Monday, August 1, 2016

FreedomPop Phone Gets Suspended if You Go Over 400Mb Data Usage

FreedomPop is getting more difficult to use.  They are starting to institute more charges.  I am OK with this for the time being -- getting a plan that gives me 500Mb data free per month is still worth it to me.

However, it turns out that if you go over 400Mb in a month, then FreedomPop won't allow you to use your phone unless you enable auto-top up.  This means that if you don't watch your data usage closely, you could be charged up to $40 per Gb of data.

I have an LG G2 FreedomPop phone and recently went over 400Mb of data use.  It turns out that the credit on the phone expired in June, so my phone was suspended.  Here's how to get your phone back up and running (to un-suspend or re-activate it).

How to reactivate an FP phone:
https://forums.freedompop.com/discussion/6613/expiring-credit

Sign in to your FreedomPop account and select "Overview" under the "Billing" tab.
Next, select "Credit Balance" below "Recent Transactions".
Lastly, select "Click here to Reactivate".


Here's a longer explanation:
If you go over 400Mb, FreedomPop will disable your phone unless you have billing information and other settings set to their liking -- so they can charge you if you go over 500Mb of data. 

I've always recommended to folks that they disable the Automatic Top-Up feature.  This way you supposedly will never be charged by FP.  However, from an FP forum:

When you disable the Automatic Top-Up feature your account will be suspended when you reach the top-up threshold. However, if you exceed your free data allotment in a single session, your account may switch to pay-as-you-go mode. Note that data usage reporting may be delayed by up to three hours.
Our system suspends activity if you are within 100MB of your monthly data allotment and your account has a credit balance of less than $2.

So to get a phone working:
You have to have an active, non-expired credit balance of more than $2.  My LG phone has a credit balance of $5, but it expires every 30 days.  It was a simple matter to go to their website and re-activate this credit balance. 


Here are some comments from various forums:

I added $10 in credit that I have to go in and re-activate (because they deactivate it) every 3 months. This keeps me from being shut off when I reach the 400 meg limit.

This happens quite a bit nowadays. Your best bet is to try and add $10 credit and then it should unsuspend. An admin can always refund the credit charge.

To reactivate without needing customer service, just change the email address on file so before the @ you add +inactive. Then reactivate your device at freedompop.com/activate with your current email.

A good forum post on this issue is here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/freedompop/comments/3289ey/freedompop_never_worry_about_using_your_phone/

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