If this were a postpaid provider, you could just cancel the services, pretty much without penatty. Howver, since Public Mobile is a prepaid provider, they have rules specifically set to cover scenarios such as as accidently toppping up or activating a new account, a policy of which is no refunds.
I'm not certain why you would think you were getting your old account reopened when the person would have been going through the process of selecting a phone number for you and typing in your information (name, addresss, e-mail address, etc.), none of which would have beeen necessary to continue using an existing account.
After 6 months of inactivity at Freedom Mobile, that account is closed permanently and there's no way to resume service. The phone number is also most likely gone and no longer available.
You could try asking the moderators for a refund, but the official policy is that they don't do that. They might do it because the data doesn't work, but usually that would be because they would have been unable to assist you to accomplish that. Have you already tried to get their help?
Getting a refund is likley to be similar to pulling teeth. I would say that it would probaably be quicker to get the service working properly. Once working, Public Mobile's network services are far superior to Freedom's. One of the only few things that Freedom has going for them is the LTE speeds in all the plans, but right now, I tend to take network reliability over data speeds, espeically wen Public Mobile's and Freedom Mobile's plan pricings are fairly similar (although 3g speeds vs LTE speeds).
