Unfortunately I’m forced to warn everybody again about Globat. I have said it before and I say it again, DO NOT HOST YOUR WEBSITE AT GLOBAT! If you are unfortunate enough to have your site hosted at globat.com; get out of there! (that is if you can)
My latest story about the Globat Automatic Upgrade Fraud is in one way different to the rest of the fraudulent automatic upgrades. In this case my customer got charged for an automatic upgrade 5 month AFTER he had moved out from Globat’s servers. Now another 49.95 have been charged to upgrade an account that doesn;t even has a login.
Bad? Yep, but nothing new and far not all. Like probably many other customers or former customers of Globat, my customer got also charged for an account that was never his! The domain name he is charged for during the past three years is available to buy! There is no account with that name on Globat, there is no login, nothing but a yearly bill and automatic upgrades.
In the US it seems to be perfectly legal to cheat people off this way. Globat.com accounts for 100’000 websites, multiply this number by 49,95 for an automatic upgrade every year. Now let’s assume that only ten percent of those get successfully ‘upgraded’ – Did i mention that those upgrades are totally useless and are included in any real web hosting account as standard anyway? – so, let’s say 10’000 times 49.95 equals 500’000 US$ in rounded numbers. While I’m sure it is far more than 10%, even a half million bucks must make a difference in judgment of right or wrong in the United states!
Globat Automatic Upgrades Fraud
For more than five years now I hear and see what they are doing, i have published articles about it and many other people have done so too. Did it help? Nothing happened, they still make millions of bucks by cheating their clients. And nobody can tell me that the authorities are not aware of this fraud. America what’s wrong with you?
Together with my customer, I now was about to contact the support at Globat to set things straight and get a refund on that illegally withdrawn money. I tried the live chat, where the windows just closes after you entered all your data and the whole story. Psychologically perfect made to piss us off. So i click the contact link at the bottom of their home page…. 404 page not found. What else did i expect? But I still haven’t given up yet; In the support section, (the link on the top of the page works) I found the support ticket, where we now submitted the following text:
My website xxxxxx.info has moved out from Globat on March 18th 2008, How in gods name can you charge me for yet ANOTHER AUTOMATIC UPGRADE on August 7th 2008. Please immediately refund these 49.95 to my account! My account at Globat is canceled and my login is not valid anymore. How can you automatically upgrade an account that doesn’t even exists on your servers? This is not the first time this happened. You als charged me for an account called lastminute-liveaboard.com for years. I DO NOT and NEVER HAD an account with this name on globat.com. There is no existing login, there is no website, nothing, but you charged me year after year! I also want this money refunded! There is no such website and the domain is available and for sale!
If we ever get an answer I will post it here. These automatic upgrades have to stop!
That’s one of the reasons why I use a debit card to pay for hosting and other memberships online.
I had a few friends who had hosted their websites on Globat and it took them a long time to sort themselves out. Down with Globat!