Hi Woot! Hope everyone had a nice Memorial Day Weekend. Happy to be back with another deal for you all! These are all LTE Phones that allow you to take advantage of our free service. I’ve put together some FAQs below. And as always, we’re here to answer any questions in this forum or via PM!
**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. The FreedomPop 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 Activate | FreedomPop 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. 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!
**7. Are these phones Unlocked? How can I take my phone elsewhere? **
While these phones will arrive ready to be activated on FreedomPop, they can also be activated elsewhere. The 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 (Mobile Phones, Plans & Covers at a T-Mobile Store Near You | T-Mobile). You can also activate this on any of Sprint’s network partners
[*]More information can be found at (http://www.sprint.com/landings/bring-your-own-phone).
[/list]
Please note that if you move service to a different phone carrier, then your 90-day standard FreedomPop warranty may no longer be valid.
**8. Are these phones new? **
These 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.
**9. What’s up with the reviews and customer service issues? **
We’ve received some 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. We are consistently working to improve all aspects of our service each and every day.
If you ever have any questions or concerns, you can always visit our https://forums.freedompop.com/, email us at support@freedompop.com, or PM us during the course of this Woot deal.
I’d really like to try FreedomPop but I’m not excited about the phones, especially that the black phone is $80 more than the white samsung! I guess I’ll wait :(. I should have snatched up the phone last time woot had FreedomPop phones.
The Black S4 is the same price as the White S4! Both at $189.99!
What am I missing here? Do I understand correctly that if I buy the phone the service is free? No membership fees or use fees or hidden charges? How long is service free? If the phone goes south can I still use the service when I buy a different phone?
I have a Galaxy S3 from a previous woot. It really is free, but you don’t get voicemail or anything extra. I’ve never had any issues in the metro area of the city I live in, but keep in mind you will get zero service unless you have 3G data, 4G data, or WiFi. It doesn’t work at all in those areas without decent data reception.
I started paying $19.99 for unlimited everything and $2.49 for voicemail. Works great for me, and keeps the total cost under what the cell phone stipend I receive from the company is.
Correct. Just buy the phone and then activate FreedomPop and choose our Free Plan (200 minutes, 500 texts, and 500mb of data each month). As long as you stay under your allotment, you won’t receive any monthly charges. You can always upgrade to a higher plan (such as Unlimited Everything for $19.99/month) or subscribe to a value-added service (such as Voicemail for $2.49/month).
These phones can also be activated on Sprint or other Sprint MVNOs if you wish to take service elsewhere.
Be sure to check your coverage first at www.freedompop.com/coverage3g4g.
I recently got one for my mom and it didn’t get signals despite the coverage map saying she did. I’d like to try it in my much bigger city, can I return this phone from woot if it doesn’t work here?
weasel words alert!
A phone is either unlocked or it is locked. If the phone’s locking condition has anything to do with any carrier, then that is locking. The words you have used here are typically chosen to be intentionally deceptive and this constitutes a big enough RED FLAG that I’m not going to read any further.
I appreciate what your company is trying to do, but with those words you have placed yourself right on the same level with the monopolists.
You won’t get a manual with your phone.
They’ll charge off data usage every 30 minutes, which will add up fast.
If you upgrade your plan, that accumulation of data charges will use up your ‘high speed’ usage pretty fast.
So go with either the free service or, as I’m doing, try the $19.99 unlimited service. You just have to go into it assuming you’ll never see a minute of high speed (4G) use. If you’re okay with all 3G, it’s a good price.
Don’t count on customer service–it’s nonexistent for the most part. You’ll sit on hold forever, and adding insult to injury, if you sit on hold for 30 minutes, waiting for tech help, they’ll hit you with a survey, asking you whether you were satisfied with the service…when you just sat there on hold with no service at all.
This service might be good for techies and those who enjoy delving into the nuances of apps and cell phone inner workings. For those who just want a phone with text and data, just go with the basics. And if something goes wrong, be prepared to waste a day or two and be very frustrated.
What they mean is the phones aren’t locked to FreedomPop, you could use one on say Virgin, since they use Sprint’s network. This is why i’m giving FreedomPop a go, my old phone is wimax, which is being phased out, if things don’t work out, I can bring it back to Virgin. My experience so far: I bought the S4 a few weeks ago, shipped in 1 week, looks brand new with very, very slight scratches on the screen (very slight), battery life is great, everything works. Signing up was at Freedompop was quick, opted out of the auto top up. Data reception is better than my old HTC EVO. I’m saving FreedomPops 200min/500 txt for backup, mainly using Google Hangouts/Voice apps! I set my Google voice # to forward all texts and calls to my S4, and it even does voice mail. There’s a trick to generate tones for verifing the new phone for Google Voice, hold another phone near and use it’s keypad! Voice doesn’t do mms, to work around, Gmail to the (cell #)@( providers mms domain name, like vzwpix.com for Verizon). Works, and even shows your Gvoice # as sender! So far i’m happy, Gvoice barely sips the 500meg free data.
edit: pics sent TO the phone by mms get filtered out, only the text part of the message gets through. Workaround: the full message appears in your gmail when you have message forwarding to gmail set in Gvoice settings!
Not available in my area, yet shows coverage…what’s up with that???
Happened to me too. Could not make any kind of call at all, even though the map showed coverage.
On starting, a tiny, brief “boot error” appeared in the upper left corner of the screen.
It’s on it’s way back via Woot RMA return, and they tell me “it hasn’t arrived yet.”
Bought a $9.95 TracPhone, as I don’t text.
Happened to me too. Could not make any kind of call at all, even though the map showed coverage.
I’ve had their service for months now, and I hate it. Freedompop uses Sprint’s network, and coverage is noticeably worse than regular Sprint phones (because they only use the data network, not the wider-ranging voice network).
They also have multiple ways to nickel & dime you. Some they mention up-front, some they don’t mention, and at least one they specifically told me wouldn’t charge me and then I had to contact them for a refund when it did. They try very hard to make the free service not free.
Overall, I wouldn’t recommend it. I only paid $20 or so to activate my old Sprint Galaxy S3 on their service, and I still don’t recommend it.
My wife bought me the GalaxyIII so I figured I’d get it a whack. What a total joke/waste of time. All she got for her money is a phone that displays server error. No calls or messages outgoing or incoming . Tech support …yea right, after 45 minutes on hold I decided it just isn’t worth it. Their website states using the forum is their best customer service, sorry I can’t find a solution among all those complaint posts. Bottom line, I now have a new camera without a sd card. If you would like to call me on it the number is 7089347270…good luck getting through.
Just came here to make a pop/soda joke but the convos in here are too real.
The joke here is the FreedomPop service.
Please make sure that the phone has been activated by going to Activate | FreedomPop. I’d also recommend making sure that you have the most recently updated version of the FreedomPop Messaging App installed on your phone. This update can be made via the Google Play Store.
My FreedomPOP S4 seems to have much better data reception, today I was in an area that with my old HTC EVO (virgin/ sprint network/wimax) it would drop to 1x, or no data at all. With my new phone I still got 4g lte. A Hangouts call to my home phone answering machine sounds fine, no drop outs. I’m just using the free data, saving the FreedomPOP app’s minutes/txts for backup. See my post above, it’s actually easier than I thought to just use Google Hangouts apps and google voice. And when I auto connect to wifi at home or elsewhere, I get unlimited free calls and txts! Working great for me so far, but I’ve only been using it 3 weeks so far…