webhosting, GISOL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.