Today at Electronics.Woot, instead of one thing in the daily deal spot, we’re giving you ALL THE FREE FREEDOMPOP PHONE SERVICE AND MOAR FREE FREEDOMPOP PHONE SERVICE!!
And since it’s a special kinda sale, we thought it needed a special kinda discussion place that you can find here.
Free Phone Service From FreedomPop
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Hi Woot! Beyond happy to be back to provide another deal for you all. The Woot Community seemed pleased with our last offer, so it’s great that we were invited back here again. For those of you who aren’t familiar, FreedomPop offers 100% cell phone service with some pretty sweet LTE Phones. We’ll hang around here to answer any questions in this thread or through PM!
I’ve compiled some FAQs about the deal below. Hope they are helpful!
1. What’s the coverage or network do these phones work on?
All of these phones connect to Sprint’s 4G LTE and 3G networks. You can check out coverage by going to www.freedompop.com/coverage3g4g. Be sure to only select the 4G LTE and 3G boxes. The phones also connect to any local WiFi network!
2. What’s FREE?
You purchase the phone, and then you can take advantage of Free Phone service. Our Free plan consists of 200 Minutes, 500 Texts, and 500MB of 4G LTE/3G data every month.
3. Any other plans?
We also have an Unlimited Everything plan for $19.99/month. That’s unlimited talk, text, and data. The first 1GB of data usage will be at 4G LTE speeds, while all subsequent data usage will be at 3G speeds.
4. I just got my phone from Woot. Now what?
Go to www.freedompop.com/activate in order to activate your phone! Here you will set up your FreedomPop account and choose your phone number!
5. Can I port my existing number over to FreedomPop?
Yes, you can port your number over to your FreedomPop phone after it’s fully activated. Alternatively, you can keep your newly chosen FreedomPop phone number for the whole time. It’s entirely call!
6. Do you still an $0.99 inactivity fee?
Nope, we stopped it a while back.
7. How is call quality when compared to a normal phone?
Our phones use VoIP, but we make every effort to make sure that you can’t even notice. Our Development Team is constantly working to make improvements to the service in order to make call quality better and better. You will be asked to update the Messaging App (in the Google Play store) from time-to-time, but this is done only to improve your overall phone experience!
8. Is Data deducted from my monthly allotment when I’m connected via WiFi? How about Calls & Texts?
Any data that is used while you’re connected via WiFi is not deducted from your Free 500MB allotment. However, calls & texts that are used while on WiFi will be deducted from your monthly allotment, since they are still going through our Messaging App.
8. How do I get extra Voice Minutes and Texts beyond my free allotment? How about data?
Once you reach your 200 Voice Minutes and 500 Text Message limit, you would need to upgrade to a higher plan if you wish to have continued usage for the remainder of the month. Our Unlimited Talk & Text plan is $10.99/month, while the Unlimited Everything plan (unlimited talk, text, & data) is $19.99/month.
9. Can I enable tethering on the phone? What about voicemail?
Both are available as a value added service. Tethering costs $3.99/month and Visual Voicemail costs $2.49/month. Even better, you can subscribe to our Premier Service which bundles all of our popular services (including tethering and voicemail, plus Data Rollover, Usage Alerts, Security, Data Compression, and Premium Support) for $9.99/month.
**9. Are these phones new? **
There are Certified Pre-Owned Phones. While there has been some usage on the devices previously, they have been thoroughly inspected and repackaged by our logistics department and not a third party manufacturer. There have been physical damage checks, functionality checks, data wipe and factory reset, and radio frequency tests.
10. I have a billing issue. Can you help?
Please contact our support team if any billing issues come up. We also have a very active Community Forum that you can check out here
11. Are these phones Unlocked? How can I take this phone elsewhere?
These phones are unlocked to Sprint and with any Sprint MVNO: for use with Sprint wireless CDMA carriers only; not compatible with GSM or other network carriers
For Activation:[list]
[]Contact FreedomPop at (888) 743 - 8107 9am - 5pm (Pacific time) or via email (retail@freedompop.com) to begin the process of moving your phone to another carrier
[]Contact Sprint at (866) 866-7509 or by visiting your local Sprint store (Find a T-Mobile store nearby). You can also activate this on any of Sprint’s network partners
[*]More information can be found at (Bring Your Own Unlocked Phone | IMEI Compatibility Check & Activate Online | T-Mobile).
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12. What’s up with the reviews and customer service issues?
We’ve received a lot of criticism over the the past year stemming from our initial wireless hotspot policies. We’re a startup company attempting to disrupt the wireless telecommunications industry by competing against the big guys with billion $$ marketing budgets and nearly unlimited resources. Everyone has an opinion, good or bad. Major publications who’ve reviewed our product including Forbes, PC Mag, Top Ten Reviews, Clark Howard, and TUAW who have been impressed with our service and respect our efforts of making free internet accessible to everyone.
The good news is we’ve listened to these criticisms and updated our policies as a result. We’ve definitely made a lot of changes since our initial launch to improve our service, but if you have any other specific questions, feel free to ask.
We’ve also beefed up our customer service team considerably over the last year. We encourage you to come to FreedomPop HQ anytime to meet the team in person. Like any customer service team, we do experience times with high call volume, but you can always email us via support@freedompop.com or PM us during the course of this woot deal.
FreedomPop Reviews and Ratings[list]
[]http://www.freedompop.com/freedompop-review
[]http://mobile-broadband-services-review.toptenreviews.com/freedompop-review.html
[]http://www.tuaw.com/2014/01/23/a-year-with-freedompop-how-did-it-go/
[]Clark.com - Advice You Can Trust From Clark Howard and Team Clark
[]Data For Nothing, Calls For Free: How FreedomPop Will Offer Free Phone Service
[]Cellphone Start-Ups Use Wi-Fi First to Handle Calls and Take On Rivals - The New York Times
[/list]
Picked up a Samsung S2 a while back. Freedom Pop was a mess to set up with terrible customer service so I bailed out. Thought I could then just activate it on my Sprint account…WRONG. Have tried numerous times but Sprint claims some sort of activation issue with the IMEI and I’m out of luck.
Very sorry for the poor experience that you had with us previously. We’re constantly working to improve all aspects of our service (including Customer Support). As for the activation issue, I can try to help you out here…feel free to PM me the MEID & IMEI of your S2.
got an s3 last time this is on here had technical problems phone had custom ROM and custom recovery installed on it as well as a rooted operating system would not install update from Samsung due to lack of signed zip file
getting in touch with rma people was not easy and due to the fact that it was sold under a third party they were unable to return the device so I’m stuck with a broken device that doesn’t work very well in my area of residence
as I know the rep will read this if you would like to figure out a way for me to get an RMA number so I can ship it back that would be great
Please PM me the information associated with your FreedomPop account & phone and I’ll help you out.
Woot should be ashamed to have its name associated with FreedomPop. Customer service is non-existent. Most customers complain of waiting for hours on the phone, to finally give up before ever talking to a Customer Service Rep.
Do yourself a favor: search online with the words “FreedomPop” and “scam”. You’ll be shocked by the horror stories of past customers screwed by this company.
We’ve heard the feedback in regards to our Customer Support, which is why we are going through some serious steps to improve it. We’ve increased the size of our Support team, and well as ramped up our training process and internal QA efforts. While we are not perfect, we hope to get there soon by being better each and every day.
I mean I understand the concept of damage control… but does anybody find corporate presence in a thread off-putting?
It’s like trying to have a sleep-over with your parents in the same room… Just let us talk among ourselves.
They’re here to help answer questions. It just appears that no one has any so far.
It has helped quite a bit in quite other sales in the past. I personally like when there is some sort of presence as they can answer questions first hand. I have to commend people like FreedomPop because they always try to stay positive no matter what is thrown at them. I have seen this with a few other vendors here.
Having a good pre-sales pitch is no excuse for the lack of post-sales support.
Nope, it’s just you. I love when the manufacturer is here answering questions.
Does any 1 know if any of the above phones & this service support the square up creditcard service
These phones are compatible with Square Up. They all are smartphones running Android 4.0 or later (https://squareup.com/reader).
Recently got two ZTE Force phones and the U770 USB hotspot. Phones were $25 each and the U770 was $15. (All on sale) All are good quality and working better than advertized. How much am I paying a month for everything? One Dollar. And that’s only so I can use one of the phones for a hotspot. Yeah, the customer service is crap…but what the hell do you expect for nothing? But if you call customer service and press the number for sales, you will get a real person. And if you don’t act like a D-i-c-k, they will almost always transfer you to tech support or whomever you’re trying to reach. Bottom line, you get what you pay for.
Question: If I buy this phone and activate it, what happens if I move to Europe? Will I be able to “unlock” it and use it on any GSM carrier?
I used a WiMax FreedomPop phone for Square at a Farmers Market last summer. It worked great.
A cheap, dedicated wireless register.
Sure beats sharing a personal phone amongst coworkers.
The WiMax coverage wasn’t the greatest, but it would default to 3G if needed, and that worked just fine.
The only problem was the battery life was horrid. I think that’s a problem with many/most FreedomPop phones, but constant use is going to drain the battery on most any smartphone.
We just kept the phone on the charger most of the time and it worked just fine.
We’re going to use the same setup this year, though might get one of the LTE phones for better coverage/speed.
I actually recommended a FreedomPop phone to a food truck this past Friday. I think it’s a great solution.
Any of these phones should work just fine.
I picked up an S3 on Woot when it was offered in March. I have been very satisfied with the phone and service provided by FreedomPop. The phone battery did not hold a charge for an entire day, so I contacted FreedomPop customer support regarding the issue, and they were courteous, local and spoke clear English, helpful, and willing to send out a replacement battery. Yes, it took quite a while to get through to customer support, but I am willing to wait to talk to someone who speaks clear English rather than getting a call center in India and deal with gibberish. Hats off to FreedomPop for keeping it local.
I understand that FreedomPop has had some issues in the past. We all make mistakes, but it appears that FreedomPop is attempting to turn things around. My experience so far has been good as long as my expectation is that I am dealing with a company that is learning the ropes as they go and are not necessarily ramped up to handle all scenarios perfectly. I expect customer service to be slow at this point. It might take an hour to get through, but eventually you should get through and talk to an American willing and able to help.
The service provided by FreedomPop may be aimed at a niche market. They provide limited service for free which is awesome. I can not justify paying a service provider that locks me into a long term contract and charges $30-$70 per month or more for service that I really don’t need that much. In my case, I have a tablet with a data plan and a couple of pay-as-you-go dumb phones on different networks which provide better coverage overall. I can not tell you how many times I have bailed out friends with smart phones tied to a single carrier that could not provide service in an area that we were located. I pulled out my 2 dumb phones and have always been able to complete a call on one of them. Now I have added another layer of additional coverage with FreedomPop.
The phone I received has some minor cosmetic damage and wear. But sans the battery issue (which is getting resolved thanks to FreedomPop), I am getting great value from the phone primarily as a nicely sized portable device that is always connected to the network as opposed to the larger tablet that I used to lug around - or not. And for the price - FREE - what could be better? And I was able to add teethering for only $1/month, so now I am considering discontinuing my data plan on my tablet and saving an additional $30/month.
Can I use this phone with NET10 if I am not happy with FreedomPop service?