Does anyone here have Ting cellular? I’m tired of paying a fortune to Verizon so I’m looking to change carriers. It looks like Ting has good service and the same coverage as Sprint for a lot less money.
My big concern is whether my Verizon iPhone 6 will be compatible. I’d rather not buy a new iPhone since it’s not subsidized in anyway.
I don’t have Ting, but according to Cnet, you don’t bring your phone directly to Ting. Ting is Sprint-compatible CDMA, but Verizon’s phones are usually locked into their towers. What you have to do is buy a phone from them and sell your old phone on Glyde.com, a phone reselling site. If your old phone doesn’t sell for what you pay for your replacement, Ting will credit you the difference.
I have Ting and used to be on Verizon. I’m a fan. It’s not the same coverage as Sprint it literally ** is **coverage provided by Sprint under contract with Ting. There’s one big exception on the coverage. For data, there’s no agreement in place to use other provider towers like if you actually contracted with Sprint or most of the other major carriers. Your phone sees a Sprint tower or no data is available. That’s only data not phone and SMS messaging.
You also have to buy your phone. They don’t subsidize the cost with higher priced service. If you can live with less frequent hardware updates and not getting the new one till after prices start to drop you can save on hardware. I bought a Galaxy S3 refurbished a couple months before the S5 was coming out to start on Ting. The difference in service price paid off the phone in a couple months. If you feel compelled to get the “new shiny” top end phone as soon as it hits the market with an intensity of Gollum lusting after the ring, check the numbers very carefully.
Whether you’ll really save depends on how much data you use. I have a totally unlimited everything plan with Sprint that’s $50 a month for the plan. Since I use anywhere from 3-6 gigs a month in data, it’s a steal for me. On top of that, Sprint has a phone leasing plan that lets me pay a set monthly fee for a premium phone of my choice (or a separate iPhone forever plan - right now I have a GS6 edge that I love), with ability to get a new phone every year for $25 a month. No interest, taxes or fees on the lease so if I upgrade yearly I’m paying $300 for the newest shiny every 12 months. I think it’s a damn good deal.
But check your data usage, Ting has a worksheet that you can use to see if you’ll save with them. For me, they can’t save me any money unless I switch to searching for wifi everywhere I go. And pay full price for a new phone every year. Nope.
Huh. Ting is a grapefruity soft drink popular in the Caribbean. I love me some Ting.
You don’t have to buy a phone from Ting; you can bring your own but there are requirements – their website can tell you if your current phone will work. Personally, I bought an unlocked Moto E on sale at BestBuy and set it up on the Ting website.
I only make a few calls and a few texts per month and almost always use WiFi for data. My bill, taxes included, for last month was $15.64 – that is a typical bill for me but sometimes it is $3 less if I don’t send or receive any texts in a month – one month I used some 4G data for GPS live traffic while on a road trip and got my highest bill, a bit over $18.
I can’t comment on customer service because I’ve never had a reason to call them. Ting works just fine for me.
I have been using Ting for a year or two.
My average bill is about $33.
The coverage is definitely not as good as Verizon, but it’s good enough for half price. The only thing that annoys me is that the price buckets can result in a large increase in price for very little usage. The smallest tier for text messages is $3. I’ve had a month where I only received one text message, and it cost me $3, which grates.
But since the overall cost is low enough, it’s still a good deal for me.
Customer service has been excellent. By far the best customer service I’ve ever had from a cell phone company. Responsive, friendly, and actually helpful.
Thank you so much for the replies!
I think I’m going to make the change. When I did the comparison between Ting and my last Verizon bill, Ting would have charged $17.00. No contest. Since I rarely use more than 3 gigs of data per month, it shouldn’t be much more than that every month. The savings will recoup the cost of the phone in no time.
Since you are making the switch, if you use the GPS functionality and travel outside the immediate area pay attention to whether your GPS software can download all the map data for a route at once. I ran into issues with Google maps on a long trip. The highway had some long stretches with weak/no Sprint signal. The phone still saw the GPS satellites but it would sometimes run in to issues of not being able to update the map. It went in to “fuck if I know where you are” mode. Fortunately I still knew where I was going till I got more signal. Don’t be somewhere rural and depending on it to have data though.
That trip also included multiple vehicles going somewhere together(all military in civilian vehicles). We were coordinating in an distinctly military fashion by text- SMS was fine. Sending a group text used data though. I could receive a group text as an SMS but I could only reply to one person at a time. If you use any kind of messaging app, even if it’s mostly SMS based, you can run in to the data wall if you’re out of service.
It’s fine if you are almost always in an area with good data coverage. Where I live is. It might take a little more attention to detail and not just assuming if you leave that area. A little effort in app choice and being aware of the limitations can keep you from suddenly missing something you are counting on when you lose coverage.
Since data costs go up when you use more you can also save more with a little management of how you use data. Making sure you are set to use wifi as the primary data source when it’s available and only allowing software updates by wifi are two money saving tweaks. Something like a bigger SD card with media vs streaming music/movies from the cloud can also save you money.
Good to know.
I live in the greater Los Angeles area so coverage should be okay but I will keep this in mind.
Want a referral code that will get us both some Ting credit? PM me.