In a recent attempt to cut down on the costs of some of the services we pay for, including telephone, we have decided to switch to a VOIP provider. In the end, I decided to go to Lingo, both because of referrals from friends and because of the lower price (compared to Vonage).
The ordering phone call was very straight forward and very smooth, along with the installation of the equipment, however things have started go downhill from there. I had been told that the porting of my telephone number would take about a week and a half to two weeks. Almost a week and a half later, I received an email stating that I had to fill out a letter of authorization to transfer my current number. When two weeks hit, I called customer service to find out what kind of ETA they had on the transfer – as we were getting quite close to having to pay two services in one month despite the one month free from Lingo. They answered with a week and a half from the point when my letter of authorization had been turned in. At that point I asked why they didn’t mention that at the time I ordered the service. Their answer was “Sorry, but please fill out our customer service survey that we’re emailing to you”. So, no big deal. I’m fairly new to the VOIP services, so I passed it off as they did say they would put a rush order on the account.
Over the weekend I also found on their website that they had listed this Monday as switch-over day, which they fulfilled as expected. Once the port was finish, I started playing around with things and found that all outgoing calls were still using the temp phone number they gave me when they signed up. When I called to find out how to correct this, I found that the ported number was currently listed as the accounts second number and that I’d have to re-order the numbers to fix outgoing calls, and remove the temp number to keep from being charged for an additional number every month. Woooohhh… Wait a minute. I wasn’t told about this either. I asked them why they didn’t tell me about this when I was ordering and I got the same response (in very poorly spoken English) “I’m very sorry about the inconvenience, however please fill out the customer service survey we are emailing you to help better our service”.
SO, after I have that worked out, and the temp number delete, I plug in my phone base (we own a simple 5.8ghz phone base with 3 wireless phones). Everything seems to work fine until I cannot hang-up any of my phone calls. I try flashing the calls, resulting in the same affect: I’m still connect. So I call Lingo back up… again. After explaining my situation multiple times, mostly thanks to the lack of clear English communication, I find out that the VOIP equipment (which is a Linksys SPA2102) supposedly has issues with phone equipment higher than 3.8ghz. I was irritated enough by the lack of clear communication, that I just accepted that response and left that phone call at that.
After several minutes of trying to figure out how the frequency of the phone has anything to do with it, I called back. I did get someone who was a little easier to understand, and asked what the frequency has to do with the price of tea in china. Supposedly the SPA2102 has issues with frequencies higher than 3.8ghz because the tone given by the phone to indicate that it has hung up or flashed isn’t properly understood by the equipment due to the frequency being to high. While that still seems a little odd, that’s a much better explanation that I had heard before.
So at this point I’m going to research this one further by calling Linksys and see if they agree with this assessment. Either way, I’m also upset that if such an issue does exist, that their sales department doesn’t warn of such an issue BEFORE you order the service. Other than that the call quality has been excellent, and the features offered are quite excellent compared to the same options provided by my land line provider. So I guess we’ll see how things pan out, but I would warn people about truly understand what they are getting themselves into before switching to a VOIP provider. If anything else, ask plenty of questions…
11/1/2007: Correction – I have a SPA2102, not a PAP2…
Update 11/23/2007: I just today resolved my issues with Lingo, so definitely read on – as much of this was just a matter of miscommunication.