Nth Forum has sort of been the unofficial CellNUVO forum but FreeUp has taken a lot of the attention away.
Even though I hate the word "synergy" it would create a lot of it if people could pay for FreeUp plans using CellNUVO gold.
I'm betting that at least half of the CellNUVO swipers would have paid accounts with FreeUp if that were the case and it would boost earnings visits to both of their apps.
Imagine if FreeUp even allowed you to specify CellNUVO gold as a payment option in your account.
Something to think about, at least.
I know that Tom doesn't interact here, anymore, but I know they still lurk.
How about partnering with FreeUp Mobile, Tom? It would also generate free press on all the other forums and prepaid news sites and could bring in new customers.
I agree it would be a great pairing! Using both already works to my advantage-- CellNuvo to buy my next phone & pay my minimal cell bill, and FreeUp to give me coverage on another carrier and backup.
I'm about ready to move to the $10 plan on FreeUp, but the $20 plan is still a bit of a stretch for me. If I could supplement my Free Up rewards with CellNuvo Gold, it would be a no-brainer.
It is something to think about, and I'm all for synergy. But I wonder if such an arraignment would benefit both companies equally. If CellNuvo would agree to pay FreeUp, FreeUp, for sure, would be glad to get paid from any source, but I suspect their profits would suffer if everyone paid for plans in cash without using any earned rewards. I mean, if a person pays $10 in cash rather than by paying with $10 in rewards earned, where FreeUp could well be getting, say, $12 dollars from the ad or coupon companies for those $10 of reward efforts( much like CN earns a profit when someone swipes for $10 worth of gold ), then FreeUp is losing $2 when people pay $10 only with cash. So the more people who pay FreeUp with cash, the less profit they make, which might dissuade then from allowing CN cash payments. Yet maybe increasing the number of paid accounts would provide sufficient profits for FreeUp, and the rewards profits lost would not be a deal breaker. I also wonder if FreeUp began offering a free plan because they were having troubles, or if they just wanted to increase the number of subscribers. And, obviously, intentional or not, Freeup profits more if people click on and print ads that register and are counted by the ad vendors but somehow do not register with FreeUp and are not credited to member's rewards earned.
Interesting analysis, Isamorph. I agree that it's likely that FreeUp benefits from double-dipping on markup (taking a cut of both ad views, and wholesale cellular service)-- it had been my thought that CellNuvo's original service also worked that way.
I suspect that the free plan was a way to get noticed--it seemed the evidence pointed that way to me, despite a pretty powerful marketing push previously. Definitely a loss-leader, probably intended to give folks an impetus to see how much work it might be to earn rewards. But it also seems that FreeUp's rate structure encourages paying with a mixture of rewards and cash. (The $20 tier would be perfect for me, but hard for most to hit just via rewards. Even the $10 tier would be tough without 2 coupons/day.)
I noticed that BestMVNO gave FreeUp the first-runner-up position for Best New MVNO of 2018. Only concerns about Customer Service kept it from taking the prize.
The 24¢ daily coupons take almost no time to print and they're the equivalent of 240 CellNUVO silver. It's safe to assume that the FreeUp/CellNUVO crowd will continue to print those.
In addition, if you're one of the lucky ones who gets credit for two coupons per day then you can easily hit the $10/mo earnings threshold that gets you the $10 bonus.
If you're not one of those lucky double dippers then we know that you can open a second account and gift the earnings to your first account to get the $10 bonus.
With things as they currently are it's easy to pick the lucrative low hanging fruit that FreeUp has to offer and I don't think that people will be less motivated to continue doing so.
If FreeUp can fix the crediting issue with the videos they will see a lot more action, there.
Whereas CellNUVO has match pots and 15 silver ads, they also have a lot of 1 silver ads.
At FreeUp, EVERY video is 10 silver (1 credit, which equates to 1¢ or 10 silver). For those who feel strongly negative about the match pot games and 1 silver ads, the FreeUp videos are a nice alternative-- they just need to fix the crediting issue, first.
Personally, I like both ecosystems and feel confident in my ability to leverage the strengths of each-- so I'll continue to be active in both places.
It would be great, however, if they could partner and come up with something where the sum is greater than the parts.
Sorry it doesn't sound like a good idea to me. If you want to pay for att with cellnuvo you have redpocket, redpocket annual plans , cricket and att. Not lacking in choices there. Its reward program works.
Then if you want freeup it has its own reward program. What it needs to do is sort it out and make it work. Things need to credit when you earn them and you need to be able to spend your credits on things like add ons. One of my accounts has nothing credited since 24th Dec and the other for almost a month. Not a good sign.
I don't see any benefit to either party to partner up.
For me the only thing freeup has going for it is the free plan. It needs to give people incentive to earn and spend rewards. Most won't upgrade to a paid plan. Basically right now the rewards I've accumulated have no value.
I imagine once cellnuvo bring out new things we will all be talking about cellnuvo again.
Don't know what I'm doing wrong, but even after attempting to print coupons almost every day (I finally resorted to actually printing them, not just saving them to PDF) I have only gotten one, 24-cent credit since I signed up on Dec 6th. And I seem to not qualify for any of their surveys any more, either. Not too big a deal considering I'm only on their free plan, but being stuck at around $25 doesn't make me too inclined to upgrade until I can bank lots more rewards and have a bit of a cushion in reserve.
The haphazard crediting is a pita. Why it works for some most of the time and others hardly anytime is odd. Maybe if FreeUp members, as some already have, chime in with what they're doing when successfully being credited, it will throw some light on the problem. My first email to FU support about 3 weeks ago stating my problems with coupons, was responded to with FU basically saying I had some problem with settings or cookies on my pc, and I responded that nothing had changed on my pc, and my printing protocol is always the same, whether credited or not. My second email to them mentioned the fact that other FU members were having problems with coupon crediting, and it's highly unlikely we all do not know how to print coupons correctly. I'm waiting for FU's response. That said, I have been mostly successful printing ( saving to Google Drive ) using the Chrome browser on my desktop pc everyday, although there were two days during Xmas when I printed from a Chromebook that I had enabled Google cloud printing on, where I did not get any credits even though I got the "successfully printed" message, and had successfully verified the device after getting a popup from FU saying they did not recognize the pc. So maybe, always printing from the same verified device is important. I have also noticed that after I have logged in and printed one coupon, it seems I have not been credited when I have clicked the coupons tab from that page rather than close the tab and return to the original coupon printing page in order to print the second coupon. But who knows for sure the cause of failed attempts.
CellNuvo doesn't have cell partner, FreeUp does. FreeUp doesn't have reliable ads to accumulate big credits (Golds/Silvers), CellNuvo does! Make good sense for these two companies to work with each other to strengthen each other and be thriving in the competitive field of cell services industry. Walmart & Target are thriving despiting each of them is competing with each other. Partnering, working, or at least talk to each other makes good business sense. Keep in mind: The bigger their customer bases, the more negotiation power they have with their sources.
It's a mystery to me, too. I'm one of the lucky folk-- printing always worked for 1 coupon, although it was about a week before I started getting 2 credits. I've had some credit in delay, but only a couple of days when only 1 coupon credited, and perhaps one day when none did. I've always seen the printing confirmation.
I print almost exclusively from the phone app-- easy because I've got it loaded on my CellNuvo swiping phone, so it's in my hand anyway almost every evening. I use Chrome, in stock format on WiFi, with location services allowed, no VPN, no ad-blocker, cookies allowed. (I normally prefer Puffin, but that seemed like a bad idea since there's an intermediary server between the website and me....I'd avoid Opera Mini for the same reason.)
When I had difficulty with 2 coupons at first, I tried various methods for printing 2. I didn't contact CS for help.
Now that I'm seeing them credit regularly, I've settled on this process:
Log in, print one coupon (as pdf to Google Drive), close the browser. My Google Drive is associated with a different email than my FreeUp email, so that doesn't seem an issue.
Close FreeUp app. (It would be necessary to log back in anyway, since the login is always lost when I return to the FreeUp app after printing & closing the browser, but I close it anyway.)
Repeat for second coupon.
It seems to be working reliably for me.
They are not an mvno but have 8 cell providers to choose from. I think that is much better.
I am not adverse to adding more. I'd rather have someone else than freeup though. I want to see freeup get their act together with their own rewards too.
I seem to be getting credited for one coupon every day but not two.
I signed my mother up (she loves it) and started logging in as her to print the daily coupon(s). It's pretty early in the game but I think she might be getting credit for two per day. (I'm going to gift her monthly earnings to my account since she's content with the free plan.)
Chelle, do you log in to both accounts from the same device?
Diedrich_Duo, how did you get to a $25 balance without coupons crediting? Surveys, or ? (It seems like the rewards app itself must be functional, just not the coupon printing?)
Great question! I (think I) got to around $25 as follows...
--A $5 referral reward for signing up (that was part of the original promo, yes?);
--Another $10 rewards bonus (not sure why that one happened but it was nice);
--The rest from lots of surveys, mostly when I first started with FreeUP, a few videos, and that one lonely coupon that got credited.
Unfortunately, the last week or so has been quite the dry spell. I'm ready to do a little rain dance to get the rewards flowing once again.
Diedrich_Duo, your rewards total is essentially the same as mine, and coupons have been working well for me.
I guess I ought to rethink about doing surveys.... When your coupons start crediting, you'll be in high cotton.
The $10 bonus was a match for earning $10 in the first month. Pretty generous, since 1/2 of that $10 earnings was the $5 referral bonus......
