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Review by Fillimerica 
Posted: 31 days ago
member for 1.2 years, 2 visits, last login: 19 days ago
 Lake Hiawatha,Morris,NJ
 $33 per month (month by month)
 about 14 days
 "Generally reliable service, good voicemail system"
 "Increasing cost, prohibited from switching to best plans, fees, support"
 "A decent technical provider near the bottom of the value proposition"
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(ratings match consensus)
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Have been a Lingo customer for five years and can echo the opinions of many long time customers. The service started out as a great value and they have steadily increased the cost and added punitive fees.
Last year I tried unsuccessfully to switch from the $22/mo plan to an annual plan (Talk-365). It defies comprehension why they wouldn't want to lock in a good customer willing to prepay but they won't! Have also seen the taxes and fees escalate to 50% of the base charge got me looking elsewhere for a lower price and an annual contract.
The quality of the calls were generally good, with clear reception except that sometimes the person on the other end would complain about breakup. I couldn't hear it on my end.
I only had to contact technical support about call routing issues a few times. Not much to say except they took the message and the issues got fixed a few days later.
Contrary to what many other reviewers have stated, my cancellation experience was quite positive. I dialed the 917 number, chose cancel and was on hold for less than 5 minutes. A nice CS person politely closed my account without much fuss. Too soon to see if they try to keep on billing the CC, but I do have their confirmation email. Since I am beyond the 24 month term, they didn't want the ATA back nor was there a termination charge.
Moving on to PhonePower, which has also been a very positive experience so far!
Followup comments:  PX Eliezer
Premium
join:2008-08-09
New Jersey | Why is Lingo so dumb? Excellent review.
Lingo has become less and less relevant in the VoIP marketplace.
It is almost as if they have a death wish.
I hope that you have a great experience with PhonePower! | |
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Review by curro
UPDATED: 60 days ago
member for 6.1 years, 904 visits, last login: 3 days ago
Seabrook,Harris,TX
$31 per month (month by month)
about 7 days
"Reliability and quality of voice are above average. E911 works!"
"Fees/taxes are as bad as traditional phone lines"
"Not economically worthwhile for the average residential user"
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UPDATE 9/29/09: Well after being with Lingo for over five years is time to move to 'better value for the money' VOIP companies. Lingo has really gone 'South' in terms of their cost and all the fees. Just take a look of my latest bill:
Federal Taxes & Fees: 0.19
Universal Services: 1.78
State Taxes & Surcharges: 1.82
County/Local Taxes: 0.50
Texas USF Surcharge: 0.96
Presubscribed Inter-exchange Carrier Chrg: 0.00
Subtotal for Tax and Surcharges 5.25
Regulatory Recovery Fee for xxx 1.99
Emergency Services Fee for xxx 1.99
Subtotal for Fees 3.98
Total Fees, Taxes & Surcharges: 9.23
Unbelievable!!! Back in 2004 it wasn't even three dollars! Yes I still need to call overseas but I am now trying CallWithUs plus Callcentric for incoming. In a few months I will do a review of these providers. Ciao Lingo ...
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I have been looking at VOIP for a while and I was going to give Broadvoice a try until I learned about Lingo through BBR and their three-month offer with unlimited calling to W. Europe for $39.90 ($29.95 activation+$9.95 shipping). It caught my attention their international plan because I noticed that on the average I already spend around $10/month to call Spain so I could see spending $15 a month for 500 minutes to US, Canada and W. Europe. Besides, their rates to other countries I was interested were pretty good too. I placed the order through a very helpful customer care representative in Virginia (Irina) and after I got the equipment the installation was a breeze following their instructions. I have to say that the voice quality is pretty good (as good as POTS on many instances) and the reliability is average with some improvement in the last week. I'd say average because at the beginning there were dropped calls when calling Europe and some incoming calls did not go through. Being new to VOIP I am impressed of the technology and I expect it to improve significantly in the upcoming two or three years. Oh by the way, the same customer representative who I ordered from gave me a courtesy call back to ask how is my service. Very nice indeed!
In general I like their web portal but there are some issues:
* There are a number of bogus calls shown in the log that although do not generate further costs to me they should be removed from their system.
* Every time I want to access various sections of "Manage Features" I need to reset my password. This is quite a nuisance. I haven't had a chance to call tech support on this so I cannot rate them yet.
I have not have a chance to test the caller ID yet but hopefully soon. I also like the fact that I can store up to eight numbers in their speed dial system.
Overall I am excited to try this technology and so far I intend to keep it especially if they continue improving their reliability and web interface. At this moment I do not see Lingo VOIP as a replacement of a traditional phone line or cellular service (which we have). I hope I can post an update later this year about Lingo VOIP.
Thanks for reading ... curro
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UPDATE 7/8/05: Well it has been over a year with Lingo and my overall impression is favorable with some comments. Lingo reliability is not A but more like a B+ because on the average you have to reboot the ATA once a month and also sometimes functions like 3-way calling do not work. Also so far I have not be able to do a call transfer (I have the original ATA made by Azatel). I call the first party then I press flash and get a dial tone, then I call the 2nd part and press flash again (so far so good). Everybody can talk to each other but when I hang up the other two parties get disconnected and this is gainst what Lingo says in their website.
At $22 a month with the international plan (we have family in Spain, Romania, Canada and other parts of the world) I am willing to put up with some occasional glitches. I am going to stick with Lingo for the time being. We have cell phone service for backup purposes.
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UPDATE 7/3/06: I have been with Lingo two years and I still believe they are a good value provided you use the international calls to Western Europe. I just tested their 911 service and it works as promised (E911). I have also referred Lingo to several friends/family with 80% retention. The down side is Lingo's customer service. Recently Lingo decided to turn off 'Selective Call Forwarding' to everybody without notifying the customers (Lingo claims fraud from some subscribers). Off course I was very upset about this and it took over three weeks to get this feature back for me! So if you are with Lingo and need customer/tech service it might take a while. On the other hand if everything works then just keep talking on the phone because the bill won't change much ($25 with all the fees) unless you call international numbers outside Western Europe/Canada.
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UPDATE 6/27/07: 'Knock on wood' the reliability is good for me after three years and Lingo futures are above average in my view. The caller id does not always show the name, especially when it comes to cellular calls (then again maybe this is expected). I have referred a couple of more folks and so far they have stayed with Lingo. I will continue to give them my business as long as they offer the current value or better.
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Review by Eutopiate
Posted: 86 days ago
member for 3.9 years, 152 visits, last login: 10 days ago
Georgetown,Williamson,TX
$40 per month (12 month contract)
"fantastic feature set"
"very dubious charges on the bill"
"complete control of your incoming calls comes at a price"
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I've been with them for years and have utilized their call treatments extensively and withs problems. It utilizes customized schedules and caller groups. The option exists to block "unavailable" numbers. You can also upload your own custom greetings. I expect if it's not the best, it's one of the best feature sets available.
I do intend to find out for myself though. A few months ago I got an email from them saying how sorry they were but they were being forced to collect more taxes and fees. These "recovery fees" have skyrocketed and they now collect a "county tax" which, as best as I can tell is never passed on to my county. I don't mind paying a little something if it's going back into my community but when I called the two local entities that might possibly collect this tax, neither had ever heard of Lingo. My bill has gone up more than $10 a month since I signed up.
The customer service is just plain awful. They respond with poorly rehearsed algorithms if it's a technical problem. For billing I just got a bunch of flabba-jabba listing possible but not definite added costs that go into their recovery fees and the insistence that no matter what I said, they were allowed to collect taxes for my county.
If you've got to have the complete control they offer, be prepared to pay what they want. Don't expect any justification of their extra charges.
Followup comments: PX Eliezer
Premium
join:2008-08-09
New Jersey | Lingo bingo These folks must be very clever to think up those various extra charges.
Lingo has a high proportion of negative reviews on this website.
Their parent company---Primus---filed for bankruptcy in March and emerged from it in July. | |
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Review by josmon
UPDATED: 87 days ago
member for 88 days, 1 visits, last login: 87 days ago
Fortville,Hancock,IN
$25 per month (24 month contract)
about 60 days
"Customer service is the WORST"
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Before I ordered, I called them to confirm if my home tel number can be ported. They kept me on 5 min hold and came back and said yes. I wanted to be double sure as many other companies said they can not port that number. So I told them that they are the first to say that they can port so are you sure and the response was sure. So I ordered the service. It took r4 weeks for the adaptor to show up and sent many emails and phone calls and there was no response, but for every email, I promptly got a customer satisfaction survey.
Later after almost a month, I got an email that my primary number which they had confirmed at the time of ordering can not be ported. So I gave them the option of another number. No response. Many emails no response. Finally last week when I called and after waiting and hearing the music for 47 min, I got a person who said that request was cancelled. So I told them that I want to cancel and the response was that I have to pay $99 to cancel. I told her that I ordered only because of the confirmation that my primary tel can be ported, or else I would not have ordered an extra line to cut cost. She said she will put an executive escalation.
Sent 3 emails asking about the decision on executive escalation and got one response saying that if I want to transfer my line I have to submit the forms again.
Finally called yesterday and after waiting and hearing music for 34 min got a person and he said he will transfer me to the accounting to wave the $99 cancelation fee and waited again for 17 min and finally the phone started ringing and the line was disconnected from the other end. I was using the land line to call to make sure that the line will not be dropped as in case of a cell phone.
So the Bottom line is, my experience so far, the customer service is THE WORST and you may get trapped.
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Review by Mango
Posted: 260 days ago
member for 338 days, 479 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Vancouver,BC
Contract price not specified.
"This company spams forums - avoid."
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This company has spammed at least eight forums (including this one) that I've found so far. First "browynscott" or "alisonfarell" makes a post that says, "I am planning to switch to Internet phone. Heard good things about Lingo, how is it?"
Then, "philipwinthrop" or "pwinthrop" shows up a few hours later and says that "as per their website and some of my friends", they have "got good rates and neat features". In one post, he said he may even sign up himself! If that's not a testimonial, I don't know what is!
In the spirit of keeping spam under control, I recommend you to avoid this VoIP provider.
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Review by helpdeskdan
Posted: 273 days ago
member for 273 days, 3 visits, last login: 111 days ago
Cheyenne,Laramie,WY
$21 per month (12 month contract)
"Nice when it works"
"Horrible tech support, illegal policies"
"Avoid it! Use a product you can actually cancel, google "Pay as you go VIOP""
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PLEASE - Read, use a search engine, you will find I'm not the only one.
I liked Lingo at first. It was cheap, and it worked well. But, then one day, people could not hear me. I could hear them, but they couldn't hear me. Just locally, and just outgoing calls - long distance calls were fine. Easy - a local carrier problem.
It took me SIX WEEKS before I could FINALLY get somebody at Lingo to actually try my sip number and find that the other guy couldn't hear. Meanwhile, me and everybody else in my town using Lingo couldn't call locally. Every time I call, I would get the same old garbage, "Is your adapter plugged directly into the wall? Because that could cause the problem, even though your long distance works fine." Yeah....
It took them another month to fix it too. No refund for the lost service.
One day, my adapter goes bad. I know it's the adapter because pings to my adapter are good, but ping THROUGH my adapter to my cable modem are intermittent. Test all cables, yada yada, (no voice cert, but I am a CCNP) and of course everything works great without the VOIP adapter. Call lingo, "Please send new VOIP adapter!" They wouldn't do it. They insisted it was a problem with my ISP! What idiots!
But, why would they care? Read on.
Hence, I go to cancel my service. But, they illegally change their policy. "We changed our cancel policy to two years instead of one, so you have to pay $100 bucks." I never agreed to that! So, they decided to keep all my money, well over $100 bucks. Not a darn thing I can do about it.
Great policy Lingo! It's more cost effective to make people want to quit than to stay.
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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 352 days ago
(review was emailed in)
Round Hill,Loudoun,VA
$29 per month (12 month contract)
about 3 days
"Not much"
"Deceptive business practices. Excessive Hidden fees and impossible to contact them via email"
"Stay away from Lingo"
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Lingo's advertise price is not what you will pay. There is 30% to 40$ in taxes and fees that get added on to your bill.
Lingo's support email does not work. I have sent them emails from my business, personal and Google webmail and they will all bounce.
Their phone features such as simultaneous ring does not work.
To add insult to injury, they recently retroactively updated termination fee for all new and also existing customers to be $99 and lengthened the minimum service duration from 12 month to 24 month.
Followup comments: nitzan
Premium,VIP
join:2008-02-27
 ·ViaTalk
 ·Comcast
| ETFs are pure greed. To add insult to injury, they recently retroactively updated termination fee for all new and also existing customers to be $99 and lengthened the minimum service duration from 12 month to 24 month. They can't legally do that. Although that won't stop them from trying... your best bet is to cancel and replace the credit card they have on file for you so they can't charge you the termination fee - and tell them to go to hell.
Another option is to dispute the charges with your credit card company - but that is not guaranteed to get you your money back.
--
Nitzan Kon, CEO
Future Nine Corporation | |
| helpdeskdan
join:2009-02-28
·LINGO
| Not much you can do Sure they can do it, if you've already paid for a year. They did it to me and the was not a darn thing I could do about it.
How can you stop them when they've already got your money? BBB? They are based in India somewhere, do you think they care? File a credit claim? For a payment you made 6 months ago - good luck. | |
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 Review by veloct
UPDATED: 1.1 years ago
member for 6.8 years, 2267 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Uncasville,New London,CT
$20 per month
about 5 days
"None"
"Tech support is horrible, new kid in town=growing pains,"
"They suck"
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When I moved to Uncasville from New London I had already decided to ditch SBC altogether since I've gone to Myeastern.com. So far, aside some minor issues (didn't have phone number and how to setup voice mail - my spam rules are too god =D ), it's been good. The sound quality is pretty good, sometimes you get the echo from digital lines but it's tolerable. The price is right and as long as they keep improving I don't see any reason to go elsewhere. So far so good, I'm happy with it.
Update (8/18): Reliability is not very good and the tech support people (in some freaking far eastern place) are just about the most useless example of tech support ever. I am cancelling them tomorrow. Simple as that, they have potencial but they also got a long way to go.
Update (12/31): After switching back to SBC for over 3 months with the same number I had through Lingo which SBC told me I could keep, now Lingo has issued my number to someone else. These people don't know their ***hole from a whole in the ground. I'm glad I don't use this service anymore. I wouldn't recommend them to people I don't like. They suck.
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Review by webpc
UPDATED: 1.4 years ago
member for 8.4 years, 501 visits, last login: 83 days ago
Bridgewater,Somerset,NJ
$24 per month
"International Numbers and International Call Quality"
"Customer support and 1st tier tech support terrible"
"Great if everything works and there are no problems"
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Update 2008
Well after using the service for 3+ years we moved the US business lines to Vonage (who we have been using since 2001). We picked up an Australian number through an Australian provider.
Our home number? Well we are now using Skype we have tested it for 6 months now and it has been rock steady. its also HEAPs cheaper
The reason we left Lingo? The last straw was when the lines stopped recognising DTMF tones and Lingo said they NEVER did, which isn't correct because the Lingo business lines had been hooked up to a PABX and except for the last couple of months you could navigate the system via DTMF. Lingo support were definite they never supported up. We also had ongoing issues with the Lingo ATA locking up when it was behind a NAT router and the time it took to troubleshoot just got out of hand.
The one redeeming feature for Lingo was the voice quality.
Original
To get going it took 2 ata's and 3 weeks of talking to tech support. Luckily 2nd tier know something and are helpful, 1st tier appear to know nothing and just follow scripts that definitely require reworking.
Customer support are great for providing disinformation. We took advantage of getting an Australian phone number, Initially as our primary number and was told by CS rep that all calls we made to other Australian numbers would be treated as local. Also was told by rep that the deal (3 months free) at the time applied to all plans. Have found out since that calls to Australia are charged at international rates, you cannot have an International number as your primary number, and the deal didn't apply to the basic plan!!
Have been trying to resolve the above for nearly a month have only received 1 email stating the position about the deal. Replied to the email asking about the wrong info provided by the CS rep and about not having the service for nearly a month, received no reply followed up still no reply. It appears silence is the name of the game!
when trying to get a copy of an invoice from the web site we just receive a message saying it's not available, when reporting outage to support we just get told its for our plan and calls (obviously!!). No details and no reply to emails asking when system will be back up and running. Also no opportunity to check the calls, especially as the charge is over $10 more than plan price and our Long Distance/ International calls over the past few years has averaged less than $3per month using Lingo's parent Primus.
The good side... the call quality is on par to Vonage (who we have used for last 2 years) for calls within the US but is much better Internationally (at least to Australia and UK). Call quality has also been steady since the connection problems were resolved.
End result get everything in writing and do not rely on what you are told by a CS rep and hope you do not need to interact with customer support. If you get technical issues get your case escalated to tier 2 support ASAP .
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 Review by HomeLvr
UPDATED: 1.5 years ago
member for 7.9 years, 2057 visits, last login: 35 days ago
Atlanta,Fulton,GA
$21 per month
about 3 days
"Price, Call Quality, Reliability"
"Everything now, had problem with box, refused to replace"
"Should have took a second chance on VoIP sooner"
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Hey,
Well lets see I dropped Vonage over a year ago because it was just horrible. Mostly because of my internet connection (Adelphia Cable), but those times when my connection was rock solid my connection overseas was not. Since then I dropped Vonage and Adelphia, got Bellsouth and Bellsouth DSL. Well I started to get sick of paying out the rear. My phone bills tripled (probably more). Then up pops the news that AT&T is now offering naked dsl. I said ok lets try VoIP again. I decided to go with my Long Distance provider, Primus' VoIP offering. Primus has been the only cheap international long distance I have never had troubles with in all the years one time or another of using POTS. Lingo has been excellent. I have used it all last night and today like crazy calling everyone. Better than my POTS line which is just amazing. And at last my overseas calls don't have issues as they did with Vonage! Lingo also offers a whole lot of free countries to call. If I use as much minutes as I have with POTS that right there will save me over a $100 by itself. Now that it's free I'll be using it even more! Im not going to budget my European calls.
Honestly Lingo I think is the best choice if you want POTS like service. It comes from a great company, Primus and hands down the best deal. Whenever I hear about free country calling I am worried, but I wasn't this time around since Primus has been around forever offering great international long distance. Quality free international calls to so many countries!
Thank You AT&T for naked DSL!
Thanks to you Lingo! for making the world a smaller place. I don't have to worry about calling internationally (all the ones I call are on the free country list!). Its now second nature to pick up the phone and call thousands of miles away! without a second thought.
One more thing, I rated the ease of installation a 3 because the box came before they registered it on the network. So I think. The way it seems was I hooked it up before their servers actually put my box online. I called tech support (5 minute wait or so) and they got me all setup real quick. Very Courteous. I know they were Indian, but his English and his control of the language was great. I could have sworn he was a car salesman at the local Mercedes Benz dealer.
UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE!!! :
Have had problem with Lingo Box, no service for a month. Gave them a month to try and repair it. Still wouldn't allow a new box to be sent out. Canceled my card, canceled service. Good thing I canceled the card too because they tried to charge the card next months service and now send me emails saying I need to pay and if I don't my service may be suspended (should already be! considering I canceled it)
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Question about occupied bandwidth