Straight out of the box - dead. Lets hope a replacement isn't dead too.
So the good news is I got a second one, and it is currently working as it should. Look out for a first look review in the gadget review section soon.
Freedom Pop Hotspot
A few weeks ago, I bought into the Freedom Pop free 500 Mb hotspot device. It took about 2 weeks to get it, and I only really started using it a few days ago. Look how much I got 'charged' one day of turning it on.
This was from light web surfing and mostly doing work - does something smell fishy to you? It does to me.
I was working on Office Documents Mostly... Does this look right to you?Anyway, they automatically start charging 'top offs' at $10 per gb. I've already got charged $30 on a 'free' plan just testing the service out.
If I were you, I'd stay away from Freedom Pop. But if you are wanting to try it out, make sure you read their usage terms which pretty much teachs us that you can't get something for nothing (other than the $49/$99 fee plus shipping).
Just an update:
So I have been using the freedom pop mobile hotspot for several months now and I thought I would share some observations. Since I've turned off the automatic top off, and made sure I turned it on and used it every month, I have not received any additional bills to my account. As long as you are aware to make sure you turn off automatic top off, and also to make sure that you use at least 5 MB of data per month, you will have the free Internet access promised.
As a side note, if you do forget to turn it on and use at least 5 MB of data per month, you only get charged $.99 for the month.
So now, the only real issues I have with the Freedom Pop are that the speeds are not as fast as the 4G that I'm used to, and also that 4G coverage does not work well around my home office.
Even with auto-top-off disabled, you can / will still be charged for over usage of your free account as described here.
"
Even if you have the Automatic Top-Up Feature disabled, your account may still be topped-up if you surpass your monthly data allotment in the time when our system is unaware of your exact data usage, due to a delay in reported data usage. Your account is topped up to pay for the additional data used, instead of charging your payment for multiple charges of just a few cents.
Due to the slight delay in the reporting of data usage it is possible that you have surpassed the 100MB threshold and exceeded your monthly data allotment during the window in which your data usage was unknown by our system because of the delay. Because it doesn't make sense to charge your payment method repeatedly with multiple charges of less than a dollar, we deduct $10 from your primary payment method, credit your FreedomPop account with $10 and deduct the charges associated with the additional data used from this credit. So your account is not being topped-up, you are paying for additional data used. Since you have credit in your FreedomPop account greater than $2, your account will not be suspended and you can continue to use our services.
With the top-up feature disabled your account will be suspended if your data usage surpasses the 100MB threshold but does not exceed the monthly data allotment long enough for data usage to be reported to our system."
This all started back around Christmas 2011. I bought a camera on Amazon.com, and then ended up returning it because it didn't suit my needs. The problem was that I had closed my account on Wells Fargo shortly after buying it, and the original Amazon.com policy is to refund back only to the original card.
So fast forward to 2012 February, the refund gets processed. Of course, I ask Amazon to please just give me store credit instead of trying to process the refund. Unfortunately it was a no go, and they told me to please contact my bank or to expect a check refund from the bank. Well I can tell you after several months, none of that happened.
I finally just went to Wells Fargo yesterday and asked someone to look all this up for me. It turns out they wipe their records clean after X number of months so they have absolutely nothing on the computer system for me. The rep also said there would be no way a refund / credit would have been processed after the account was closed. I didn't want to call him a liar but Wells Fargo had been a pretty shady bank to me over the years.
So I went back online and contacted Amazon.com for some assistance - via email. Their response was the same, so naturally I filled out the feedback form and let them know what I thought about their policy. They asked me to give them a chance to correct it and offered to have them call me immediately to resolve.
25 minutes on the phone, and its finally resolved. Most of it was just waiting for their team to figure out a way to process the refund to me - store credit isn't possible, but a work-around was. Basically they would refund an amount from a previous order to my account.
All-in-all, Amazon did not lose me as a customer. Amazon and Costco rank right up there for me in customer service and it's still my favorite place to shop.
Target has pre-orders for Wii U up right now. From the looks of it, its probably going to be the hot item of this Christmas. I recommend that you pre-order right now.
Sorry, pre-orders sold out.
It allows you to stream any video output to any computer, iOS device, Android device with internet connection. This latest top-of-the-line version pretty much adds Wifi, HDMI, remote control, TV setup, and expanded sling to TV options built-in.
The wait is almost over, season 3 starts tonight at 8C/9PST. For those of you with FIOS digital cable here in SoCal, its on tonight on channel 231/731HD.
Right now they are having a walking dead marathon for those of you that want to catch up.
Don't have AMC on cable? Amazon and Apple can help you with a season pass or episode downloads:
