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Review by happydogcat See Profile

  • Location: Bellevue, King, WA, USA
  • Cost: $7 per month (12 month contract)
Totally broken service, not helpful and tricking customer service.
Pre Sales Information:
Install process:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

I have been a freedompop user for a month and want to share my horrible experience to use their "service":
I have a brandnew sprint iphone5 with its original sim card. I decided to try the service based on my small usage pattern and its

good pricing. I spent $100 activate my service on Nov 6 and the BYOD verification and onboard process went successfully. When the

activation was done I was happy to try to make a test call and that's when the horrible horrible journey started: So far I spent

20+ hours over the phone with its technical support and account department, and couldn't use any service: not a minute of call or

a byte of data for internet browsing!
I placed 8-10 calls to its tech support, and every single call went exact the same pattern: first between 10-40 minutes wait,

then average ~30-50 minutes describing my issue and previous "helps" already done by the tech support, going through steps

provided by the technician. It always ended up fruitless and the technician always promised he/she would escalate this issue to

their dev team and would get back with a fix within 24-48 hours. I waited double the said time, 2-4 days, there was zero follow-

up, no call, no email, so I had to spend another fruitless 1-1.5 hours going through the next loop again. EVERY single time out

of my 8-10 technical calls went like this!
Since there is no help from freedompop, I also spent 5-10 hours trying to fix myself:browse web for possible solution(a lot of

users went into all sorts of issues just like me, and the overall feedback is terrible), go through 50-100 times the "fix" steps

posted on freedompop's help site and hope no such "fix" will make the service rise from its zombie state.
After one month's try and so much time wasted, I finally gave up and another terrible billing loop started, so far I made another

3 expensive calls and haven't see a penny refund of $100 I paid: On 11/2 I explained my terrible using experience to Savari of

cancellation department. Since I couldn't use any service and on its website it advertised free cancellation within one year if

not satisfied with the service, I asked naturally a full refund. Savari used all sorts of weird reasons first trying to persuade

me to stick to their "service", or downgrade to its "free service", then avoid to make any concrete soluton on refund, eventually

she promised to email me back on the same day a soluton on billing, so far 4 days passed no such email; I then make my next 2

calls on 12/4: After 15 minutes' going through their deep-stepped phone system to reach cancellation and subsequent wait, I

reached another representative, I went through the same experience as the first billing call and went through the same "sorry

about your bad experience but no solution for refund" game, I asked to talk with her supervisor. I waited 30 minutes for the

supervisor and it looked another trick of endless waiting so I ended the call with one more wasted hour! I immediately made the

third call with Robert. He went through the same trick with me and promised to call me about a resolution after talking with

billing department, there is again no call so far from Robert. After failing in every aspect of their service, freedompop did

well in one area: train its customer service well to play trick to delay and avoid cancellation and refund.
After wasting so many hours going through the painful "service", I feel very relieved finally end the journey with freedompop and

will be extremely careful to choose my next provider. Byebye freedompop, you suck a lot and only aim at fooling existing

customers and trapping more new customers by your "free service". I will not use your service again in my life time!

member for 9.3 years, driveby review (so far)
updated 9.3 years ago

wchillman
join:2011-11-20
Gig Harbor, WA

wchillman

Member

Republic Wireless

Republic Wireless uses wi-fi to make calls and Sprint cellular service when not on wi-fi. Sprint's service is pretty decent where we live in Gig Harbor and maybe in Bellevue too. Republic Wireless offers the Moto X which has been a great phone. We've been using their service for several years and it has been one of the best decisions we've made.
davidrbreed
Premium Member
join:2014-11-26
Chicago, IL

davidrbreed

Premium Member

Re: Republic Wireless

happydogcat - I had the exact same experience with FreedomPop. Over a year ago, I tried their "Free Internet" with the 3G/4G data service. I blazed through the monthly "free" allotment of data in 6 days. Learned that unless you are just doing text emails, it was a very costly plan. It only took me 6 months to get my money back. I tried their newly advertised cell phone - got an HTC Evo 4G - it never worked. Battery replacement, 2 phone replacements, and after a year and about 1000 hours of wasted time, they still owe me a refund even after I returned the phone. -- A friend gave me his old HTC phone, so I signed up for their Beta BYOD offer for $9.95 activation fee -- with free monthly 400 mins. talk + 200 texts + 0.5 GB data (3G/4G). The talk works about 5% of the time and the text messaging works about 20% of the time. -- But the data works 99% of the time -- both 3G and 4G as well as wi-fi. So i use my old cell phone on Ting for talk and text.