FreedomPop Enters Home Broadband Market With 1 GB Free Plan → Any way to avoid overages with this thing?

I was thinking about signing up with one of their offers, until I realised that it doesn't look like there's any kind of thing to prevent you from going over the allotted free usage, and being charged hefty overage fees.

Is that basically their whole business model, to surprise heavy users with overage fees, or is there some way to actually use the service without overages, and simply choose to be automatically disconnected once you are over your quota? Or, at the very least, have some kind of a setting to limit overage fees to something like at most 5$/mo, and then be disconnected?

Otherwise, thanks, but no thanks. T-Mo would be cheaper, faster and with actual coverage and throughout the nation.

You are right.

I signed up for the free 500mb plan. Although it is hard to find online I made sure that I would NOT be automatically charged for overages. Inspite of that I was charged $30 without my knowledge for a single session of usage. I should point out I had checked my monthly usage online before this session and it was small.

Learned of the charge when I got my VISA bill. Called FreedomPop and was told that Clearwire only updates an individual's usage once a day so even if you check the "no automatic" overages box, you will still be charged for overages.

Won't be using it again.

So, they actually do have a "please no overages" box somewhere, but it doesn't actually work? :-) How convenient!

Did you demand a refund or issue a chargeback, or did you deem it was still within the terms you've agreed to? (Or just not worth investigating/bothering with?)

Does their access device not offer any internal (but user-accessible) statistics on usage? As a system software engineer, I can tell you that it's entirely possible and relatively trivial to design something like that, and have a captive portal that would take over once you are within a certain percentage of usage, on which you could decide what to do next. Of course, whether or not you have something like that is defined by a business need. :-) On my unlocked Google Nexus, I know exactly how much data I've used in any given period, even without having to consult any on-network billing departments. On the other hand, I haven't heard of Apple implementing any service as rich and detailed yet.

They would not give me a refund. Told me it was in the "terms of usage". The representative also told me that Clearwire only sends Freedom Pop an update of individual usage "once a day".