Freedompop

I have been pleasantly surprised by this company, but that is partly because I was expecting it to be terrible.
I have a USB stick modem that works fine, and two android phones that were $ 25 each. All with free service.
The voice/​text service is poor and unreliable, but that doesn’t matter too much for me. Their data connection works fine, and so the phones are great for what I need: email and driving directions.
You do have to read all of the fine print and be careful not to opt-​in for paid services (which are all worthless as far as I’m concerned). You also have to keep an eye on your credit card statements, as they will sometimes «accidentally» change you for things that you haven’t agreed to, but my experience has been that they’re reasonably efficient at answering the phone and refunding the money.
Even though this company is a little icky with the «accidental» charges, for the price of $ 0 per month, I’m happy with the service.

geeeee usss. i can’t see how they get anything done!
first i tried to sign up online, but they said that my email address was invalid. so i called to ask if the service is available in my zip code. well like most phone reps, they were not paying attention. so i told her after repeating the query six times, i’ll wait for the response to my query.
since the girl was not paying attention, i requested 18 times if she would transfer the call to a professional contact? well after 27 minutes she said that since you are not cooperating. i’m hanging up, and she did.
why do you have these children playing office? why are they there is they will not pay attention to the caller. so because they did not pay attention… you’re going to hang up?
«i’ll show you… since i won’t attention to you, i’ll hang up! i did my job… he would not repat himself because i was not paying attention… do we really need customers that will make us work» ??
horse shit!!!

What an unbelievable experience. My mother got me into this and we have both regretted it. Her phone/​service was echoing every time she used it. They sent me a completely defective phone that wont charge. Apparently their phones are all used/​refurbished. I messaged customer service about this and they closed my case because they hadn’t heard from in 48 hours. I opened it again and the agent must have not spoken English well enough to understand that my phone wouldn’t charge, because she just kept messaging me that things «seemed fine» on her end, like she can see my battery on her end. I opened another case and was just delayed by the representative telling me to reboot the system and that they were going to close the other open case. Every message I get from them, they are spelling my name wrong, saying they don’t understand, telling me things are checking out fine from their end, that I need to download their program, etc.
After nearly a month of going around like this, I finally called them and spoke with people who could barely speak English with accents so heavy you can’t understand them. Their automated directory doesn’t let you get to someone to cancel the program. You have to select tech support and firmly argue with them that you want to cancel several times before they will transfer you to someone who also barely speaks English. I was argued with for 10 minutes about how I need to reboot the system and download their program and the fact that my phone doesn’t turn on to be able to do this, wouldn’t phase the woman at all. I was told again that things looked fine on their end and I need to turn it on and download a program. Finally I said, «No, you cannot tell me things look fine on your end. There is no way for you to see my defective battery on your end. What you can see on your end is that I have never been able to make a phone call or do anything on this phone at all in the whole time I’ve had it. I want a refund and I want to be taken out of your system.»
She comes back on the phone and claims that I’m out of the 30 day period and she cannot refund me. I tell her that I have opened up three cases to get this resolved and have been delayed by every agent and that if I don’t get a refund, I’m going to file a complaint with the BBB and the Public Utilities Commission because this fraud. She again rattles out some gibberish that I can barely make out is an excuse that I’m past the 30 days (how convenient that the email agents never seemed able to help me in all this time!) and she cannot assist me. I ask to speak to her supervisor and she asked me why. I told her because I couldn’t understand her but I was getting the impression that she was claiming that because the agents delayed me this long, she wouldn’t be able to help me and this was not acceptable. I was put on hold for several minutes, while waiting for the supervisor.
After being on hold for nearly 10 minutes, I spoke to another woman, that barely spoke English, and she told me that, because her agents delayed me past 30 days, and wouldn’t honor my request for a refund, I was past the period that I could return it!
This company is extremely fraudulent and I’m going to the BBB and Consumer Affairs to file complaints.
If you have had a terrible experience as well, please take the time to file a complaint with these agencies, as they will not make complaints public until several people have done so.

Hard to add anything new to the other reviews here. I’ll just state my experience and make a recommendation.
1. I put a $ 100 deposit down to lease a «free» WiMAX hotspot in 2012. Sprint turned off WiMAX in 2015. I want to send it back and receive my deposit. «Sorry sir, we changed our policy in 2015 and we don’t offer refunds anymore.» So, a deposit is not a deposit according to Freedompop.
2. In January 2015, I needed a cheap plan for a backup phone. The salesperson promised that for $ 99/​year, I could have unlimited talk and text plus 1GB of free data per month. The free data didn’t show up on my plan and I called. I was told that the salesperson could never have offered that. Must have been my misunderstanding. So, I asked for the $ 99 back. «Sorry sir, that would violate our policies.»
3. The app that you have to use on the phone (iPhone 5) is iffy at best. It crashes a lot and then you don’t get calls and texts until you notice and reboot. For a backup phone, that’s a pain.
For the money, T-Mobile’s cheap plans for a backup phone are a much more reliable thing to buy. For $ 36/​year, I get a number and a few minutes. Works great and the support is much better.
For international calling, you can use What’sApp or Skype or Hangouts or Facetime or … (there are a lot of ways). All of them work better, so there’s no reason to bother with FreedomPop.

The absolute worst. They are incompetent at technical support and customer service. It is ridiculously hard to get in touch with them over the phone and when you do, it’s a nightmare. I ordered a phone for my son for Christmas. It arrived (a Samsung Galaxy S4) and it would not charge, never booted up not to mention that it had sticky shit all over the back like it had a sticker on it and they just took it off and said ‘fuck it’ before they shipped it to me. I submitted a ticket, telling them that this was a Christmas present and I’d need it rectified before Christmas. After not hearing anything (and the email saying that it could take them 72 hours to respond) I dug up a google phone number for them. They acted as if, of course they were going to replace it, just send a photo of the sticky back (huh? who cares, that’s the least of my worries if the phone won’t even turn on) but I did that. We were now down to 5 days before Christmas Eve. I followed up, got a follow up email that it was sent to the ‘escalation team’. I reiterated that I needed a new phone by ¹²⁄₂₄ and got no response. I called in today on ¹²⁄₂₃ because they still hadn’t responded and we’d talked on ¹²⁄₂₁ twice. They informed me at that point that it was to this escalation team to ‘look into’ sending a replacement battery. W.T.F.
Not to mention, their support team must be located in India because it was very difficult to understand what they were saying and they dicked me around for 20 minutes between people before I finally got the account cancelled. Now I have to buy a phone from somewhere else and send this POS back to them to get my money back.
DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY, it sounds like a good deal but you will regret it.

WORST company ever. Funny the word «freedom» is part of the company name and yet there is nothing free about it. My hot spot device no longer works as they have moved to a new spectrum and yet still charges me $ 0.99 for not using my device which doesn’t work no fault of my own. Yes, you get charged for NOT using it too. I bought my device for $ 105.99 a couple years ago and now they want me to buy another device for $ 69.99. Call them (888) 743‑8107. STAY AWAY!!!

WOW — -truly a S***BAG company — -after attempting to be loyal customer since its inception, i was recently notified that my WiFi hotspot had to be upgraded — NOT GIVING IT A SECOND THOUGHT i ordered the upgrade ($ 39.99 plus a $ 19.99/monthly data charge {no commitment}) — i immediately changed my $ 19.99 plan to my original $ 3.99/month plan — after i received my new WiFi hotspot i contacted customer service to refund my $ 19.99 — -NOPE:( — F**K them i have now cancelled my service — SHOULD HAVE HEEDED the reviews !!!

BEWARE of FreedomPop. It’s easy to be drawn in by their promises of «free» internet access. All you have to do is click on some offers on their website and you get X gigs of free data! I spent at least an hour, hour and a half clicking thru various offers posted, each one leading me thru a web of more offers and dubious services. After all that, instead of getting any free data, I got bombarded with junk mail and junk phone calls, which months later are still pouring in. I got zero gigs of free data, zero minute of internet access. They automatically bill you $ 30/​month and what you get for that is very little data. And when you want to cancel the service you must do so online and then call them as well. I was on hold for 40 minutes just trying to cancel my service, no exaggerration.

I saw Freedompop in an AARP article a few years ago, assumed they were reputable, and signed up for home internet. It took weeks to get the 4G router I had to buy from them ($ 90), but once it showed up it worked well and was adequate for my fairly low-​use internet (8 — 10GB per Month). One day it quit working — I spent a LOOOOONG time on hold, they told me my credit card (which had been working for a year) was declined. We tried 6 other credit cards, funny but they were all declined too, even though they were accepted that same day by other merchants. They told me to call my bank, who told me everything was fine. Would Freedompop even entertain the idea that the problem just might be on their end, or notice that EVERYBODY’s credit card was being declined? «No way Jose, not our problem, something wrong with your card or your bank!» Can I talk to a supervisor? «No, they won’t be able to help you anyway.» So I was totally without service for a few days until magically my credit card was accepted again. This taught me that the off-​shore customer support is horrible but I stuck with them anyway.
Then I got an email a few weeks ago informing me that Sprint (Freedompop’s carrier) was dropping support for my WiMax device in a matter of a few days. (Hey thanks so much for the heads-​up, Freedompop! You knew about this for a year or more!). I saw on the Freedompop website that the replacement device ($ 40) came with a data plan that was 3+ times the cost of my old one, and the additional cost if I went over the limit was also going up. After 45 minutes on hold I was told by 3 different almost-​English-​speaking customer service folks that I could keep my old data plan (10GB for $ 24/​mo) and just upgrade the hardware, so I ordered it. Sprint indeed pulled the plug on my old unit and I did all my internet at the library for about 3 weeks until the new unit arrived. After I made a couple small repairs to it (loose antennae), it worked OK, but checking my account online I found I had been switched to the totally inadequate 2GB plan and my «old» 10GB plan was going to now cost me $ 75/​mo. I spent another eternity on hold, they told me sorry but the old plan was gone, and I had to upgrade to the $ 75 plan to keep my monthly 10GB. So either I had been lied to by the first 3 people or they were clueless. Either way I was screwed. I started shopping around for a different provider, and called back a couple days later to close my account and take advantage of the 30-​day return period to get back the $ 40 I paid for the new unit (minus shipping of course — like this was my fault). Oh Sorry, they said, the 30 days started WHEN YOU ORDERED IT, even through it took them 3+ weeks to ship it, so most of my 30-​day free return period had expired before I ever got the unit. I got about 2 – 3 days use out of it, can’t afford to use it, can’t return it, can’t get any refund. The two useless routers now make a nice pair of bookends.
And by the way, you also don’t really get all the capacity you sign up for; when you get close to your limit (into your last 100MB) they bill you $ 10 to «top off» your account, claiming they’re doing you a favor by not disrupting your service. Problem is you already paid for that last 100MB that’s supposed to be part of your data plan! So if you used exactly what your plan includes, or even a little less, you’d wind up paying $ 10 extra anyway without ever exceeding your limit. (You can turn off the automatic top-​off if you search really hard for it on your account.)
Bottom line — STAY AWAY! Their equipment is OK (if you can wait weeks for it), their data plans are expensive, customer service is the absolute worst I have ever dealt with, and their 30-​day return policy is outright fraud. Yeah, if you buy their equipment (which isn’t free) you can get a tiny bit of internet for free (500MB/​mo., enough to last a typical user for a day or two if you are careful) but when dealing with these lying crooks «free» does not mean «without any cost». Be prepared to pay one way or another, in dollars, time and aggravation.

Just a note… I was the first to review Freedompop and less than 24 hrs later there was a 5 star review. Yet every review after that was 1 or 2 stars. Makes you think someone may have had a google alert in case someone got around to reviewing them. Seems kinda fishy to me.

I have dealt with this company twice. Once for my father and once for myself.
This company will opt you into services that are unwanted and bill you for it. When you call to inquire about the charges, they tell you that you did not turn it off on the back end. The funny part is that some things, you cannot turn off by yourself without contacting them.
My most recent experience with this company is bait & switch. They decommissioned their old system and brought in the new. They then forced me to upgrade to their new device for $ 39.99 which is not $ 39.99 when I got the bill. The $ 39.99 device is really $ 59.98 because in very small print, a $ 19.99 data plan was required to get this device.
If you choose to deal with this company, make sure you go through every setting in their system and read every word because they will lead you to believe you are getting a good deal and shock you when you get the bill from your credit card company.

Terrible service. When I called to cancel our trial plan, they promised to refund the monthly fee. A month later nothing. So I call again. First, they say there’s no record of me calling to cancel. Then they confirmed that I did call but still no record of offering a refund. Then they tell me they’ll give less than half of the fee back since I used most of the data. I told them there’s no way since I use this phone strictly as a back up emergency phone. They said they need authorization to give any more back. Blah, blah, blah.
Stay away!!! Not worth the trouble!

Yea… there’s pretty much the worst company out there. All of their equipment is «refurbished» but I’ve come to discover that means used, untested, and usually defective. They were selling WiMax hardware (and charging people for it) until a few months before Sprint shut it down.
The last device I got from them (I have/​had several accounts) came in dead, they told me they were shipping a replacement and never did. That was a couple of weeks ago. Repeated calls to people who don’t speak English didn’t help. I’m sorry but an extra 500MB doesn’t make up for weeks without service.
There are several other Sprint MVNOs who have to be better. Even better would be a T-​Mobile MVNO which would have the added benefit of actually having coverage outside of St. Louis (where I’ve never been and have no plans on going)
In short if you want defective hardware and no support this is your provider.

Fredompop more like Free Poop
If you like being stranded in the middle of nowhere for half a day and not being abel to call for help this is the phone for you.

Beware. You can get 1 gb of data a month, by connecting with other users, so you get the 500mb free and then an additional 500mb. But the company uses every trick to get you to pay more. They automatically sign you up for a top off, so you have to dig into the settings to unclick the button. When I first signed up they were charging me $ 1 a month if I did not use the service! That sucked. Now they will automatically charge you if you go over in usage, but they shut you off if you get within 100mb, if you dont have top-​off, I’ve not had top-​off for months, yet they still have charged me for top-​offs. Trying to contact them thru a phone call is like dealing with comcast, long waits, people on the other end who get to deal with pissed off customers.
One other user said they are like Spirit Airlines, I agree! Its all about charging the customers, not providing a service.

I tried to explore this ISP’s offerings. You have to give them an email address just to get past the splash page on their website, and they don’t have a single straight-​forward price list or service menu anywhere. Cut the BS and just fucking tell people how much the service is going to cost for the data they want (and no, it’s not actually free unless you plan to use the Internet for ten minutes a month…500MB isn’t enough to do much of anything. Plus, apparently you need to buy one of their devices).

Very prompt service to sign you up. After that, you are on your own. Ordered device on almost 4 weeks ago, never received it. Couldn’t get an answer via email. Found out it was back ordered and never notified me. Long wait time and unresponsive customer support
Run…

Their plan, especially for a 13 year old who’s mostly on wi-​fi, look great, but they will not honor it even though it worked flawlessly for 48 hours (more on that later). They now say you must be on wi-​fi for this plan to work (though someone explain to me how you get a 500MB data plan over wi-​fi??)
Plans — Including the world’s only 100% FREE mobile phone plan
FREE — 100% Free talk, text and data: 500 texts, 200 voice minutes, and 500MB of data free every month
When I bought the iPhone5 for $ 200 and signed up the free plan worked great. Then I got a phone notification of a carrier update and did an IOS update. Since then I cannot connect except over wi-​fi.
I called support 15 times. 12 times the call was dropped before I was able to speak to a rep. Twice I went to a voice mail box and once I was hung up on by a support tech who kept repeating the same words over and over and would not let me talk to a supervisor.
Before he hung up he kept repeating the free plan is only over wi-​fi. I asked why it worked for 2 days. He repeated the above. I told him I had a screenshot from when I signed up that does not state what he is saying (it has been changed since) and he repeated the same thing.
STAY AWAY from the company. They are very shady and I feel like I was scammed.

If you want to save yourself some money and a whole lot of aggravation, stay away from freedompop.
It’s the Spirit Airlines of internet service, if you know what I mean.
Essentially, absolutely the worst service and same price (or much higher) than mainstream providers.
Won’t bore you with the details of my experience. But it’s truly the worst experience I’ve had ever not to mention $ 30 for 3 days of service (mind you I’m not streaming movies or music)!!!
Did I mention you can’t even speak to anyone in customs service?

This company is terrible! !!!
After I realized any cable company is much cheaper, I decreased my plan to the free 500mb a month since I drive for über and lyft and these idiots just cancelled my entire service and refuse to give me the free 500mb for the $ 30 device I purchased.
They deactivated my account so I can’t even log in. Such a scam and rip off. Please do not spend a penny with this company as they are the worst I’ve ever seen.
And there slogan is the Internet is a right, not a privilege. Such a lie. It’s their right and privileged to take your money.