LINGO VOIP Consumer Reviews - Page 3

I had written a complaint some months ago about Lingo and the rotten service that they had with their phone system. Frankly, I am surprised that no government agency has dealt with their crooked business practice. To those people who are considering changing their phone system to Lingo, please be aware that when you sign up with Lingo, you are hooked for two years and if you cancel the service because of poor service, you will get slapped with a termination fee of $99.00. Please read all the complaints from other people about Lingo before you jump in with their phone system.

Long distance calls to foreign countries like the Philippine never worked and I still received charges for these calls even though the calls were unsuccessful. Service interruption is very frequent. In fact, what prompted me to dump Lingo was when there was no dial tone for two days and there was no way of accessing their technical support using my cell phone because nobody answered. I e-mailed Lingo to complain and received a reply two months later. My case is now in the hands of my lawyer.

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN -- I have absolutely nothing good to say about this company, from the get go it was nothing but a nightmare. When I signed up I asked if there was any cancellation fees, if I were to cancel my service and the answer was a very clear "NO".

Well after being charged way more than their advertised monthly price, I tried to cancel my service, that in itself took quite a while, in the end I got a rude and threatening guy on the line. He proclaimed to be a manager/supervisor, who informed me that I had signed up for 2 years and that there is a $99.00 termination fee. I told him that I had specifically asked about anything like that and was assured that there is not, he then informed me that it would go to collection if I did not pay it and sure enough it did. This company is crooked and I recommend anyone who does not want a bad experience to stay away, far away!

MCLEAN, VIRGINIA -- I signed up with Lingo in June 2009. That was just the beginning of my nightmare. For many occasions in each month, the phone service would be out (no dial tone) and I had to contact Lingo with my cell phone to rectify the problem. In many occasions, I had to wait a long time before the technical support would answer. Problem #2: I could not make calls to foreign countries like the Philippines in over 90% of the time.

Climax of the nightmare occurred in early January when my phone service was dead for two solid days. I tried on many occasions to call Lingo using my cell phone, but could not get their technical support to answer. I terminated my Lingo service on January 10, 2010. My bill was paid up to January 24, 2010. Lingo kept sending me bill for $137.37 for termination fee and collection service fee. I was never informed of any termination fee when I signed up. Lingo's business practice is shady and unethical. How can a company like this be allowed to proliferate their business?

I ordered the Lingo account to call international as part of their world plan. They kept charging me for calls that was included in the plan, every time got apologies and assurances it would not happen again. It continuously did and finally I could not take it anymore and spoke with a supervisor to cancel. I was only 2 months into the plan and my account was heavily documented as to all my issues. I spoke with supervisor so that I would not be charged the cancellation fee and was assured by the supervisor they would cancel and I would not be charged.

I was and it was forwarded to collections. I called and they suddenly have no record of my not being charged cancellation fee. Terrible nightmare that I have paid several hundred dollars to get out of. Every time they credited my account for calls, they only credited calls, not the tax from the calls. Also had to end up paying the cancellation fee to avoid collections.

FAIRFIELD, IOWA -- In October 2009 I switched my phone service to Vonage from Lingo. But Lingo continues to bill me while they are not providing any service to me. All my attempts to cancel the account with Lingo have failed. The cancel-by-phone puts me on indefinite hold. An email to customer service regarding this came back saying use the cancel-by-phone option.

After talking to a friend, who had a similar experience, it became obvious that the only way to close the account was to block payments to Lingo from the credit card company. Now they have sent me a letter regarding credit card charge failure. "Please respond to ensure continued uninterrupted service." I have no clue what service they are providing me. If this is the way to interrupt Lingo "service" then so be it. Reading all such reports about Lingo, this seems to be the established business practice of Lingo.

Dear friends, please do not fall prey for Lingo services. Lingo will tell you that first month free, unlimited worldwide call, and lot of other blah..blah..blah. My humble request to you: please stay away from all VoIP services with unlimited international calls. Once you sign up you cannot cancel your service and they will never answer your call. I had my worst experience with Lingo and never, ever in my life I will come back to Lingo or to Vonage VOIP services.

I request all current Lingo and Vonage customers to cancel their service and try your old calling cards to make international calls because that will still work out cheap for you rather than paying $30 a month for VoIP and another hefty fee for cancelling the account and poor call quality. So stay away from all VoIP providers, they are cheating their customers because the VoIP service is new and do not have many laws and regulations. Thank you.

Someone sent me the reviews of Lingo, and having been a happy user of their services for over two years, I would like to offer some positive feedback. I noticed that one complaint was about FAXing - everyone knows that VoIP doesn't work with faxes. Someone complained about customer service, I have on occasion talked with their CS people, and they were always knowledgeable and helpful. I judge them by the quality of the VoIP interface and they are as good as any that I've used. Certainly, no provider will please everyone, but, really a blanket suggestion to not use them because of a few people having bad CS is silly. Call AT&T or Verizon and see what really bad CS can be!

Looks like its being run a bunch on imbeciles. Have no clue what is happening to their customers. I went through a harrowing experience trying to sort out my monthly bills with them. The customer service has no clue how to resolve, the email support does to work. The wait times are high and never received a call back when promised. They only apologize profusely every time I called but what good is it if it cannot solve my issue.

Absolutely ** service and when I wanted to cancel, they would just not let me cancel the service. Finally I removed my card from the bank so that they could not charge it anymore. I hope people read these reviews and make a sensible choice when selecting the VoIP provider.

ROWLEY, MASSACHUSETTS -- The service was never great, equal to cell phone I'd say. Then they raised the rates, which was annoying. But the horrible thing is that when the time finally came to cancel the service because it wasn't needed any longer, they would not allow me to cancel. The Indians in customer support keep giving the run around, first they needed the secret PIN, then only then they had to talk to me instead of my wife. Then they wanted to wait until they transferred the number to another SP, then they finally result in just putting me on hold forever.

WASHINGTON -- For those that are still having issues with Lingo, I have found that WA States Attorney's office will take complaints against them. If enough people complain, they may be able to address their business practices. I have been in Telecommunications for 30 years and thought I had seen it all until my wife got us involved with Lingo. Their product is marginal at best. Would not work with my airport (wireless) system.

I returned their product as instructed, never made a single phone call with their service. Now I have 6+ hours invested on the phone with numerous levels of "management" in India and I am still being billed and now hounded by a collection agency. This is after being assured several times that the issue was taken care of!! I would avoid this company like the plague!!!