I have used Lingo for over 1 year. I had stuck with them during poor service times including
one bad network box. Today, they called me to tell me that I have been using the "unlimited" service too much. I am not a typical user, so I must upgrade to a business plan or be canceled. They are giving me 14 days to leave or be upgraded. I have a teen at home who likes to talk, but it would have been nice to have them explain that we have been using more "unlimited" service than they would like us to use. When talking to customer support during my problems and as they kick me out, I have to speak with someone who speaks poor english from India. Well, forget them. So much for long term customer....Upgrade to SunRocket for me. At least when I call Sun Rocket with questions, I speak to an American.
1 out of 10 calls complete to
Mexico. Always the same answer from tech support "working on it" or "I've escalated", but never fixed and never a call back. Am looking for a decent Mexico unlimited plan. LINGO SUCKS and I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND to anyone calling Mexico
I lived in Europe for 10 years, prior to being transferred back to the States last July (2005). I was looking online for VoIP providers and saw that one had unlimited calling to Europe. As my wife is Swedish and all of our friends are in Germany, this was a no brainer. I don't know if
the people having issues have crappy, low bandwidth, internet connections, router problems, never selected the box online that allows the ATA to maximize bandwidth for voice quality, etc...but I have yet to have any problems with this service. My wife is on the phone to her family numerous times per week, I call my friends weekly in Germany, and we also have a universal number in another part of the US for my Teenaged son to receive calls from his mother and her parents. I have excellent service on all fronts. As I have not had a problem requiring Tech support, I cannot comment on waiting times. I would and DO recommend this service to coworkers, friends, etc. I make sure to ask them if they have a nice high speed connection first. I look forward to my next transfer back overseas, and having a US phone number wherever I go. (Can actually be cheaper than using the host nation phones, as most charge per minute for local calls.
I wrote a review a couple of months ago and promised an update - I couldn't be happier. Once
I was happy with the service I ported my number over, it took about two weeks. I have not had a dropped call and the sound quality has been very good, the odd echo but that's it, certainly better than my cell phone. Even when I was having trouble with my internet bandwidth the calls were fine. As long as you follow the setup instruction and go from the modem to the ATA and then to your router/PC then the ATA ensures the call gets enough bandwidth. Fortunately Comcast have now fixed their problem. The $40 a month savings are great too. I've recommended Lingo to all my friends and a few are starting to take the plunge.
I took the Lingo service for the European free calls - prior to Vonage having the same service.
The adapter was on the outside of my network, so was unaffected by our (light) internet traffic. Voice quality was simply terrible. There were many calls which were simply unintelligable - particularly international. I cancelled after 2 months, moving to Vonage - when I found another major problem with Lingo. You have to cancel 10 days prior to the end of the service period (at which time you lose service), otherwise they charge you for the full next period. So even though I called 4 days prior to the end of the period, I was charged for a full month of service that I did not receive. Apart from being borderline illegal, it's just a terrible policy. So even though this seems like an inexpensive service - it actually costs you more. Run screaming rather than choose this service.
At first my fiance and I thought we'd done the right thing by choosing Lingo. It was by far the cheapest way to call our out-of-state family and friends. It worked great for the first couple of months and we began recommending it to our friends.
Then, our Lingo box burned out. We spent over 30 minutes waiting on the phone for a live person and got transferred 4 times before a tech support person offered to send a new one. A month later, the box broke again and we went through the same thing. However, they were nice enough to credit us for the 2 weeks that we were unable to use phone service. (Although it wasn't even a fair trade for what it cost us to use our cell phones during this time). After the 6th month, our service went downhill big time. The call quality was so poor that we ended up using our cell phones for the "important" calls rather than our VoIP. Calls would drop in the middle of talking to someone- sometimes we would have to call the person back 2-3 times per conversation to complete the call. This happened several times in the middle of a technical phone interview for a job and was pretty embarrassing. Furthermore, the e-mail delivery of voice messages began failing too. We missed several messages that were recorded on our voicemail, but that we never bothered to check because the system had not sent us notification. I would not recommend counting on this if you are waiting for an important call/message. We also had periods, days at a time, where we were unable to receive incoming phone calls. People who called would get a busy signal, even though we had call waiting and were not on the phone. Some days we couldn't dial out at all; there wasn't even a dial tone.
Twice, we tried calling customer service from our cell phones when our service went down, and customer service number was also inoperable! (I have never called Lingo and waited less than 20 minutes to talk to a person, by the way. For these other reviewers who get to a person "immediately", I would like to know what the secret is please.) When we sent an e-mail to complain, we received the following response 6 days later: Dear XXXXX, Thank you for contacting Lingo Technical Support. We apologize for our delay in responding to your inquiry about not being able to make or receive calls. We experienced a brief network outage on April 11th which impacted our customer's ability to utilize their Lingo Services. If you are still experiencing a No Dial Tone issue please power cycle your Lingo Adapter. If this does not restore your service please contact us at 1 888 546 4699 for further troubleshooting.
For Credit inquiry please contact our Customer Care department and they will be glad to assist you. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Sincerely, Lingo Technical Support. We still have yet to see the credit. It's been 54 minutes, and I am still on hold waiting to talk to a CSR about canceling the service because today they announced that they are raising the cost of the service. We would have been better off spending the extra money per month for a regular phone line and long distance, or for another
VoIP service. We spent at least that much in compensatory cell phone minutes anyway.
I don't normally write reviews but I have been pleasantly surprised with the ease, quality and
savings of using Lingo. Both my wife and I have family in the UK and we were looking for an easy and cheap way of phoning them. The search by country on your site was excellent. I found a bunch of companies that have free calls to the UK and after reading the reviews and seeing the price ($20 a month!!) there was only one choice - Lingo. I must admit I did go in with some intrepidation not for the quality or reliability of the service
but I always have trouble installing any network equipment like routers and bridges. However installing the ATA was so simple. I spent 10 minutes reading the instructions, plugged the ATA into the cable modem and turned on the phone, gave it 10 minutes to setup and then powered up my wireless router. I had a dial tone and my internet was still working - you have no idea how surprised I was. I've only had the service for a couple of weeks but up until now the sound quality has been perfect. We have made dozens of call to the UK and locally and no one has noticed a drop in call quality. I haven't had the need to call customer services but I did have a couple of questions before I signed up and they were very fast in emailing responses, so I gave them a 5. Anyone who wants to save money should get Lingo. I'll post another review in a few months but I am so glad I took the plunge and got Lingo, it's going to save me close to a grand a year.
I connected the wireless router and the Lingo box next to where my phone wiring is. I hooked
the Lingo box up to my house wiring and it works great. I am able to use my fax machine and other wall phones. I have a battery back up connected to the router and Lingo box and don't loose service when the power goes out. My phone calls are as clear as when I had the conventional phone service. For the price and with the European long distance included, this service can't be beat.
Yes, there was some problems at first. The problems were mostly minor (fax not working,
occasional lockup). However, customer service has rectified each of my problems in a timely manner. I still keep my cell handy as a backup though. The cost savings have been fantastic. Calls to Europe and frequent long distance calls all for $20 per month! For me, this service has been as good as advertised...A nice change in today's world!
I have had Lingo for 3 weeks now and it has been awesome. I have Road Runner Cable modem and the I not experienced any sound quality problems. No one can tell the difference between my Lingo VOIP and my old AT&T land line. In reality, if you are aware that I am using VOIP, you can tell a slight difference but it is barely noticeable. I was expecting to have
cell phone quality, but it is far better. Connecting the service can be a drag. My advice - don't try to set it up yourself, call customer service to have them walk you through it. It took me about 1 1/2 hours to set it up with the help of customer service. There customer service was not too bad, especially compared to most other companies. It appeared they are outsourcing customer service to India - which I have no problem with, especially if it insures keeping my rates low. I went with Lingo because of the unlimited Mexico plan (unlimited call throughout the US, Canada and Mexico). My wife calls her mother in Mexico frequently. I was paying between $80 - 120 per month on AT&T local/long distance PLUS about $20 per month on prepaid calling cards. My unlimited Mexico Lingo plan cost $32 with tax. Needless to say, I am very
happy with the savings. The features are really cool too. The only feature I wished they had is the ability to hear my voicemail from a website (Vonage has this service). Currently, I can program my voicemail to email me an alert that I have voicemail or email an actual copy of the voicemail to listen to it on the computer. I am essentially acheiving the same goal, but I would like to track my voicemail via the web. Overall, I love my transition to VOIP. I also have friends on Vonage and they love it too. I went with Lingo because it was the only service that had unlimited calling to Mexico. They also have Asian and European plans. Don't believe all the bad hype that people write in their reviews. I guess if you are a technology moron, then VOIP may not be for you. But for the rest of us who have made the transition to the 21st century, VOIP is the way to go.
I have Lingo for almost a year now. This is my first and only VOIP so far. I ordered it to test it out for my friend and ultimately decided to keep it, ditched my landline by switching the number to Lingo. The journey so far has been great ...... As I can recall, I had problem ordering through the Lingo website because the cookies they set on my machine when I
started ordering got erased due to Norton web cleanup task before I finished submitting my order and I had to call in to order. VOIP router arrived in few days and connections were fairly simple. Initially I was experiencing frequent signal loss for Lingo while i was able to browse web. It turned out that I was having signal loss at Cable Modem due to usage of couple of signal splitters and having cable modem connections coming out of 7db split rather than 3.5db. It is advisable to get connection to cable modem with less signal loss using none or least number of signal splitters (In layman terminology, 3.5db has loss of only 3.5 whereas 7db has loss of 7) Once comcast person fixed it after making a service call at my home (and it did not cost me anything), the signal quality improved at my cable modem and I did not
experience any outage since then. I talk to my friends and family for as long as I want. I call my brother who is in UK for free. Most of the times, I save them money by calling them back whenever they call me. If someone leaves me a voicemail, it gets emailed to my email account from where email get forwarded to couple of email accounts (work, yahoo, google, pager, etc) along with the number from where the call came. I can listen to the voicemail on computer or call my voicemail to listen to the message. Lingo still lacks the features of Caller ID with name and though it is not a requirement but still a cool feature to have but I won't like to pay another $5 to get it. I want it free like other features. I was travelling abroad visiting my family during Christmas and took my Lingo adapter there with me. My family had DSL connection there and I connected my router and I was calling my family and friends in USA from abroad to wish them for Christmas and New Year. After
coming back from there, I ordered a Lingo box with $7.95 plan for them, tested at my home and then sent it to them. Now I am saving more money by calling them as a local call and Lingo to Lingo is free anyways so they can call me anytime they want. I also have set call forwarding from their phone number to my cell so I know they have called even when I am not home and call them back at my convience. I can say lots more about Lingo but most important it saves lots of money for me and has tons of features included in the price. BTW, after taxes and all it is less than $23 for unlimited calling to US, Canada and Western Europe. They still have to improve customer service because they lack a little there. It has improved over a year but then I have not called them much except initially and later few weeks back when I had to order second lingo box.
We used Vonage for over a year, but we tried Lingo because it is less expensive. We make lots of calls to Italy, which cost 4 cents extra per minute with Vonage, but are included in our $20/month Lingo plan. Lingo ordering and setup was smooth. Lingo reliability and voice quality has been better than Vonage, and nearly as good as our Verizon land line. For us, Lingo has been an excellent value for the money. I haven't needed their customer service, so I can't say anything about that.