Not infrequently I get requests for advice on conference call services. Since I work with many solo and small firm attorneys and budget is a big issue, I try to recommend free or inexpensive services whenever I can. Of course, if at all possible, I like to try out the services myself to see if they work properly before I make a recommendations.
Unfortunately, the most recent free service I tried is called Rondee. I say unfortunately because Rondee completely failed.
Details
My conference call included four people, me, two people in Pennsylvania and one lucky person on vacation in Puerto Rico. The call was scheduled for 1:00 pm (EST) on June 28. When I tried calling the service at 12:58, the phone couldn’t connect. Rondee provides a backup number, I tried that, no go. I tried to get to Rondee’s website to see if there was an outage or if Rondee had recommendations to fix the problem. The website wouldn’t connect.
Eventually I managed to get three out of four people on the phone, 7 minutes after the call was supposed to begin. It took about 20 minutes to get the person who was in Puerto Ricco on the phone, so I had to communicate with her via email until we could connect her via telephone.
Anyone who knows me will tell you that I hate being late, with a passion. I was embarrassed about the failure of a service I chose to use. Fortunately, everyone was understanding.
Conclusion
Obviously I cannot speak to the quality of the calls when Rondee is working. I did like how its website is set up and the various options available in terms of reminders. I was very impressed with the email reminders I received. Of course, those reminders are useless if the service won’t work.
Some might say that the recent Amazon outage affected Rondee. This would be possible if the outage occurred on June 28th, but it didn’t. The Amazon outage occurred after my scheduled call day and time. No explanation of the outage on Rondee’s blog. Why not?
If Rondee desires to respond, it may feel free to do so. But right now, I cannot recommend anyone use Rondee as conference call service. It is unreliable.
Amy says
We used freeconferencecall.com before we switched to Rondee (because of many problems with the former). Unfortunately we’ve also experienced issues with Rondee . So far, it’s only been that people have to sometimes call the # several times to get into the conference call. We haven’t been unable to conduct a call (yet). Our saying has become, “you get what you pay for.” It’s unfortunate that none of the free options are reliable.
Mark says
Thank You Jennifer….I am on a new business adventure and do not like things that do not work as advertised and when someone is free….makes it tougher to have a lot of confidence in it other than some good referrals/reviews.
Mark
Jennifer says
You are welcome. I think all you can do is look for honesty in reviews. I am sure that Rondee works most of the time. It just didn’t work when I needed it. If something doesn’t work and you are embarrassed (as I was,) and worse, you don’t get answers (which I didn’t get until someone from Rondee contacted me some months later) you are never going to return to the product. There are too many other options.
Good luck with your new business!
Joshua Schmidt says
We were looking for similar services. If not Rondee, which one would you suggest? We are small business, so free conferencing call would be preferred. Quality is also important since these will be transcribed later on.
Jennifer says
There are two I have used successfully. One is http://www.freeconferencecall.com the other is Google Voice. If you want to step it up and have the ability to record the calls, pay for a service such as gotomeeting which costs, I believe $50 per month. Make sure you let people know you are recording.
Joshua Schmidt says
Thanks Jennifer. One of my client uses freeconferencecall.com for conducting meetings which we then transcribe. I will check that out.
dave says
I used Rondee twice and the first time we were all cut off after about 40 minutes. I have had no help from Rondee about this problem.
Dave
Jennifer says
What a shame. I didn’t bother contacting Rondee, because I was focused on getting my call running. I did research what might have happened but had no luck. Rondee is of course welcome to contact me to discuss what happened, but I never heard from them.