Republic Wireless or Freedom Pop

[wageslave23]

It seems like all personal finance bloggers recommend Republic Wireless.  I have used them for about 4 years and it seems like the service is getting worse.  I have calls that don't go through all the time and missed text messages.  I'm thinking about switching to Freedom Pop.  They have a free plan and $80/yr plan.  Both seem like a better deal than RW.  I wonder why everyone recommends RW and not FP?  Does anybody have any experience with FP?

[orangepalm]

I'm not sure why there's so much hype around Republic Wireless either. They don't seem that cheap to me. My guess is they provide some bloggers with a generous kick back.

I've been using Freedompop for years. All the stories you read online are very true. It's a pretty crappy company with terrible customer service. They'll take any opportunity to charge high fees etc. BUT I still love them.

The way I look at is that it's similar to credit card bonuses. For many people, it's a bad deal (late fees, high interest), but for Mustachians there's a real opportunity (get sign-up bonuses). Same with Freedompop: for most people, it's no good (gimmicky website, spotty coverage, fees for everything), but there is an opportunity to have (almost) free cell coverage if you make an effort (downgrade services, add "friends" for extra data).

I used to have their CDMA service (Sprint network) which was really abysmal. Nowadays, you can order a SIM-card (LTE, AT&T network) for 1 cent (look on Slickdeals).

Keep in mind: Freedompop is data only. You need to install an app in order to have voice service (VoIP). I just use Google Voice. Really, I would not recommend FP if you call a lot, their VoIP is very unreliable. But if you use it primarily for data, you really can't beat free.

Otherwise, maybe look at Ting or Mint (sometimes there are decent deals for a full year of service, look on eBay).

[Daley]

I'm not sure why there's so much hype around Republic Wireless either. They don't seem that cheap to me. My guess is they provide some bloggers with a generous kick back.

It's this exactly. Some of the most generous referral kickbacks in the MVNO industry come from Republic. It's still $30 a referral bounty. It's yet another reason why I never recommended Republic for a multitude of reasons to the good community here, and why I never used referral links with the companies I recommended in the guide. When money's involved, bias can be introduced. And personally? No amount of money can help me sleep at night if I'm recommending an awful service to people. I want to help others make sound choices, not pad my own bottom line.

Over the years that I maintained the guide here and on my own website, the one thing that saddened me the most was a personal finance couple who wholeheartedly copy-pasted so much of my original work from the first revision of the guide and even linked over to my wireless plan calculator, only to turn around and use it to shill Republic Wireless to their readers to line their own pockets.

I don't recommend FreedomPop, either. It's why I always tell people to pay for what they need, because there's never such thing as a free lunch. Use a better MVNO and actually pay for what you need and use. Maybe give US Mobile a look.

[Syonyk]

I'm pretty happy with my AT&T Prepaid ($30/mo for unlimited talk/text and 1GB/mo of data with rollover, and if you go over it just slows you down instead of thwacking you with overage charges).

What are you looking for in service, specifically?

[wageslave23]

I need about 300 to 500 mb in data (mostly for google maps, etc), and probably 300 minutes and probably 500 texts.  And I need the calls and texts to actually work.  Don't need great coverage, I'm in a suburb of Chicago so all networks should work.

[wageslave23]

I'm not sure why there's so much hype around Republic Wireless either. They don't seem that cheap to me. My guess is they provide some bloggers with a generous kick back.

It's this exactly. Some of the most generous referral kickbacks in the MVNO industry come from Republic. It's still $30 a referral bounty. It's yet another reason why I never recommended Republic for a multitude of reasons to the good community here, and why I never used referral links with the companies I recommended in the guide. When money's involved, bias can be introduced. And personally? No amount of money can help me sleep at night if I'm recommending an awful service to people. I want to help others make sound choices, not pad my own bottom line.

Over the years that I maintained the guide here and on my own website, the one thing that saddened me the most was a personal finance couple who wholeheartedly copy-pasted so much of my original work from the first revision of the guide and even linked over to my wireless plan calculator, only to turn around and use it to shill Republic Wireless to their readers to line their own pockets.

I don't recommend FreedomPop, either. It's why I always tell people to pay for what they need, because there's never such thing as a free lunch. Use a better MVNO and actually pay for what you need and use. Maybe give US Mobile a look.

Thanks for the tip on US Mobil.  If you go over do they penalize you or just bump you up to the higher minutes/texts, etc?

[Syonyk]

I need about 300 to 500 mb in data (mostly for google maps, etc), and probably 300 minutes and probably 500 texts.  And I need the calls and texts to actually work.  Don't need great coverage, I'm in a suburb of Chicago so all networks should work.

Project Fi should do that for about $25/mo.  Also, you can download Google Maps offline data for an area and seriously reduce data use.

[wageslave23]

I need about 300 to 500 mb in data (mostly for google maps, etc), and probably 300 minutes and probably 500 texts.  And I need the calls and texts to actually work.  Don't need great coverage, I'm in a suburb of Chicago so all networks should work.

Project Fi should do that for about $25/mo.  Also, you can download Google Maps offline data for an area and seriously reduce data use.

Thanks.

[Daley]

Thanks for the tip on US Mobil.  If you go over do they penalize you or just bump you up to the higher minutes/texts, etc?

Prepaid hard cap. If you run out before the month's end and need more, you can buy a 30+ day add-on/top-up.

And yeah, use offline maps. Physical storage on your phone's way cheaper than constantly re-downloading the same data over and over from a remote server.

[geekette]

I get about that from Red Pocket for $10 and change (500 minutes, 500 texts, 500mb).  Other than the problems I had with the initial set up and bonus plan, it seems fine now.  Are there any red flags on Red Pocket at this point?

[Daley]

I get about that from Red Pocket for $10 and change (500 minutes, 500 texts, 500mb).  Other than the problems I had with the initial set up and bonus plan, it seems fine now.  Are there any red flags on Red Pocket at this point?

My only hesitation is on customer service quality at this point, along with your own setup and multi-month prepaid experiences. If you'd be so kind as to shoot me a PM when you get the chance and go into detail on what happened? Ebay sellers involved, websites used, etc.?

[geekette]

I get about that from Red Pocket for $10 and change (500 minutes, 500 texts, 500mb).  Other than the problems I had with the initial set up and bonus plan, it seems fine now.  Are there any red flags on Red Pocket at this point?

My only hesitation is on customer service quality at this point, along with your own setup and multi-month prepaid experiences. If you'd be so kind as to shoot me a PM when you get the chance and go into detail on what happened? Ebay sellers involved, websites used, etc.?

Other than the original $1 GSM sim bought on Amazon, everything was through Red Pocket, including the $20 for "3 months and a CDMA sim" that caused so much grief.  My renewal today went through just fine (AFAICT).  For more details on exactly what went wrong, I'd have to look at my old posts.  They always tried to help, but sometimes they just didn't know what they were doing (and I suspect that's because they were so new to CDMA at the time).

I had one month of GSM after porting from Airvoice, then switched to CDMA in December to get MMS and visual voicemail (yeah, iPhone user here). 

MMS has worked quite well, but I did have some difficulty with vv showing a (non-existant) voicemail almost every time I went through a dead zone for a time.  It was doubly annoying because I'd have to actually call from another phone, leave myself a voicemail, then call and delete the real voicemail to get rid of the ghost message.  That seems to have been fixed, though.  Knock wood.