freedompop.com Refused to refund unauthorized credit card charge Los Angeles, California

Lee, 

To clarify, FreedomPop does not have any external popups on its website. Boxes appear that are internal to our website and the web page, so a web browsers settings would not impact these messages that pop up. There is always a confirmation that pops up prior to downgrading that explains what will happen so that users have the information before making a decision. If a user ever has any suggestions on how to improve this flow of information, FreedomPop Customer Support Agents are always happy to hear suggestions!

Thanks for your explanation. Here is my reponse:

1. I did not authorize the charge.

I did not recall any popup (could be blocked by my web browser's default settings). Even so, the popup propmt told me neither billing cycle starting date issue, nor confirming my permission to charge on my credit card. The prompt popup was simply not comprehensive at all.

Because it is common sense to assume that the new free 500MB plan starts either immediately after trial ending date (that was one day later), or immediately after the downgrade request time.

You could simply just suspend service until the "new billing cycle" starting, due to my top-up was disabled that means I do not authorize this kind of charge! But it is not an acceptable bussiness conduct to charge customer's credit card without permission and clear confirmation in advance.

Your system failed to inform me that there was billing cycle issue and failed to comfirm my permission for the possible credit charge.

2. I was trying to switch back to the free plan at the END of trial date, never thought that was excuted immediately. I wrote a message in your "Contact Us" page to request the swithing back at the end of trial, before I found out I could do the switch on the account website myself. There was no place I could indicate my intention to switch at the end of billing cycle. Besides there is no phone number to call for customer service.

3. I tried to switch back to the free plan one day earlier before trail ending date just becuase my friend was charged non-refundable renew free of $17.99 at the exact trial end date. So what is the exact HOUR (rather date) to switch without charge?! You charge anyway! Is it not scam or what?! 

4. After I made switch to free plan, my account page clearly showed that I was on 500MB free plan, never showing the chargable "Pay As You Go" plan until I found the charge on my credit card. You should not charge customers for the misleading website system.

Before you improve your website system and business conduct, you should try to settle for the unfair charges claims and buildup your business reputation. Remember this "Customer always right"! 

Lee,

I did look into your previous correspondence with us, and I hope that I can help clarify the incident that subsequently led to your top up.

I want to start off with the fact that we are still in beta and we are trying to provide a service for free while also going head-to-head with some of the largest corporations in mobile carrier services.

When you downgraded short of the end of your billing cycle, you were prompted prompted by our pop-up warning in red that stated: By downgrading your plan, you will lose all additional data. You will be charged for any data usage incurred above your new plan limit. Since your billing cycle was not ready to be renewed, you no longer had any remaining data after the downgrade. This could have been viewed on your home page above the usage bar. I understand that you assumed that by downgrading, you would automatically be put on the 500MB plan and receive a fresh allotment of 500MBs of data. This is not the case, as cited by our pop-up disclaimer. The new allotment of 500MBs is not issued until your new billing cycle starts, which was not for a few days.

You were subsequently topped up despite having the option disabled, because you continued to use our services, within the 3 hour delay where our systems are updating data usage. We cannot issue a refund for used data. We also suspend service to users who issue chargebacks so that we can allow time for our agents to investigate the issue further. At this time, we cannot reinstate your service.

I hope that I was able to clarify what occurred.