Carphone Warehouse Fresh Freedom

I'm surprised at all the negative reviews for CPW on these sites.

I was looking for my first Smartphone (finally!) and had spent a long time looking at different operating systems, phones, retailers, etc.

I had settled on the Galaxy "Fame" as the one which suited me best: Pocket sized with a good internal memory (and easily/cheaply expandable with a micro-SD card for adding more music, photos, etc), nice screen, Samsung's good reputation and price not as outrageous as certain phonea are...

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I found the staff at the Tamworth branch extremely helpful and knowledgable. They had the phone - and colour - which I wanted, in stock - and they set it up, including transferring all my tel. no's from my (very!) old phone.

And, as I was on Virgin PAYG , I received a small discount for staying with Virgin - and this was off a phone price which ws already extremely competitive. (In fact, even Amazon could not get close - and Debenhams' price was DOUBLE!)

I had a small query and rang "the Geek Squad" (I think this cover/service is normally at additional cost) and found that their service was also exceptional. A man called Peter (in Preston, not some far-flung country..)was friendly, knowledgable and very helpful.

All in all, a 10/10 experience throughout: I recommend CPW, the Tamworth branch (and Geek Squad) at least!

Customer service didn't resolve the problem, of the restriction on my phone not to be able to receive in-coming calls.I paid the bill of 30 pound also topped up a further 20 pounds altogether making it 50 pounds.They promised me the bar would be removed in 24 hours i waited 26 hours before i phoned fresh custmer services i then got told to wait another 5 working days.I am not happy with the service i have had nothing but hassle with the fresh network.I would be grateful if you would put the service back on my phone a.s.a.p I have given this number to many people seen as i have had it for over two years.Thankyou

I bought a sim from Carphone Warehouse's Fresh Freedom and tried to port my number over, didn't work, rang customer service, useless, went back to local shop and they rang and gave me a new date for porting, didn't happen. Went back to shop again the guy in the shop spent over an hour on the phone being transfered back and forth between different departments, even he lost his rag with them in the end and asked for their names so he could report them. They finally gave up on the original sim and gave me another one and this time the number port worked, but it took over a month from start to finish. They did give me £20 worth of call credit by way of apology but it was a load of grief. My recommendation is don't port a number, or if you do be prepared for a lot of grief.

Cheap tariff, seems to work in most places including west of Scotland and north Wales. No problems experienced from day one and now had both the phone and used this tariff for almost five years.

Useful that you pay by direct debit and don't need to top-up the phone as I understand you do with lots of other tariffs.

No complaints.

Said it all

I find the Carphone Warehouse Fresh Freedom tariff is a great no-frills service, with very good PAYG rates, and some of the roaming rates are also excellent.

The only drawbacks are that in my area the T-Mobile network it uses has some holes, and if you run out of credit you cannot phone the automatic top-up service from your phone.

I bought a v220 on Fresh from the Carphone Warehouse site. On the Fresh web site it says don't connect your phone if you want to keep your old number. I left the sim in the box, rang them up with my Virgin mobile PAC and I was told the Fresh sim is activated at point of purchase. I emailed them asking for a non-activated one and got a robotic reply and I went to a Carphone Warehouse shop who couldn't help ANYWAY, I went home, stuck my original Virgin sim card in and it worked! The Fresh mobile was unlocked, hooray. So I have a spare Fresh sim with £10 for disposal and my old number, cool.

Fresh Freedom is the worst mobile provider I've ever dealt with! Bought a SIM from the Carphone Warehouse and then tried to port my existing number. Total nightmare. Fresh didn't get a thing right and in the end I just gave up and asked for THEM to give me a new port number so I could go elsewhere.

Same problem here. Fresh Freedom took weeks to port a number over from Vodafone which left me without any service during the transfer. The guy in the shop was good - loads of tenacity but back at the Carphone Warehouse were unhelpful in the extreme.

I made the mistake of signing up to Fresh Freedom from the Carphone Warehouse on the monthly contract tariff. It is the worst mobile experience I have ever had. Right from the start they got it wrong, and I ended up without a phone at all for 10 days while they ported my numbers (it's never taken this long any other time I have swapped network). I got itemised bills that I specifically declined, and I did not get the text bundle I requested, but used the text assuming that I had them in a bundle!! I have received no credit for these mistakes, and no apology.

I then requested international roaming, and when I arrived on holiday needing to contact my friend - Yep, no international roaming.

I had just changed my bank account, so I waited until Fresh took payment from my new account before cancelling the old one. They are trying to say that I cancelled the new one. This was a different bank, so I am quite clear about which I cancelled and which I set up!! They even charged me (again) for their mistake.

Apart from the service issues, the coverage is awful. I can rarely make a complete call (although I know my Motorola V620 is partly to blame). You can't get WAP, so no downloads, and no picture messaging etc...