This is here to let anyone researching the Lingo broadband phone
system know how a customer feels about their service.
After signing up with Lingo I was unable to complete any faxes nor
could I connect a work-related dialup device correctly. The line
quality was terrible. Callers frequently complained about echoes and
dropped signals. By dropped signals I mean that the person could hear
everything you said except for the last word (before a pause). On top
of that there were several times that there was not a dialtone. I had
to reset the phone adapter numerous times just to get a dialtone. I
also had several dropped calls similar to what a cell phone would do
if you lost signal suddenly.
When I contacted Lingo's customer support via their website e-mail
(24hr response time according to website) it took them four days to
get back to me. I followed the directions to allow for a
configuration change on my phone adapter and was still having all of
these problems and more. On top of that they wanted me to ping about
ten sites to see if their routing was the problem. Sorry it's sure as
hell not worth the hassle.
On top of all this they charged me $39 to disconnect so you see they
make more money in the short term to have you disconnected. My
feeling is that they really don't care if it works right for me
because they make their money anyway. It all sounds like a great deal
in the beginning at $19.95, but it is all a scam in my opinion.
My recommendation is to stay as far away from this company as is
humanly possible.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If your sentences get cut off on the
last word before a pause, then make the 'last word' in each sentence
be 'pause'. i.e. your sentence, "How are you today pause" (then pause
for reply), "I am doing fine, thank you pause" (then pause again for
reply). So all you lose is the 'filler' word 'pause' each time. It is
a crummy work-around I know, but it would do the job. I've never heard
that particular complaint about VOIP before. I have heard that
speech gets broken up sometimes, if the pipe is to full at the moment,
unless you do like Vonage recommends, and use their router which tries
to throttle other machines on the stream at the same time.
But regards the $39 to disconnect, that's one reason that Vonage does
_not_ have a current, usable credit card of mine. In the event I run
out of 'next month free' coupons and have to start actually paying for
the service and decide it is not worth it, then to hell with them
getting any disconnect fee from me. PAT]
ME123 (bill94el@yahoo.com)