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.