Complaint Review: Lingo.com

The Demise of Birch Primus Lingo

Attention Birch Owners and Stock Holders

RE: Lingo.com, Birch Communications, Inc., Primus

320 Interstate North Parkway, SE

Atlanta, GA 30339

September 14, 2018 San Antonio, TX. We are reporting on a sad situation as we've witnessed the sinking of a once prosperous company. Here is the story as we have experienced it.

In 2004 we signed up for a VOIP Voice Over IP account for my office phone at https://adventdigital.net with Lingo. They were located in the United States and the service and support were very good. We had need to contact support about every couple of years and the service was 4 stars out of 5. Lingo at this time was a valid contender with Vonage. In March of 2016 Birch acquired Primus Telecommunications Canada and Lingo. Since that time Birch Primus Lingo are failing, and they pose zero threat to any valid VOIP provider. 

After the Lingo company was acquired by Birch everything changed. Support was moved to Manila Philippines and that is where the demise of this company began. All offices and phone numbers in the United States were gone. Support calls became a circular failure. On occasion, 5 or 6 calls are required to obtain a "partial solution".

On ALL support calls they give you the option to rate the call by pressing the 1 key while holding. The staff in Manila completely stop this by never hanging up at the call end. They simply place ALL support calls on hold, so clients are NEVER permitted to submit a report of bad service. This horrible practice is about than 2 years old, and continues today.

The client portal at Lingo VOIP began failing in 2018. Simple tasks such as "View My Invoices" or "Current Calls" or "Billing History" have failed to function throughout 2018. These have been reported to Lingo Tech Support perhaps thousands of times by us and other clients. Now for 9 months this portal failure has gone unchecked. Also, the site is NOT secure, there is no SSL. This is NOT even legal in the United States.

Next, in July of 2018 we called for Tech Support, and the person in Manila gave us a telephone sales pitch to change our plan from a $26.95 a month to a $19.95 plan. To our surprise our next bill was $68.04. Obviously this entire switch was fraud. But, we were not surprised as this company appears to be in a death-spin of failing.

We have been completely unable to contact anyone at Birch Primus Lingo within the United States. We now have 8 phone numbers, but talking to U.S.-based staff is effectively blocked. Only after many days of trying, we finally have resorted to publishing these findings. We sincerely hope to save you misery from joining in a similarly bad situation along with thousands of other very disappointed clients. We are currently looking into NetTalk at this time.

Blessings,

Greg Schipper, San Antonio, Texas