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Phone Power vs Lingo
Compare Phone Power vs Lingo. Find out whether Phone Power or Lingo is better for your VoIP business or home needs. The experts at VoipReview have analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of Phone Power and Lingo and detailed analysis of the comparison can be found below.
User Ratings & Reviews
- 126 Reviews
- 59 Reviews
Overview:
Phone Power is a California-based VoIP company that delivers residential VoIP phone solutions throughout the US and Canada. Founded in 2005, Phone Power has a growing subscriber base and has earned a number of industry awards. In fact,the company...
Lingo is a residential VoIP provider that offers home phone plans for nationwide and international calling. Lingo plans come with a number of included features, free calling to other Lingo subscribers, and even the option to keep your existing...
Provider Info
- Website: phonepower.com
- Headquarters Country: United States
- Founder Year: 2005
- Website: lingo.com
- Headquarters Country: United States
- Founder Year: 2004
Plans Available*
- Home Phone USA/Canada Plan - $8.33
- Lingo Unlimited - $14.95
Users Average Rating
Recent User Reviews
I was with PhonePower for 5 years and recently "ported" to CallCentric. I am so glad I did! This summer, we learned that our home phone had been ringing busy for over a week and important calls had not gotten through. After much hassle with PP, I researched other Voip providers. Bottom line: I now have superb technical support, excellent custom features, and a much lower bill. Other than getting no calls for weeks, I was unhappy for a long time about other issues. #1: calls going through Nomorobo spam filtering rang once at home before Nomorobo killed spam. Calls that went through had the Callerid screwed up. The PP web interface was always very slow, clunky, and limited options, such as a small limit on blocked numbers, etc. I did not realize that other Voip providers now offer modern, fully customizable features, web gui and mobile apps. The PhonePower billing, rates, and policies are abominable compared to competitive providers. For example, when my credit card expired and got a new expiration date, as they do every few years, I don't think I ever received any notice. If they didn't email, they certainly knew the phone number to call me on! That was 9 months before recent issues and I did solve the billing problem. By the way, the online bills never show a name, jut an address. Which makes it more difficult to port a phone number out. Probably not by accident: "Hotel California" that is easy to get in and a huge pain to check out. Buyer beware. (I did get ported with the help of CallCentric support asking for a screen shot of the payment screen with my name on it). Five years ago PP was the best I could do after Verizon dumped us. Now, not so much.
I have been a customer since 2009. The service meets my needs with the main line and a cloned line, giving me the ability to have 2 calls simultaneously. From the beginning I have brought my own adapter (picking it from the list of supported devices). I recently replaced it and discovered that the automated provisioning scripts don't support the setup of the second line. That's okay -- I contacted PhonePower and they put me in touch with one of their technicians who was able to give me enough information so I could manually configure my adapter. Recently (August 2023), I noticed that my adapter showed everything was good but calls weren't coming through (going immediately to voicemail) and then one of the 2 lines became inactive. I contacted support via email and continued to work on the problem (I'm in IT so I don't mind digging into problems and stepping through a reconfiguration process). Using my notes from the manual setup, I got things working again. I also noticed that my firmware on my adapter was significantly out of date and updated it too. I had it fixed before customer support reached out to assist. Things ran well for a number of weeks and then suddenly calls were going directly to voicemail again. That's actually not a bad thing since PhonePower automatically sends a copy of the voice mail to my email. So, I typically screen my calls anyway. To fix it, I have simply unplugged my adapter for a few minutes and then everything works fine -- I can call the house phone from my mobile and everything rings through just fine. I don't know if this is a problem at PhonePower or with my adapter or perhaps my internet provider. I'll dig into it one of these days but it isn't on the top of my list to fix. The amount of spam calls has been reduced by use of NoMoRobo which Phone Power provides free along with good instructions to setup. So, overall, I'm happy with PhonePower. The sound of the calls is excellent; customer service has been responsive and helpful; and it does a pretty good job filtering out spam calls. Some reviewers have reported caller id not working in the past. All I can say is that it has always worked for me since 2009.
Lingo made unauthorized changes to our account, including canceling active phone numbers without permission. A basic request to forward a phone line took two months, and their cancellation process has been intentionally difficult. We are still waiting on a final invoice. We didn't realize how badly we were being scammed until our new provider started looking into everything. We had phone numbers on our account that belonged to other businesses, and we were supposedly renting phones from Lingo. Now they are claiming we own them. No one at Lingo seems to know what they are doing, and getting anything resolved is nearly impossible. I work with many phone vendors and have never had this many issues. This is not how a phone company should operate. Our new phone company is more affordable and has provided fantastic service. I regret letting this drag on for as long as it did.
Horrible - Dishonest - Useless Customer Service - Lie about contracts They lie right off the bat when they call you. At least the guy who calls to hook you speaks your language. After that it's accents you can't translate from call centers with a million other voices in the background. I agreed to their services in 2018 with free first month and 6th month. That was a lie. Never happened! Tried the customer service on that. Of course they say they don't know anything about that. Customer service person I can't understand. Ask if there is someone who can speak better English and am told "NO" Can't email me. Doesn't care. Over the years, they have added about $25 to my bill. Bogus taxes - unexplained "Other Charges" Got a letter a few months ago with a bill. The bill was for my gradually ever-increasing bill amount, the letter says I'm being charged another $20+ for some other taxes they had failed to include on my bill for the last year. Paid that. Couldn't bring myself to suffer through a useless episode with overseas customer service agent. Finally sick of them, switched the line over to a cell with Verizon. Lingo continuing to bill me for a service they have not been providing for two months. Paid it once. The second time I call Customer service. Hung up on. Call again 15 minutes on hold - another guy I can't understand. What I am able to get from him: Verizon didn't notify them (A lie, Verizon can't use the number until Lingo releases it - I waited several days for that to happen) I am suppose to still owe the bills + more to come which will include a $200 Early termination charge!!! Say I am under some other contract that they can't provide me with. Just simply a lying scamming company . By the way, they were called Birch Communications when I signed up. They changed to Lingo somewhere along the line. Not BBB accredited - No shock there I'll update this when I get my next statement.



