As promised, The Mokenman will post reviews on companies deemed to need some “exposure” about their business practices.
The first of these is Global Internet Solutions, a company based in California who provides Internet hosting for your URL. In fairness to GISOL, who hosted a site of mine over a few years, I must say, from a technological standpoint, they did well. The few glitches which arose were taken care of promptly, via trouble tickets.
Would I use GISOL again? Absolutely not! Why? Because no one works there! Try to contact anyone at the GISOL phone number (if you can find it). This is one of those companies who has apparently hired some offshore phone answering company to handle their calls. An actual company number, given to me reluctantly by the “offshore” person, was never answered, left unattended to ring out day after day. The “offshore” person had just one rehearsed line. He kept saying the only way to contact anyone at the company was via email. I explained to him repeatedly this was the problem. I had sent previous emails which were ignored and unanswered! He didn’t get it!
The problem for resolution was, I was terminating my service, with advance notice, so my service would not be renewed on its annual date, therefore I would no longer be billed. Although I sent several notices in advance, I was billed through my old credit card anyway!
What this company had done was to bury a rule they created, in the fine print of one of their web pages, automate everything, and bury their few human heads in the sand. The rule was, you could not terminate unless you went to an official form they could provide on-line, fill it out, and terminate in that fashion only. The problem occurs because it is next to impossible to find this “rule”, or a form. Any reasonable person would terminate service via an email, form email, or phone call. GISOL does not allow any of these, and will continue to take your money if you use any of those methods. No doubt any court in the land would rule against GISOL if the matter went to court.
GISOL has apparently had so much difficulty with this lame business practice, they have included warnings on their discontinuation instruction page, telling the customer not to ask for a refund through the credit card issuer, and not to contact “your bank”. That of course is the practical solution when one runs into a situation like this. It is a matter of filing a complaint with the credit card issuing bank, refuting the charges by submission of proof, which in fact I did.
Customer service is NOT one of GISOL’s attributes. In fact they represent the evolution of business in 2008, that being, cut costs by eliminating human beings to deal with human beings (who happen to be your customers), take as much money as you can, anyway you can, and do all you can to prevent customers from cancelling service, threaten them with “your rules”, in spite of the fact your rules are not fair, reasonable, or legally binding. If you loose one, another sucker will be along shortly!
Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
The truth will set you free!
**(see these sites for more on GISOL):
http://www.report-gisol.com/polls/
http://www.epinions.com/cmsw-ISP-All-gisol_com/display_~reviews
April 10, 2008 at 11:44 am
Hi Mokenman,
Thanks for listing my site, although an actual link would be better.
Your readers might be unaware that their fraudulent tactics are a lot worse than in your post. These include ripping people off for $1000s. They are a BIG problem. I am so insensed that they are getting away with it time and time again, that I am devoting every waking hour to helping get them sent down.
It is only a matter of time.
If you get chance, leave a post on my site.
April 10, 2008 at 7:41 pm
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