Complaint Review: FreedomPop - Internet

This company will lie to you, trick you, and withhold important information in order to get you to buy.  And then when you start to realize what has happened, they will charge you to cancel the account and return the phone!

I will try to summarize all of the FreedomPop BS:

1. They lie about the price of the phone. They said it would cost 89.99, but they charged me 99.99.

2. They misrepresent the cell phone service they are selling. You are not getting real cell phone service with a real phone number, you are getting a VIRTUAL phone number.  So you cannot use the phones dialer, you must use an added on application. And guess what? Using the virtual phone number uses your DATA (at an alarming rate, I might add)!  This WAS NOT DISCLOSED up front!  Very underhanded.  This is not what most people would consider to be a "cell phone".

3. They try to upsell you on their "package of services" by LYING to you.  They told me MULTIPLE TIMES that I could not get voice mail unless I bought their extra package of services, and when I threatened to cancel the transaction because I wanted voicemail but I did not want to pay for the extra services package, all of a sudden they told me the real truth: that in fact the plan did come with free voice mail!  I didnt need to actually buy the extra package of services!  The plan I wanted came with free voicemail all along! I couldnt believe that one, I should have seen the red flags at this point, but I was stupid and I continued on to purchase the phone and service....

4. They do not clearly explain their return policy.  They dont tell you that if you need to return the phone, that you will be paying for return shipping (in addition to the original inflated shipping fee) AND a mysterious "return fee" that they will not tell you how much it is up front.  You just have to return the phone and find out later how much they decided to keep.  Again, very underhanded.  So basically, they are costing you at least 50$ even after you realize they scammed you and you cancel and send everything back and do everything right.  You still have to pay, and theres nothing you can do about it.  I suspect this is by design.  I suspect this is a key part of their business model - they are making ~50$ every time they lie to someone and trick them into trying their phone service.  Even after they are found out, it is too late because they still get to keep the shipping and return fees.

5. Their data policy is carefully designed to extract a lot of EXTRA money out of you AUTOMATICALLY each month.  By default, they will charge your credit card automatically when you go over your data usage, and the only way you can stop that from happening is BY PAYING A FEE!  I kid you not, you have to pay a fee to stop them from automatically charging you a data overage fee.  Now you might think "well I will just be careful about how much data I use and it wont be a problem"  WRONG.  You dont really have much control because the phone by default is sucking down data at an alarming rate, and until and unless you know how to optimize the phone and get rid of the apps that are the culprits, YOU DONT STAND A CHANCE!  I will give a few data points to illustrate: I turned my new phone on for about 10 minutes, and I didnt do anything on the phone - no calls, no apps, nothing - and when I checked how much data I had used I was shocked!  It was already at ~10 MB.  That is an average of 1 MB per minute when not even doing anything, imagine what it will be like when you start using the apps, or even more importantly, making phone calls!  Yes, the phone calls use your data because this is not a real cell phone!  Surprise!  I bet you didnt expect that!

6. They lied about how much the extra data would cost. They kept telling me that extra data is 1.5 cents per MB, which sounds OK.  But what they dont tell you is, you have to pre-emptively buy an entire 1 GB in advance to get that 1.5 per MB rate.  If you wait until you go over and it automatically tops up, guess what?  It costs 2.5 cents per MB and it is charged in 1 GB increments only!  So you arent just paying for what you used, you are paying for even more AND at a rate that is almost DOUBLE what they claim!  Can you believe this?!

At this point, you should be smart enough to realize that YOU SHOULD NOT EVEN ATTEMPT TO DO BUSINESS WITH FREEDOMPOP.  They will screw you in more ways than you can count.  I could actually even list a few more things, but honestly, I am tired of typing at this point.  If you still choose to try FreedomPop, then you get what you deserve!  You have been warned...