Free Conference Calling Blog

I saw this letter:

“I did not see any description of the charges that will apply to individuals who call in the number. Can you explain, so I can inform future call participants accordingly.”

Calls to Rondee’s basic conference calling service cost no more than any other regular long distance call your callers make from your home or office phone. For cell phone users, a call to Rondee’s basic conference calling service is just like any other call they would make.

I saw this posting from a prospective corporate user: “I often use free conference call services  for my work. I have recently become concerned about the sustainability of the business model. Because of the high interchange fees, I expect that carriers will increasingly block calls to these services. What makes Rondee’s model more sustainable - and therefore more reliable for businesses - than its competitors?”

There has recently been extensive publicity concerning VOIP carriers, most notably Google Voice, blocking calls to services located in rural areas.  The problem came about because the rural phone companies in these particular areas impose exorbitant tariffs on the national carriers who originate these calls. The reason that the free conferencing services partner with these rural carriers is because the rural carriers are able to collect high tariffs on these calls. Such tariffs, in some cases, have been five to ten times higher than the tariffs on normal call traffic. In turn, the free conference call services enter into more lucrative revenue share arrangements than would otherwise be possible.

Individual callers have historically not paid these tariffs; rather, they have been paid by the national carriers that originate the phone calls. With Google’s recent moves, there is now growing concern that these tariffs could get passed along to users of free conference services.

Rondee users have been totally unaffected by this controversy. This is because Rondee is the only major free conference call service that does not use the sort of rural dial-in numbers that are at the heart of this controversy.”

Rondee’s free conference call dial-in bridge is area code 619 — the metropolitan San Diego area code. Rondee does not charge for its regular service.

I saw a user asked: “Is this area code accepted in Cebu?”

619 is a US area code (San Diego, California) so as long as you can call a US number from Cebu, you can use Rondee conference calling

a user recently wrote to us and said: “I have just signed up for Rondee. My question is if someone from sacramento calls the 619 # are they charge long distance?”

A call from Sacramento to area code 619 is, by definition, a long-distance call. How much they will pay for that call is really a function of what carrier they have.  Rondee does not charge for our free conference call service. The person in Sacramento will either pay nothing for the call (if they have a flat rate unlimited plan) or a per minute rate equal to whatever the rate is her carrier normally charges for calls to San Diego from Sacramento.

these were questions recently posted by one of our users about recurring rondee

1) If I have 15 people in my address book and have scheduled a “recurring Rondee” do all those people get conference call invitations every week.

Ø  They get reminders but they do not get re-invited each time!

2) In my Rondee list, I see 7 accepted invitations. Are those acceptances from this week’s invitation or last week’s?

Ø  It would be difficult for me to know offhand because individuals can change their response at any moment .  Assuming nobody has changed their response from the first time, these responses would have been for last week.

3) How do I know which are which are this week’s which which are last weeks’s acceptances?

Ø  Unfortunately all you can really know is what people have said their status is as of this moment in time.

4) How can I avoid all this confusion?

Ø  Recurring rondee works best when you have a stable group of attendees.  If you have a lot of people in a state of flux and you are really trying to figure out if they are going to be there or not going to be there, sending out a new rondee conference call invitation each week is the preferred approach.  It only takes about a minute and many of our users find this is worthwhile.

5) Must I schedule a new Rondee every week in order to know who is in and who is out?

Please see my response to question four

I saw the posting:

“I have used your conference call system several times for my work/company. There are several of us who use the system and we are wondering why we each get different PIN #s when we sign-up for a call. Originally when I set-up our account, I created a specific PIN # for all of us to use. I’ve never seen that number; whenever I schedule a call I get a number assigned by Rondee. However, lately, my colleagues & I are noticing we are each getting different PIN #s for the same call. Why is this? And, what happened to the PIN # I created when I started our account? I look forward to your response.”

The heart of the confusion, I suspect, is coming from the difference between Rondee-On-Demand and Scheduled Rondee.  Here is the difference:

Scheduled Rondees are calendared through the Rondee website. You sign in to Rondee.com to choose the date and time for the call. Rondee sends out email invitations, and invitees respond on the Rondee website. Rondee keeps track of the attendance and displays the call title, agenda and responses on a page unique to that call. Various features can be enabled such as call recording, automated reminders and recurring conferences. Rondee emails each participant a different PIN code unique to him or her.

Rondee On Demand conferences are not scheduled through the Rondee website. Instead, you independently notify your invitees of the date/time, and all participants dial in with the exact same PIN code. Click here to get a PIN code for Rondee On Demand.

What I think happened is that you signed up with a Rondee On Demand PIN originally and are now using Scheduled Rondee….

I saw the posting:

1. Is there any way to stop the loud noise when people come onto the call?

>>> Unfortunately not but we are working on changing the tone to make it less grating!

To date the conference call service has been great but above were a few things we wanted to inquire about.

I saw someone’s question: “Is the On demand conference call pin associated with my email address forever or does it ever expire?”

It is valid as long as the conference call PIN is accessed at least once every six months.

I saw the note: “How do you mute on conference call? How do you unmute?”

While on an actual Rondee teleconference call, you can:

Press the pound (#) key. After that:

Press 1 to mute or unmute yourself

Each time you want to select one of these options on the conference call, you must first press the pound key

I saw this question: “How can I listen to a conference call that I participated in?”

I assume the organizer elected this option….

DIRECTIONS FOR ACCESSING AUDIO FROM A SCHEDULED RONDEE
If so, after the call is done, just go back to Rondee.com, log in, you can get to your call through My Rondees link at the top of the page once logged into your account; you’ll see a new link for the audio.

DIRECTIONS FOR ACCESSING AUDIO FROM A RONDEE ON DEMAND
after the call is done, just go back to Rondee.com and log in, then go to the My Account link and you’ll see the audio links in the Rondee On Demand section.