Ah-- yes, I think you always forfeit Friends' bonuses for the month when a line goes dormant. So, you're not necessarily seeing a change in Friends bonus yet, and it should return at whatever rate is really in effect next rollover.
[EDIT to clarify: I think you miss the Friends bonus if the line is dormant at rollover-- the moment when it would normally be credited. If the Friends bonus has already been credited on an active line, it won't be lost if the account goes dormant afterwards.]
My kids' phones (3 Hydros) and a NetGear Mingle Hotspot reset over night and now only have 550MB each...so the change is effective immediately for new billing cycles and affects both Sprint and LTE Sims.
Sucks...
The freemium model again is woefully unsustainable without revenue. Any bets on when another company will sprout up to fill the void? I know CellNUVO is effectively free, but it still requires user interaction, whereas FP was free from the get-go.
This is probably a dramatic shift more towards their Unreal model, because $10/GB is about right where they need to be to turn a profit, assuming all their users fall under their AUP.
Thanks, woo_24, for the update.
I've seen this quote of a FreedomPop email sent to some subscribers, so it looks like we can all expect what you have seen:
"FreedomPop Update
FreedomPop has been subject to targeted abuse by users leveraging multiple accounts to aggregate additional free data. We have tried to battle the abuse by adding conditions around accounts with no data usage over several months, but unfortunately we have been forced to limit the friends sharing program.
Please note that going forward with your next billing cycle, you will earn 5MB/month per friend with a max cap of 50MB/month on earned data or shared data."
A few thoughts:
T-Mobile's free Data-For-Life program was very popular, with just 200mb.
My SIMs are already bought and paid for, so it doesn't cost me anything out of pocket to keep them active. (But the utility of them is going down, and at some point it may not be worth the hassle.....)
The utility of the Sprint devices, recently considered the "orphan child" of FP users, just went up. (In comparison, since 500mb is still a usable amount.)
For anyone using the FreedomPop app for calling/text, can you confirm if data used for that is actually/still zero-rated? (Zero-rated = does not count against data usage.) The 'common wisdom' says it is, but I've seen numerous reports that it's not, or at least not reliably so. Without zero-rating, 200mb on an LTE SIM is just about enough to provide the 200 VoIP minutes/500 texts. If it is zero-rated, it's a possible reason to use the FP app for calling instead of Google Voice, etc. (which definitely is not zero-rated).
re: the void: See the thread in this forum about FreeUp Mobile, which includes the best real-life user report I've seen anywhere. (Thanks, Fraser1!) I have my doubt about sustainability of this one, too. since user adoption seems very slow.
Like CellNuvo, it's paid-for-by-others-and-effort instead of free-with-no-payment that FreedomPop seems to be.
Freemium is definitely a tough nut to crack, and I agree it's not sustainable without revenue generation-- from somewhere. Sooner or later, someone may find the nutcracker to make it work, just as someone managed to give us "free" email providers, 'free' powerful search engines, 'free' online data storage, 'free' apps, etc.
Confirmed one Sprint based line renewed at 550mb.
Zero-Rated is so unreliable that eventually I quit using it. Hangouts uses less data.
Just checked and my renewed line only has 250mb of data now.
This stinks. Oh well. At least they are still in business.
Has anyone emailed them to ask why this change?
Per FreedomPop support when I contacted them just yesterday about the lack of friend bonus on 2 of my accounts.
Those 2 accounts I contacted FP about are LTE sims which rolled over on 14th. I've got another LTE sim rolling over on the 7th which still shows 500Mb (50/mb/per each) friend bonus. Guess I'll be losing it when it rolls.
I don't use even 250Mb of data per month but liked having that cushion for emergencies. And I didn't have to check nor watch my usage that often which is why it took so long for me to notice the lower data amount.
I can understand FP's position & reason for having to do this. I can imagine they've have too many people greatly abusing the system to get gigs of free data monthly, especially when it's so easy to swap SIMs, unlike Sprint system. Like everything there's always a few people that ruin good thing for rest of the people.
Oops I didn't finish reading thread before replying so missed seeing Kent posted FP reply already. Oh well. It appears FP is at least working off the same script. lol
RE:
I made FP to FP call using the app & the device using data does show "Phone Call Data Credit" well it shows it 3 times since I called it several times. What's weird is my phone was using WiFi & it also shows "Phone Call Data Credit". Or maybe my WiFi dropped & it switched to data to complete 1 call. The other phone was out of WiFi range, we were using them to re-align the satellite dish that must have gotten knocked out of alignment just a bit when they cut down tree right by it. I hadn't noticed before we started that the friend bonus had been reduced so good thing got that credited back. Was also lucky the phone using Data still had the 500Mb friend bonus even though it didn't use much. Looks like about 5Mb total for all 3 calls which totaled 23 minutes.
They seem shocked that people used multiple SIMs, yet they'd offer you a second one, for a penny, when you purchased the first one.
Did they think people were throwing those away?
I'm not a heavy data user, either-- I have multiple FP devices mostly for convenience and possible emergencies, but typically used less (and probably far less) than 500mb across all the devices.
To encourage rapid subscriber growth, not only did FreedomPop offer the second-SIM-for-a-penny, but they also send lots of offers to my registered email addresses for additional devices-- and make it nearly impossible to upgrade a device, while making it easy to add a new one. (Example my first SIMs were Global SIMs, which I would have gladly upgraded to LTE SIMs if it was possible at the time-- since it wasn't, I ended up with both) .
@akaLTD, thanks for the report on zero-rated calling data- your instance sounds like far more efficiency than I would have expected (mb/minute). Hungry-Hog, in his post at the top of this page, indicates he's found data credits for calling to be hit-or-miss. Glad to hear that even though it caught you by surprise, the data reduction didn't run into overages!
One of my accounts got a "you're within 50mb of your data limit" warning email this month, so at least they're making an intermittent attempt to warn folks. (But that account is not within 50mb of the new reduced limit, so I"m not sure what triggered it.)
I always get the 50MB warning when I'm within 200MB. I think they just have the wrong email linked to that trip point.
Oh, great. With the reduced allotment, that means we'll all be getting regular 50MB warnings after using somewhere between 1mb and 51mb, which will do less than no good. (On FP SIMs).