Does anyone have an extra freeup free plan?

Telecom
1

I was hoping that someone could help me out or at least offer some advice.

I am a person who tends to donate things that I no longer need. In a few instances, I later need something that I gave away. This is one of those cases.

Several years ago I had a Lycamobile, RingPlus and a TracFone plan. I had approximately 3,000 minutes on the TracFone plan, but I did not want to add any more money to the plan because I really did not need it. Therefore, I decided to give it away to a neighbor for an elderly grandmother to use.

In the past few months, my son, who has a 2014 car, has had car trouble so I want him to keep a phone in his car in case he needs to call AAA for emergency road service.

I have since found that my Lycamobile account does not work any longer and I found that the phone that I was using for that service can no longer be activated since 2g is not supported anymore.

I purchased an AT&T phone from Best Buy that I intended to use on freeup with their free plan. When I finally had time to contact freeup, I was told that they no longer have a free plan. I can no longer return the phone, since the return period has passed.

Consequently, I am wondering if anyone has an existing freeup free plan that is not needed and you are willing to give away?

I will pay it forward by helping someone else, and I will provide personal information for the account so that you can change account information so that I don't have access to your personal information. If you are unable to delete your credit card information from the account, I can create a $1 virtual account number that you can put on the account to replace your credit card number.

Since no one might have an extra freeup free plan that they are willing to give away, I would also appreciate advice regarding any other almost no cost alternatives for extremely low cell phone usage.

Thank you for reading!

2

The below $39 one year FreedomPop deal might work well for you, and you could use Google Voice to call, etc. with cellular data if so desired, depending on what phone you have.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/freedompop-12-month-prepaid-plan-lte-3-in-1-sim-card-kit/6187400.p?skuId=6187400

Or maybe the FP free plan:

https://www.target.com/p/freedompop-nationwide-4g-lte-3-in-1-basic-free-sim-card-kit/-/A-52960591

3

I would do this. I do not believe there is anything cheaper atm, that uses ATT, then freedompop.

4

The FreedomPop SIMs that Isamorph listed above will work fine with the AT&T Prepaid phone.
I used to use FreedomPop for exactly the same glovebox/emergency purpose, and it worked well. It is VoIP service, instead of traditional cellular voice.

The 1-year 1GB/mo SIM is about as cheap at Best Buy now as it ever gets. (Currently $40.) The starter SIM, currently $5, does go on sale sometimes at Best Buy and/or Target for $1.

I believe the cheapest traditional cellular-voice plan on the AT&T network is the annual Tracfone plan, currently $50.

That one has been sale priced at $40 several times in recent months.

5

Thanks everyone for the replies. I don't want to use FreedomPop because a lot of people have reported billing problems and they don't accept virtual account numbers anymore.

Regarding the TracFone plan, I think I read somewhere that the phone had to be unlocked, even if it used AT&T. My phone is not unlocked. Since I know that freeup will work with it, I am still hoping that someone has an unneeded freeup free plan. I can't be the only person who had more free or low cost phone plans than I needed.

Even if this doesn't work out, thanks to everyone for taking time out of your busy day to read this.

6

I believe that the annual plans don't require any billing information which eliminates the problems that people have mentioned.

I think the creative billing is only a problem with the free plans.

7

Chelle is right-- the annual FreedomPop plan (the $39 SIM that Isamorph linked to at Best Buy) requires no registered payment form at all, so no worries about billing problems. The free plan does require a registered payment source, and you do have to keep an eye on it. (The 'cost' of free, I guess.)

No problem using your AT&T-locked phone on Tracfone, as long as you activate it with Tracfone's AT&T SIM. The Ebay listing I linked to above comes with SIMs for all 3 networks Tracfone utilizes, including AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. (AT&T allows a user to activate a still-locked AT&T Prepaid phone on any AT&T MVNO.)

8

Good point about the annual FP plan. In the past, I purchased the one year FP plan sim from BestBuy without having to list any billing info and the plan worked trouble-free for the entire year.

9

michellesmith89898, another option that doesn't require as large an initial cash outlay:
www.h2owirelessnow.com has a $10/3month PayGo plan that bills minutes and text against the deposit at 5c each.
SIM is free with online plan purchase, and autopay reduces the cost to $9/3month.

www.blackwireless.com/ has a similar $10/3 month, 5c minute/text plan as well.
SIM is free with online plan purchase.

Both are on the AT&T network, and both should work with your existing phone.

10

Just a wee bit of info from when we used h2o to add here...
We had 2 lines for ~$40/month, barely used for voice only.
They suddenly tacked on a $50 charge that they could not explain in the several calls made to ask about it - and refused to remove that charge.
We paid it as it looked like the only choice - then they killed both our lines without any notice or permission, right in the middle of a billing cycle that we'd paid for.

Looking into that company a little gave the impression that it is either a 'baby at&t' or a front that is directly the same company.

Never heard of that blackwireless before KentE's mention of it (thanks), but have to wonder if it is just another 'front' for the exact same thing ??

As for FP, we found their VOIP option to be all but completely useless for voice calls - even in an area that has strong signal.

Other posts here have suggested getting whatever works & then also using GV & its app as much as possible.

Hopefully you will be able to get something that suits you from all the info here.
I am presently using a FU line for at&t & barely use it at all (only when my Twigby phone has zero signal...) - it has its share of annoyances, limitations & I have my doubts about its continuing 'free' nature based upon what has gone on with them lately...we'll see.

-IF- that gets replaced with some great deal from Redpocket I won't need it anymore & have no idea how to hand it off except to maybe mail the SIM & change the credentials, if that is possible ??
(Of course to free that line, RP would have to have a sale on the plan I need, which hasn't happened this year, sadly...)

11

Black Wireless is owned by Red Pocket. For the most part, their plans are similar except that Black doesn't do the ebay & Amazon annual plans. The straight PayGo is another Black-only offering.

12

For FP, I have found the VoIP service works best with "newer" phones. I have tested and found the quality to be very close (rarely issues) to a regular phone using their AT&T SIM and the following devices:
Apple iPhone 5S, SE, 6, and 6S (software and calls seems to work on point with any iPhone),
Moto G7 Power, TracFone Stylo 4 (yep that thing that everyone bashes on the SD forums for being a supposed lag monster), Metro Stylo 4 (same thing but more internal memory), and a LG Q7+ (Metro). Now, stay away from the Sprint network for the VoIP calls, you will not like the experience unless you are on a city with perfect signal.

13

My experience with FreedomPop VoIP was also that it was highly phone dependent. It was some years ago, but my very cheap FreedomPop LG F3 (Sprint) worked just fine for voice quality. Outgoing calls were reliable if I had strong LTE, but incoming calls not so much. (I think my phone only had one LTE band, though.)

At about the same time, there was a lot of discussion about unacceptable VoIP performance from (I think) the Moto E2 that FreedomPop also sold. The suspicion was that the issue had to do with the voice level set internally by the phone to feed the VoIP line. Too hot, and voice was badly distorted. (The Moto problem.) Too low, and you were hard to hear. Unfortunately, this setting is not user accessible, at least without root.

I've seen other reports repeating tech-stitch's experience that FP VoIP is much better with the AT&T SIMs than it was with Sprint service.

14

Yep, the LG Volt is another example of a phone that was too much trouble for FP. Making adjustments via root helped but still. No problems using that phone with native service.

15

Thanks for the memory jog! It was probably the Volt rather than the MotoE2 I was thinking of.

The problem with that particular phone seemed to highlight a problem that likely occurrs on many devices. It was easier to dig into specifics on the Volt because it was very much a known quantity on traditional cellular use, and FreedomPop was selling them-- so there was a large enough user base in the exact same situation to make investigating worthwhile and productive. It was a good example of crowd-sourced knowledge and learning, since FreedomPop wasn't particularly interested in following up or in vetting the phone for usability in the first place. 'Community' at it's best!

16

I'm sensitive to latency. I use Google Voice on Hangouts (VOIP) for my primary voice communication. When I was using forwarding for GV number, I was experiencing latency that bothered me. Ever since I switched to Hangouts, I'm much happier, and I'm not looking back. Because of how I use data (VOIP), I avoid services that use separate dedicated servers. That, depending on your geographical location versus the location of servers, introduces higher ping (latency). AT&T Fredompop's SIM, Visible, or Cricket are the ones doing that, that I'm aware of. For VOIP, not all apps are equal, and not all phones are equal. For that reason, for me, Hangouts on my little iPhone SE and (not so little) LG V30 works perfectly, while on LG Volt, Moto E2 and LG Tribute HD is unusable.

17

I agree with everything you said with one exception: when you say "I'm very partial to latency." that means that you have a (strong) fondness or preference for it. You meant the opposite.
You might want to try the GV app on your SE as well , remember to choose "Prefer WiFi and mobile data" under Settings/"Make and Receive Calls". The only functionality that I miss on GV is initiating conference calls natively, you can accept multiple inbound calls to "host" one though. I always use https://www.freeconferencecall.com/ at that point if everyone is not already on WhatsApp.

18

Yeah, I love latency :slight_smile: Sorry, English is my second language. Thanks for the correction, I appreciate it! I changed it, and I hope it makes more sense now.

I'm aware of the GV app. I think I tried it for voice, but there were issues with messaging... (?) In Hangouts the only restriction I have is sending video messages, which I don't, but I receive them often, and that part works.

19

Isn't hangouts being EOL'ed by G at some point this year?

20

The rumors I've heard were about transitioning it to a different use...