FreedomPop: FREE Cell Service! Is it Too Good to be True? I investigate.

^source

When I first heard about Steemit, I immediately thought "this sounds too good to be true". But when I saw regular people making good money from it, and began to make good money from Steemit myself, I had a rethink. We live in a strange future. Many things seem to be possible now that weren't before, in particular with respect to money.

I still don't understand where Steemit money comes from. But it keeps coming, and I can spend it. That's legit enough for me. I had the same experience with FreedomPop, a cell phone service provider that offers a basic plan for $0 per month.

"What's the catch?" That's what I wanted to know. It turns out the answer is that it's hard as balls to fully opt out of payments and secure the basic, free plan. After you sign up to receive the SIM cards, there is a $5 fee to activate (and ensure the debit card number you gave them is legit).

After that you need to go to "My Account" at the top and choose "plans":

I've already downgraded my account to free, so it won't look like this for you. But the red circle shows the "Details and Plan Management" link that will be under the default plan you want to opt out of. Click that:

That will take you to a screen where, if you ctrl+f for "downgrade" (or just scroll down and look for it) you will find an option to downgrade the default plan to the basic, free one. This is where they charge the $5 fee to verify you've given them a real debit card number, so technically not absolutely free, but the fee is one time only.

This didn't go through for me. I had to do it a few times. I suspect they intentionally make it difficult. But eventually it worked and left me signed up only for the basic, free plan:

Done! Right? Wrong. There's another option hidden away. If you go over the allotted data for the month, they automatically charge you $15 for a data "top-up". That's something I was never warned about and had to find out by doing some Google sleuthing. How to avoid this? Easy peasy. From the "Billing" drop down, choose Billing Settings:

As you can see, at the bottom, my "Auto-Top Up" is already turned off. To turn yours off, click "Edit" to the right of it, as indicated by the red arrow:

After that, it will expand and you'll see a check box that is checked by default. Un-check it. Repeat, you don't want it checked. Un-check that sumbitch to turn off the auto-top up "feature". It will now simply suspend service for the remainder of the month when you go over the data limit:

Damn that was a lot of work. Presumably they make most of their money off people who can't figure out how to do this. Or who just don't care, as their paid plans are honestly very low price. I didn't go into this blind. As you know from past articles I've written about identifying scams, I investigate the shit out of anything that sounds too good to be true.

No sign of any pending litigation against them. No sign of anything sinister, their backers are all reputable, and the explanation for how it can be so cheap on the Wiki page (preferentially places calls over any available wifi nearby) checks out. It also makes note that they have been accused of not making certain charges obvious (like the auto top-up mentioned in this article).

So, they are a little bit shady and make it confusing and difficult to opt out of charges. But it's actually possible to do so, and receive legitimately free cell service. I ordered the bundle where I get two sims on the same plan, so I can use one in a tracking device for my ebike.

They're also currently offering a $20 hotspot. That's $20 one time, then free service forever. Presumably however, you must look up the plan on your Freedompop account and go through the laborious steps outlined above in order to make it actually free.

So there you have it. $5 gets you one or two sims (depending on whether you get the bundle). Then a little bit of tedious clicking around to opt-out of all the charges, and you've got free cell service. $20 gets you a hotspot with perpetually free internet access.

Is it a little bit shady? Absolutely, and they certainly try to trick you into incurring charges. But is it possible to actually get the free service from them that they advertise, with a little work?

Yes, it is. It's not ad supported, but I suspect part of their revenue is data mining. I won't stand behind that because I don't know for sure, but it's a possibility to be aware of if you plan to go for this.

^{Disclaimer: I've received no money from Freedompop for this article and as yet haven't ever taken money from anybody to promote anything. They'd be fools to pay me for what I've written here anyhow, given that it's highly critical of their attempt to trick users into incurring charges.}