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Review by l1lk1ll 
Posted: 3.8 years ago
member for 3.8 years, 2 visits, last login: 3.7 years ago
 Marietta,Cobb,GA
 $22 per month (12 month contract)
 "Great price! Great Quality! Fast Friendly tech support!"
 "cannot cancel before a year (fees)"
 "Great VoIP Service with a Great price and LOTS of features"
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I did a lot of shopping around before finally deciding on a VoIP service. I needed something to call my girlfriend in australia with. So I got the international asia plan. Service was great, quality was really good. I got unlimited calls to so many countries! even China!
Eventually my girlfriend came to live with me so I had to call tech support to downgrade my plan. It was quick and easy, the techie was friendly. He clearly informed me of a 9.99 fee which I accepted.
Installation was easier than I had expected, the router is soild.
The features are great! The price is unbeatable.
Another thing that sets it apart from other VoIP services I've noticed is for it's unlimited home plan (and even in the basic limited plan) it includes not only USA and Canada for free but also Western Europe!
I know my review seems flawless but there are some slight problems, nothing major. If I'm using all of my upload on bittorrent or something it can get really choppy to whoever I'm talking to (I hear them just fine) but to fix that I just put a cap on my uploads so I don't waste all of my upstream and leave enough for the phone (I leave it like 10kb/sec and it works fine)
I also don't like the fact that you can't cancel before a year.
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Review by missionary2000
Posted: 3.8 years ago
(review was emailed from domain gmail.com)
Norcross,Gwinnett,GA
$23 per month (16 month contract)
"Service in other countries"
"The WORST Company to torture the customer"
"BAD service provider"
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I have been using the Lingo for more than 16 months. These are my
experiences with Lingo.
1. I was told my number will be ported from Vonage to Lingo with in
two months. But they didn't do it until 5 months. They even didn't
inform me that Vonage is not letting them to do it.
2. I referred my friend to get Lingo service and I am sure my email id
/ Lingo phone # was mentioned as " referred by " and they didnt give
me $25 for referral fee.
3. When I found a better service from Broad Voice, I wanted to
disconnect this Lingo service and the customer service representative
requested me to stay back with Lingo to complete one year to own my
Lingo adaptor. I continued to stay with them and wanted to disconnect
it after a month, they said they are going to charge me for the next
month 'cuz my billing cycle started already.
4. Again I called on Dec. 29, 2005 and I told Eddy to put it in the
system to cancel it on Jan. 20, 2006 before the billing cycle starts
and I didn't cancel on that day but continued with them.
4. Now after three weeks, when I called them and asked them to disconnect
before the billing cycle, Samantha said they can't quarantee stop
charging me. The previous customer service (Eddy) representative told
me I need to call them before 5 days, but today the customer
representative (Samantha) and the supervisor (Mark) say that I need to
call them before 10 days. I agreed to do the cancellation today
positive with out any delay. The customer service representative
(Samantha) in the cancellation department told me I don't need to send the
Lingo adaptor and I won't be charged any disconnection fee 'cuz I
have been with Lingo for more than one year.
5. Once I cancelled my account, they sent me an email afer 10 minutes saying that
This is confirmation of your request to cancel your Lingo service. This request was processed on 01/23/2006. We recently changed our policy and you can now avoid the cancellation fee if you return the Lingo adapter. Please return the adapter and power cord in good condition within 30 days. If we do not receive the adapter within 30 days or it is damaged or missing parts, you will be charged a $39.95 cancellation fee.
We recommend you receive a tracking number or delivery confirmation for the return package. Please write the cancellation number on the outside of the box and return the adapter to:
Lingo Returns
7901 Jones Branch Drive, 9th Floor
McLean, VA 22102
Cancellation #:
We want to take this opportunity to thank you for trying Lingo and hope to have you as a customer in the future. If you have any questions, please contact us at customercare@lingo.com or 1-888-Lingo99 (546-4699).
Thank you,
Lingo Customer Care
REF: CAN_PPEN052605
What a cruel act!
Does any one still want to use Lingo service? Even if I pay all they
want, will there be an end of the problem?
I can't let them torture me any more!!!!!!
PROBLEMS from Lingo continue even after we pay all they want!!!!
The WORST VoIP compnay is LINGO
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Review by xnwang
UPDATED: 3.8 years ago
member for 5.1 years, 23 visits, last login: 3.7 years ago
Hercules,Contra Costa,CA
$19 per month
 about 15 days
"Call quality is great with long distance to canada and W. Europe free"
"ATA box arrived 15 days after order was placed"
"Really good service with the lowest monthly rate"
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Update:
I have Lingo service for more than a year now. It served my needs well with free calls to US, Canada and western Europe. I have basic DSL from SBC and I have noticed any voice quality problem. Furthermore, I set the ATA box behind the router. Both the phone and rest of the internet connection work fine.
I really love all the features that come with the Lingo service, especially the online management feature. Just one example: You are on travel or away from your home and need to call someone in Europe. All you need to do is to logon to your Lingo account and turn on the Always Forward and type in the European number. You can then call any where in Europe by just calling your home number from anywhere, even your cell phone.
If any one wants a referral, just type in my email address when you sign up. My email address is wangsx@hotmail.com (name: Xin-Nian Wang). It will save both of us $25.
Update:
I used to connect ATA directly to my DSL and use ATA as a router. In this configuration, ATA automatically checks updates and sometime reboot. Such reboot could disrupt phone connection briefly. Few months ago, I change the connect and put the ATA behind my wireless router instead. Since then, I have never had those brief intrruptions again
XNW
Update:
My ATA box today stopped providing DHCP service to computers behind it. So the computers behind it cannot get ip addresses. My basic setup is:
Cable modem -> ATA -> computers.
I called tech support. The guy told me that it is normal or often that the DHPC in Lingo box stops working. He said that I have to use fix ip addresses for my computers behind it, which is not very convenient. Anybody has similar problems and know how to solve the probem?
I have been using lingo for a couple of weeks. So far it is great. The voice box initially was not working properly: Could not hear the greetings but the messages were recorded all right. I called teh tech support. They told me they know the problem and are working on it. One week later, everything is working. It is really great service. I am going to dump my MCI phone line which coss me $40/month even without a single call.
I have question and wonder any has an answer.
Is there a way to call from Web based program (IM, NetMeeting etc) to the Lingo number?
XNW
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Review by voipnoobie
UPDATED: 3.9 years ago
member for 5.4 years, 56 visits, last login: 62 days ago
Redmond,King,WA
$20 per month (4 month contract)
about 6 days
"the promise of a universal number anywhere in the world"
"caller-id doesnt display name"
"Primus seems to have the background to pull this off!"
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Their CSR has been very good. I like the fact that the CSR has picked up the phone promptly and given me all the answers.
Questions I had was on the disconnection fee ($40) which I personally don't like, but apparently every VOIP does it. I also had questions on the ATA, and the "promise" of a universal number soon anywhere in the world.
Bad point so far was that the website died yesterday around 10pm PST while processing my order (maybe site maintenance). I resubmitted today morning, and things are good.
Financially, this is a good deal. 3 months free, and then unlimited calling at 19.99 is very competitive. They also have a referral program that credits an EXTRA $25 to the referer and new customer. IM me if you want a referral.
Will update the review when the kit comes in.
update 07/06/2004
===============
So the kit finally comes in... nicely packaged.. couple of flash cards, VOIP box, ac adapter, cables..
Setup takes 5 mins.. i straightaway call Canada, and voice quality is good. I called some friends using Vonage, and voice quality is good there too..
Outgoing and incoming caller-id works, but only the number and not the name. Also the caller-id displays the wrong incoming time, which has been reported in this forum. Tech support is still working on it. (update 07/07: caller-id now shows correct time)
2 things which seem silly out of the box was the fact that I didn't know what my phone number was, and I didn't have the default passcode to my voicemail. Apparently, according to the fledgeling tech support, these were sent in an email.. maybe another lingo user can confirm to explain how I lost mine. In case someone else runs into this, the default passcode for voicemail for new accounts is 0000.
Otherwise everything seems to work as promised. Will try individual features such as call forwarding etc soon.
Once again, financially, this is a good deal. 3 months free, and then unlimited calling at 19.99 is very competitive. They also have a referral program that credits an EXTRA $25 to the referer and new customer. IM me if you want a referral.
update 11/15/2004
================
so far the service has been good.. i would consider uptime as 99% in a month.. most of the downtime has been due to my broadband connection flaking out.
Billing has been spot on.. so have been the referral pay back.. Lingo has credited my account and my friends all the "refer-a-friend" fees!! IM me if you want a referral!!
update 5/1/2005
==============
i'm still a happy customer.. i thought i should write that its very easy to setup Lingo as a SIP host.. meaning I can have friends use SIP software like Windows Messenger call my phone and have a voice chat.
Need tips? IM me.. looking for referrals to get $25, IM me..
update 12/30/2005
===============
well i'm still their customer. To be honest, i almost considered moving to Sunrocket for their deals, but am still sticking to Lingo. Their uptime and customer service and voice quality has noticably improved. Plus i can't beat the cool SIP capabilities, where a Gizmoproject user can call my phone.
Need tips? IM me.. looking for referrals to get $25, IM me..
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 Review by ycool
UPDATED: 3.9 years ago
member for 7.9 years, 1605 visits, last login: a few minutes ago
Miami,Miami-Dade,FL
$21 per month
about 5 days
"great price, call quality and reliability!"
"does not work with Tivo, at least not yet."
"good deal for the price."
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ORIGINAL REVIEW - SEE UPDATES AT THE END.
I ordered the Lingo Residential Unlimited Plan $19.95 with the first three months free offer on 8/30/04 and promptly received my ata five days later.
- Connected my ATA to my Linksys router waited about four minutes and the VOIP light came on, picked up the phone and it had dial-tone.
- Placed the first call, crispy clear call quality and it has been like that all the way. It even sounds better than my old pots line.
- I only had one outage which lasted about one hour, besides that I have had to power cycle the ata four times in the 90 days plus that i have had the service because the voip light will just go off rarely. I think it has something to do with my fax machine that the ata does not like it too much.
- I am able to send faxes without any problems at all after I lowered the speed rate in the fax to 14.4k of course.
- I have not been able to get it to work with my Tivo but I've read that other people have gotten it to work.
- I did not have to do any special configuration on my Linksys router, I just connected it and it worked.
- I’m also on a 1.5Mbit x 384Kbps Dedicated ADSL line which has higher upload and its more stable which may explain why I have had such steady and good service.
- I’ve had the service over the 90 days mark; I disconnected the pots line a long time ago and have had no regrets.
- I also found out that my family keeps calling directory assistance every month, last month there were 11 calls, I called lingo tech support, the rep. answered the phone on the second ring, I explained to him that I wanted to block directory assistance from my line, he opened a ticket and two hours later it was being blocked already.
- Everyone in the house has cell phones so if they want to use 411 directory assistance they have to pay for it from their pocket, I’m not greedy but there are seven people living in my house and do not help enough with the bills for me to be paying more of my hard earned money.
- The tech support rep. was extremely easy to understand and spoke good English as they are in Canada now and not in India anymore.
- I was very skeptic at first about voip, I’ve read all those horror stories and was afraid the same thing would happen to me but it didn't, the three months free certainly helped in making the decision.
- All the features can be managed online, you can download your bills and see current call data.
- Well if anyone needs a $25 referral send me your name and email address to: ycool@bellsouth.net and I’ll send you one.
-------- UPDATE 1/1/05 -----------
- I was having issues with my Linksys router where I would have to power cycle it often to get the internet connection back-up. Replaced with an old D-Link router and now the internet is rock solid and I have not had to power cycle the Lingo Adapter again since.
-------- UPDATE 1/26/05 -----------
- I am happy to report that I have not had to power cycle the ATA since I replaced my Linksys router, its been up 26 days and counting without a power cycle.
- Call quality is still crystal clear.
- I am happy to pay Lingo now for the new $1.50 fee since that will bring my monthly total to $21.45 and I rather pay them and not Bellsouth's $12 in taxes/fees.
-------- FINAL UPDATE 12/20/05 ---------
- This is a long overdue update. I've stopped using the Lingo service since 12/11/05 because I've moved to Sunrocket because they offer real E911.
- Lingo has worked extremely great for me since I ordered on 8/30/04, excellent service, tech support has fixed my problems, never had any billing issues. I once called them because I did not have enough money to pay one month and they gave me a one month credit of $19.95.
- I only remember of having two outages in a one year period for less than two hours or so which is excellent.
- If it wasn't because Sunrocket offers real E911, I would not have left Lingo.
- In general Lingo has been great for me and I highly Recommend them.
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Review by pablo928
Posted: 3.9 years ago
member for 4.6 years, 38 visits, last login: 1.6 years ago
Yuma,Yuma,AZ
$19 per month
about 5 days
"cost"
"only as good as the ISP"
"Better than I expected"
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I've had Lingo for about a year. At first I had it installed before my router, but that caused a general bandwidth loss even when I wasn't using the telephone. Now I have it installed behind my router with a DMZ set to the UTSTAR adapter. Works fine. For the last three months I've had an issue with outgoing communications. Sometimes the other party loses my side of a conversation. It took a while for the Lingo tech support to find the problem, but I have a intermittent high latency problem with intermittent packet loss. So that is a problem with my ISP.
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Review by pbspt
Posted: 4 years ago
member for 4.3 years, 8 visits, last login: 3.9 years ago
Wichita Falls,Wichita,TX
$20 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
"Cheap"
"Poor service, fair call quality, dropped calls"
"Cheap, but WEAK service. I wouldn't do it again!"
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I have had Lingo for about 3 months. I have RR cable, which is very fast. Lingo set up was a breeze. My caller ID is off by 6 hours and all of the settings that I can change online are correct. I have requested for repair 4 times and still have no results from them. In fact, the first time I requested help the service personell said "That's an easy fix" I was then disconnected (dropped call) and they could not get me back up and working (at all) for 5 days. The rep apparently accidentlly corrupted my profile and no one knew how or had the authority to fix it.
The call quality is horrible. My girl friend will not let me call her from my home phone because the quality is so poor. The connection enhancer made no improvement at all.
I changed to save some $$ and now, I have to pay $59 to get out of the service in less than a years time. I waited past my initial opt out time, one month, thinking they could fix my issues. So far, they have either made it worse or ignored my service requests. I have attempted to speak with a VP or CEO, but they are too sheilded, hidden or busy. What a shame, it could be good if they could fix things.
Don't count on Lingo as your only phone.
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Review by Tubisten
UPDATED: 4 years ago
member for 4.8 years, 294 visits, last login: 16 days ago
Euless,Tarrant,TX
$22 per month (12 month contract)
about 6 days
"Good price, many features, excellent price for unlimited calls to western Europe"
"None"
"Good service for the money, no problems for a long time"
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Order process was great, installation was painless except my wife could not get it to work. I had to tinker with the DSL modem first, not sure if it had to do with public vs private IP or not. Initially had it set up to use private IP behind the DSL modem, after changing it back to having the DSL modem share the public IP it initialized and updated the firmware just fine.
I got the UTSTARCOM adapter.
Connecting with 1536 Kbps (downstream) 384 Kbps (upstream) SBC DSL. Started out with having the telephone adapter (TA) behind my US Robotics 8022 Wireless Router but the call quality dropped extremely with any kind of other Internet traffic at the same time.
Since having the TA in front of the router the call quality is good except for too many dropped calls. I am not sure if it has something to do with how I tried to tie down my security. Experimented with setting my router (behind my TA) in the TA's DMZ, but then my computers lost the ability to sync the time with a NTP server. Then I tried to set a non existing IP to the DMZ, which results in all my ports showing up as stealth (e.g. »www.grc.com) and my computers regained the ability to sync the time but it appears as if after that I have had a lot of dropped calls.
I am suspecting that having a non existing IP as the DMZ might cause the TA to be saturated with connections it is trying to keep track of while it is waiting on the non existing IP to respond and then dropping the call.
Update 3/8/2005
Since I got Lingo and concluded that it was working fine I switched my DSL modem back to NAT mode instead of sharing the public IP with the TA. Seems like it was a bad move. I switched it back to share the public IP. This last week the call log shows the phone calls were dropped every 11 minutes. It is interesting that it as so consistent. Then we obviously had the issues going on over the weekend but the calls stopped from dropping at 11 minutes. It still dropped once yesterday though.
Last night I also upgraded the firmware in my DSL modem (Speedstream 5100b with SBC Yahoo! DSL). Will see if that helps.
The next step I believe is going to be to try to put PPPoE on the ATA and see how that works.
Update 3/24/2005
I subsequently tried to put PPPoE on the ATA, but it broke some other applications, could not get to Microsoft's website (which by many might not seem too bad  and could not post messages on some forum's (actually did not try this forum). During all this I had SpeadStreem connected to UTStarcom ATA and then USRobotics 8022 Wireless router and then two computers.
I am still puzzled by the issues mentioned above but not enough to investigate further right this minute since the calls are currently staying connected, phone quality is also good. I really would like to cut the number of NATs down though. 3 of them just seems a few too many. Have been thinking about what will happen if I put both the modem and the ATA in bridged mode. I once before tried to put the ATA in bridged mode and that did not work at all.
I am wondering if I could set the modem to have PPPoE on the router, have the ATA in bridged mode and have the PPPoE on my actual router...
11/19/2005
I now have PPPoE on the DSL modem (Efficient Networks Speadstream 5100 with SBC Yahoo!). This means I do have three NATs before my computers. Seems to work fine though, and since the phone adapter has QOS which prioritizes the phone calls I don't have any problems with surfing at the same time as I'm on the phone. This last week I've had some calls with silence one way, but I've solved it so far by having a batch file rebooting the phone adapter every hour so it hasn't even been bad enough to call tech support. One week out of 7 months or so, not bad at all.
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Review by mlbSAE
UPDATED: 4 years ago
member for 9.3 years, 2299 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Dayton,Montgomery,OH
$20 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
"Cheap, fairly reliable, easy to get up and running"
"Tech support people"
"worth $20 a month"
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(ratings match consensus)
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I have had it since August of 2004, and generally have not had many problems. I originally put their router in front of my NAT router, but after it kept locking up I moved it behind my NAT router. Since then there has been no lock-ups, and just a handful of reboots (generally after firmware updates from Lingo/Primus). Not having the Lingo router in front of my NAT router has caused some quality issues when downloading/surfing the internet at the same time, so I have ordered a D-Link VoIP Router (Lingo branded) to replace both the ATA and my own NAT router.
Update:
Due to my wife complaining about an echo that could be heard from time to time (probably due to poor upstream on RoadRunner internet service) I dropped Lingo. I ended up moving my internet, phone, and cell phones to SBC and got a deal where I save almost $60 a month from what I was spending on RoadRunner, Lingo, and my old cell phone company. I still think Lingo is well worth the $20 a month, especially if you have a decent internet provider that gives you some upstream bandwidth.
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Review by TheBoomer
Posted: 4 years ago
member for 4 years, 13 visits, last login: 3.1 years ago
Brooklyn,Kings,NY
$22 per month
about 2 days
"Price, Western Europe call included,Free router"
"Some static in the background, Tech support hot and cold"
"Quality is good, not great, price and features very good."
| Web-site:
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(ratings match consensus)
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After comparing different VOIP plans and reading lots of reviews I settled on Lingo.
The biggest draw for me, with Lingo, was that Western Europe was included in the unlimited plan. I have many friends in Europe, do some programming for a web-site based in Germany, so the ability to call them for free was enough to push Lingo past the other VOIP providers.
The Price with all taxes and fees is 22 dollars .
Not wanting to pay a big startup cost, I found that D-link has a Lingo enabled router the DVG-1402SL which currently has a $90 rebate when you purcahse it and sign up for Lingo.
After finding a dealer selling the router for $49.98. www.compuplus.com I decided this was worth a shot.
Ordered the router on sunday, it shipped monday and I had it on Tuesday. Price with shipping was $54. Lingo has no activation fee if you purchase this router. The only requirement for the rebate is you must wait until you paid your first bill from Lingo.
I also used Lingo's referral program, so I'll get a $25 credit after 3 months. In total the first 5 months will coast about $28 total. The reabte deal is good thru the end of december.
Setup:
It took about 10 minutes to register an account and set up the router, which I placed behind my existing Belkin wireless router. And guess what , no dial tone. 
Now I'm a reasonably technical guy, I write software and train programmers professionally, but I'm not a VoIP expert. I do however know a little about TCP/IP setup and networking. So I try some "debugging" on my end. I download the D-link manual from their website, figure out the IP address that it received with DHCP etc, install a spare PC behind the D-LInk, I can ping the D-LInk, and I get IP service on the PC behind the D-link, so I know I have everything cabled correctly.
Tech support call 1
After about 15 seconds on hold, I get a very friendly and knowledgable Tech. I explain the problem and my setup and the testing that I did so far. He says sounds like the Belkin Firewall is blocking things. I give him the model number of the Belkin router, and he gets the manual for that unit and we go through the configuration. Turns out I needed to open some ports on the Belkin for the D-link. Belkin's configuration is a little non- standard. It takes about 20 minutes, we configure both routers and presto I get a dial tone. Maybe I got lucky and got a good tech, but this was what I consider first-class support.
Now that I have a dial tone, I start using my Lingo Service. And what do you know, talker echo at the other end of the call. I've been a beta tester for software many times, so when I decided on Lingo I expected an evening of tweaking the system.
2nd call to tech support, hold time about 45 seconds. I explain about the echo, they adjust some settings, no change.
3rd call to tech support, they update my line with a new configuration, for echo problems and survey says.... no change.
I'm discouraged, so I take a break and do a few sudoku puzzles to clear my head.
On to googleand the dslreports fourms to learn about echo. I find several very informative articles about talker echo. They indicate that one source of talker echo is acoustic feedback from the other end( for example Moe calls Larry, Moe hears no echo, but Larry hears his own voice echo, what's happening is Larry's voice comes out of the speaker on Moe's phone and get's picked up by the microphone on Moe's phone and sent back to Larry). I'm now thinking, maybe it's my phone. I did use a spare phone for the Lingo setup, keeping my regular phone on my landline. Ok, I switch the phones and the answer is....... No Echo.
It would have been nice if the 2nd tech had said, it could be feedback from your phone, let's try a different phone. It would have been even nicer if I had thought about that, maybe I need to take a longer break.
Where do I stand now:
Currently, I still get a little background static on the line, I'd say call quality is about the same as a good cell call. Tech support, seems decent, except I wish they had asked me to try a different phone.
Setting up things like voicemail greetings was simple, you can even upload wav files via the Lingo website.
The only serious problem was the echo, which seems to have been resolved by using a best quality phone. However I've had their service for less than 24 hours, so I think it's too early to give a final grade.
So far I'd say Lingo is earning a strong B+
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