Primus Lingo Primus Communications Lingo billed me for service I never received and threatened to injure my credit. Ripoff McLean Virginia
March 2005, I tried Lingo to lower my phone bill. They promply sent the equipment and instructions. I had difficulty getting the equipment to work and bellsouth was very slow in releasing my phone number to them. I sent several e-mails and called their tech. support for help many times with no resolution in my problems. I was never able to establish a satisfactory phone connection.
April, 2005 I finally gave up, I called them and told them I no longer wanted their service. I didn't hear from them again, however, as I found out later, they continued to draw money out of my credit card account for several months. They withdrew over $100.00 from my credit card over several months until I caught it and cancelled my credit card. Now, also in April, I started using Vonage for my phone service. Their customer service and tech. support were superior to Lingo. I had no problems installing the modem they provided and I was promptly able to establish phone service.
I hear nothing from Lingo until October, 2005. Lingo sends me a letter or e-mail requesting their equipment back which I promply returned. Then, Lingo starts sending me bills for phone service I never received from them for the months of July, August and September, 2005. I refused to pay and they sent the bogus bill to a collection agency. I receive 2 or 3 letters from this collection agency threatening to turn me over to the credit bureau. On Thursday, March 30, 2006. I received a call on my cell phone, while I was at work by a man at this collection agency who once again threatened me with the credit bureau thing. We are talking about $50.00. I have debated with Lingo over this over and over. I have provided bills from Vonage which show that I used their service for the same months with the same phone number over the same line; I don't believe I should pay for something that I didn't receive. I filed a complaint with the FCC, but Lingo will not budge. What can I do?
I paid the $50.00 because I don't want my credit damaged by them. I would like to get that money back, but I won't hold my breath. I hope I can save another person the anger and frustation I have experienced with this company.
Edwin
Lexington, North Carolina
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Michael
Lisbon,Europe,
Portugal
A medical services comparison to PrimusTel
#2UPDATE EX-employee responds
Sat, April 08, 2006
Having worked Tier2 and Tier1 for Primus Lingo, supporting their VOIP devices, and dealing with the management's behavior, I'll give you a bit of insight.
Imagine you're in a hospital, where the most experienced doctors are treated a lot worse than students just out of university. In fact, the hospital has no objective of treatment patients with quality, productivity or pride.
The management only cares about blaming employees left and right, if there
are any complaints - any there should be a million complaints -
and about pretending problems don't exist.
Early in the experience in this hospital, experienced MD's would discover a
favorite game the management liked to play, which is removing recorded from the computer system, or never entering records in the system
about dissatisfied customers, and pretending problems never existed.
Imagine also that the only real hope that customers would ever get a decent quality of treatment, was the knowledge that co-workers
would share informally among themselves. Those who did not partake in the informal sharing, would fail to progress, and fail in knowledge
even to measure blood pressure or how to stick a popsickle stick under a patient's thumb.
Imagine that intentionally, false and wrong technical facts were passed along to new recruited employees, to help them fail as fast
as possible, so they would not constitute competition for some of the management, and would cheapen, and weaken wages, job quality, satisfaction among the veteran workers and even destroy the last speck of pride they could have in their jobs.
Imagine that over a thousand patients were lied to point-blank by management that their cases or sicknesses were being studied, decided upon, and would be followed up on ASAP - when in reality,
their cases were placed a lot worse than under a rug. Their cases were literally flushed down a toilet, never to be seen again. In fact,
the computer system would be cleansed, the employees instructed to never volunteer, never refer to the unspeakable acts being committed
against those customers in "limbo" of resolution.
Imagine that ....in 10 years of work, a hospital existed where waiting times for treatments, quality of treatment, productivity, or
management performance did not matter in the least. For some reason, in this strange world, the entire goal of management was to hide under
a rock, hoping the Sun would Rise again the next day, with cluelessness abounding on how to manage the team of doctors and the staff.
Imagine the staff quitting, in disgust, of being spat upon for the strangest reasons in the world....professionalism, performance, knowledge,
pride, a dedication to customers.
The world is upside down..... the objective of management was only to spend the least amount of money on anything, and as said above,
cover up incompetence, cluelessnes, cleanse complaints, make scapegoats out of the best people in the team, in the hope that this skins would be saved another day, to make another dollar, with an MBA strategy that nobody would have dreamed of.
Translate the above medical services comparison, to computers, networks, VOIP phone service and Lingo, and you have that goes on behind the scenes at Primus Telcom, Lingo and their VOIP service.