First let me introduce myself. I am a former employee that for personal reasons will keep his name anonymous. Wile I was in fact Laid Off form Zingotel, I do not hold any grudges towards the company of the people that work there. If you don’t believe me I DON’T CARE! I’m not writing this with the intention of damaging Zingotel in any way, I believe that the poor management of the company has done that already. I’m writing this to informed people on what to expect before they sign up.
Let’s get to the point. ZINGOTEL IS NOT GOOD SERVICE!
The truth is that the telephone service is not actually that bad. As long as your internet connection is good and stable, you have a properly configured router and you do not use your computer a lot at the same time as you are using the phone, you will have service almost as good as your standard PSTN line.
Unfortunately the lack of customer service and the misinformation makes this company a bad choice for almost anyone.
First things first; “Not all is well at Zingotel”. The company has been loosing a lot of money in the past 2 years (you can see the annual sales numbers on Nasdaq’s website). This has forced the company to cut down on expenses severely. The cut downs translate to layoffs and problems in the hardware infrastructure. Further more the company is poorly organized.
The operation is mostly run out of Ft. Lauderdale Florida, which once had over 30 employees and now has only 6. Yes 6 employees run a company with over 6,000 customers. The Las Vegas office is mostly accounting (not including customer billing which is in FL) and basically dose nothing but write checks to debtors and the few employees that are left. The COO is not even based in The US, he is in the Canadian offices of the parent company of ZingoTel.
The business service with is according to the head honchos the “Bread and Butter” of the company is ran by 1 person. This is sales, customer service and tech support for the entire “Small Business Solutions” side of the company.
The equipment that provides service to all the customers is not properly maintained due to a lack of funds and has failures more and more frequently. Wile the equipment is located in Miami FL, the person most capable of providing it with maintenance is based in Massachusetts.
The company frequently makes changes to its operations and dose not even notify their employees about them until they are in placed, giving them no time to train which makes other services (tech support and customer support) slow down considerably. Zignotel has recently opened a customer service center in India to address the issues, but this center is poorly trained. The fact that the company doses not return voicemail calls is not because the employees are lazy, but it is because they are understaffed and are routinely asked to take on duties that have nothing to do with their position. The best way to bet help is via e-mail, and that can sometimes take weeks to address.
The worst thing about Zingotel is the lack of respect and consideration they have for their customer. Misinformation is everywhere. Here are some of the things customers have ran into.
- The Zingotel website states that there is “NO CONTRACTS”, even after receiving poor service customers that cancel within 1 year are charged a $39.99 CANCELLATION FEE for every line (this includes fax, toll free and virtual numbers).
- Many of the “FEATUERS” DO NOT WORK. Wile this is not the case for every customer, many will go months without most if not all of the free features (Voice Mail, Call Waiting, Caller ID, etc.etc.)
- In accordance to section 1.2.1 of the “Zingo Telecom Terms of Service”, “Zingo Telecom reserves the right to immediately terminate or modify the Service, if Zingo Telecom determines, in its sole discretion, that Customer's Service is being used for non-residential or commercial use.”
What dose this mean? Wile the Website states that the Residential Unlimited has Unlimited Continental US and Canada minutes, this is in fact not 100% correct. Customer that uses the line more than 2500 minutes per month will incur $0.039 per minute for every minute over 2500. That’s 41.6 hours a month or about 1.4 hours per day. Zingotel will reverse the charges if you complain about it but will send you an e-mail that will warn you that if you go over the “Unlimited” minute again you will have to eather upgrade to a $49.99 Business Line (+$9.95 service fee) or cancel your line (and possibly pay $39.99 cancellation fee). If you say nothing or complain after 30 days you were charged, they will not refund you the money.
So even if you can prove that you are using it a lot because you have 2 teenagers in your house, they still can brand you as a Business User.
- Management believes the Customer is always lying and is reluctant to issue a refund. Sometimes the employees must go out of their way to prove that Zingo is at fault and when a refund is issued it will sometimes take 2 or up to 3 months to be processed (there is only 1 person in charged of all refunds, chargeback, FCC complaints and BBB complaints).
I can continue with more, but my fingers are getting tiered.
So in review. If you want cheep phone service, be sure that you have an excellent internet signal, and you know some basic networking. Do not expect much customer service but be always on the look up of hidden charges (like the $0.95 monthly 911 fee).
