FreedomPop no longer free from 29 July

I cancelled my account online yesterday and received an email back to confirm that it had been cancelled and the sim card is no longer working. I have also contacted them through their contact form to confirm that I do not authorize any future payments. I did not port my number out as when I ported it in I was charged £4.99, but I did get it refunded when I complained.

Roger1 wrote: »

I have raised a chargeback with the credit card company.

Update:

The card company has activated the chargeback. They are refunding.

They have found other charges which they are also refunding. Part of the process involves cancelling my old card account and issuing a replacement - on its way as the PIN arrived yesterday.

E-mail from FreedomPop:

Sorry to see you go!
Dear Roger,
This email is to inform you that your account has been cancelled. If you believe you received this in error or would like to reactivate your account down the road please contact support here. You will receive no further charges.
–Your friends at FreedomPop

OK, but which account? (No info in the e-mail.) I think we had 5 between us. I'm checking old e-mails.

Roger1 wrote: »

Update:

The card company has activated the chargeback. They are refunding.

They have found other charges which they are also refunding. Part of the process involves cancelling my old card account and issuing a replacement ...

FURTHER UPDATE

I queried FreedomPop's actions - how and when did I sign up for the service they have not provided but charged for. Their response is disturbing. Extract:

FreedomPop wrote:

Please be aware that some pop-up ads of promotional trial plans and services are automatically added to your account when tapped/clicked and its renewal will be based on your billing date regardless on when it was added.

This may have been the reason why you have not been aware to when the International plan Global Pro 1000 was added on the account.

So clicking to find out more info = subscribing? Surely not, not in the UK anyway. In fact, the information was not forthcoming and I certainly did not sign up.

We're in further discussion while I weigh up whether to involve Ofcom.

In the meantime, be careful what you click, and make sure you check your card bills.

I used to have 2 Freedompop's as spare mobiles when wanting to keep my work/personal numbers private - used for booking reservations, online contacts, sales listings etc. I have cancelled them both as not worth even the £3.50/month fee as despite the text/call working fine the call were hit and miss (since everything went through the online app - some calls never came through and always a delay lag). Although if you did the 12 month in one payment it was £19.99 (£1.67/month) for the new essential pack - 1GB, 200 SMS, 200 Mins calls - which is not too bad but as I used many texts, that part of plan was never great (why I had 2 Freedompop SIM's - if was 1000 or 2000 texts then I'd probably pay the £19.99 plan) and fact that Freedompop seem to change their plan terms continuously to try and catch you out trying to charge you here and there. They do have some good international plan call options, think was about £0.99 for 100 international mins - that was only add on occasionally I would use. However, did not support international texting (I'd still use Fishtext for that).

Extra's they used to try and catch you out on were when getting the free SIM with first month 2.25GB and unl calls/texts for 1p, you had to then remember to downgrade everything before end of month. Also ticking to remove lots of other things like no voicemail/premium calls quality/auto £5 top up etc. I'd also always order with a prepaid card so they could never charge me any extras later in contract (many others reported random charges and they did try to charge random things some months, that should not have since was downgraded to free plan but could not take any money out as the prepaid card was zero and only topped a small amount of money to it when used it).

So their claim that people were taking advantage, I feel was nonsense, was just people were probably becoming savvy from the reviews and avoiding any extra charges while using the free only plan. Clearly Freedompop could not really operate giving the free plan only if there were too many people on it and those users were avoiding been charged extra fees.

Weird as I got the plan increase notification email to. But I’m still on FreedomPop and get charged £0 a month, seems like nothing changed for me