During the COVID19 remote working surged and it became the only way to continue working in some cases.

For people working abroad, making phone calls is inconvenient and very expensive “Depending on where you are and the destination country”

Since I’m working in Italy in a consulting firm, I decided to remove this limit by purchasing an unlimited calls package to Italy “2000 minutes included, then they charge a per minute rate”

I even searched for an Italian number as a Dial-IN with no success, So I purchased one in Sweden as it’s one of the countries not imposing any limits on purchasing the numbers.

So, diving all-in using Skype services to cover all the possible needs during this period. I found out “the hard way” that I gave too much trust in them based on having a company with the size of Microsoft behind without trying their services.

So, What are the Pros and Cons on this service based on my experience?

Pros

  • You can easily start dialing multiple attendees, in case of phone meetings and/or interviews using the phone
  • The services simply works “Sometimes”
  • I had no issues with the quality of the voice “when it worked!”

Cons

  • The service is unstable “Sometimes I cannot make any phone calls for days before the service is restores <And yes, they don’t compensate and accept getting paid for nothing!>”
  • Inconsistent service: Sometimes it works from the client on the phone, but not from the Linux Client or the Web Portal.
  • Stupid and unrealistic Error Messages (For example dialing a number in Italy gives an error message that the number is not covered by the subscription, although the same number was dialed many time before by the same subscription)
  • They simply disabled the account once, and I spent couple hours to understand why & then found a forum post buried somewhere was speaking about resetting the password.
  • Carefully hiding the way to cancel the recurring subscriptions is very malicious behavior
  • The worst of them all “NO SUPPORT!” even when you’re a paying customer
    • After going through a gigantic questionnaire, you may reach nowhere. or even if you find the hyperlink to chat with the support, You get a new pop-up window that keeps loading forever “I forgot it for couple hours once”

Examples:

  • Dialing an Italian Number from Skype Linux client gives this error
  • Dialing the same number from the web portal
  • Skype Chat with the support pop-up window loading forever

So, This is my experience with Skype so far.

I’ll update this post when I find and test a valid alternative “Hangouts maybe or any other SIP Provider”