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Comment by driverdan | Hacker News Reader

Wow, FreedomPop has a terrible site. No coverage map, overly SEO coverage list, everything tries to get you into the funnel rather than giving you helpful info.

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Tell me about it! I couldn't find how much the service honestly costs because they don't you!

Pro 500MB Data Plan Trial - FREE Freedom Spot Overdrive Pro (Refurbed) - $59.99 1 GB of Bonus Data ($20 Value) - FREE

Shipping - $6.99

Due Today - $66.98

First Month Service - $0.00

All I want to know is how much are you going to charge me on a recurring monthly basis? This feels scammy to me... is this a dark pattern?

UPDATE: I finally found were the monthly prices were/are found (they used strike-through on the monthly price on the plan selection page and wrote in larger font behind it 100% FREE Trial)... They're hurting themselves by making it difficult to find.

They also hide on the FreedomPop Premier page that after the first month those "free" ($20 value mind you) offerings cost you $9.99 each month after the first one. They make the "Continue" button huge and the "I don't want free stuff" continue link much smaller.

I would definitely say there are Dark Patterns in use by FreedomPop. Caveat Emptor.

You can look at Karma http://yourkarma.com. They truly only charge for what you use.

Both Karma and FreedomPop run on the same Sprint network. However, that's a big issue since it only uses WiMax which never really saw much coverage penetration. In addition, Sprint is ditching that entire network for LTE.

Karma is apparently preparing to launch a new hotspot which runs on the new LTE network and I would suggest waiting for that device.

They are a Sprint MVNO, so you can just check Sprint's map.

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