What am I missing about Ting?

October 26, 2015 11:56 AM

Price comparison between Ting and Verizon calculates that we'll save an average of $120 a month on Ting. What am I not seeing?

Using Ting's calculator, and comparing our actual Verizon usage and devices, it's hard to argue against making a switch, unless the coverage really doesn't make it. According to Ting's map, our home coverage is about the same as Verizon. My husband does like to hike in sometime remote areas (mostly in the western states, especially in Northern CA), and is questioning if our coverage will be diminished.

What else am I not thinking of?

posted by Gusaroo to Technology (20 answers total)

I don't know if I can help with identifying why your particular bill would be cheaper, but I can report that my phone bill dropped significantly when I switched from AT&T to Ting. I used to pay almost $100 per month with AT&T. Now, unless I really go crazy with using my iPhone 5s on 3g, I usually pay somewhere around $39 a month to Ting. I don't think my bill has ever climbed above $55 and I have used Ting for a year now.

FWIW, I brought my own device (a refurbished iPhone 5s). I'm in the mid-Atlantic region and haven't noticed poorer coverage (except of course in the rural areas where I wouldn't have gotten AT&T coverage anyway).
posted by pinetree at 11:59 AM on October 26, 2015

I switched from Verizon to Republic Wireless and saved about $100 a month on two lines. Verizon service is really, really expensive.

I assume you are factoring in the cost of new devices as well since your Verizon phones likely won't work on Ting.

Republic uses Sprint and the coverage here in Maine is not as good, but in my own personal metric it is worth it.
posted by selfnoise at 12:02 PM on October 26, 2015

We are in an urban area in the upper midwest. My husband switched from Verizon to Ting, and I'll switch soon. His coverage changed a little - he stayed on the CDMA network but doesn't get quite the same reach in certain areas of our house or in a few spots on his bus ride into work. This could also be a function of the phone, however, since he got a new device at the same time. It's noticeable, but so far hasn't been problematic - he's going to get the GSM SIM card to see what difference it makes before I make the leap. We've figured that even if we wound up in the highest tiers of Ting's offerings for voice, data, and texts, we'd still be paying less than we were to be in a family plan with Verizon, even adjusting for the cost of buying devices up front, so the savings is pretty substantial. I think the biggest confounding factor to more people making the jump is having the cash to purchase a phone up front - we are accustomed to not realizing how much devices cost because of the way those costs are hidden into contract plans.
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 12:05 PM on October 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

I don't think you're missing anything (except, as others have mentioned, the cost of a phone). Ting is awesome. When I used it, it was Sprint towers only, and I was in a Sprint black hole... but you can't argue the savings.
posted by getawaysticks at 12:11 PM on October 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

Best answer: One key piece that will be different and I didn't see mentioned: you get no mobile to mobile minutes, all minutes count toward your bucket.

If you spend a ton of time talking to spouse or relatives or whatnot on cell phones, make sure you're including that in the usage calculator. If you just don't spend much time talking on the phone in general, you're probably fine.

Regarding the coverage: Ting offers Sprint and T-Mobile as carriers, and their coverage maps are pretty accurate, so you can look at those to decide which is the best option for you (Sprint being the CDMA option, T-Mobile the GSM if you're unfamiliar).

(I've been on ting for 3.5 years now, recently switched from Sprint to GSM sim card (luckily I had a phone that could handle both already), and it went smoothly.)
posted by HermitDog at 12:18 PM on October 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

You're not missing anything. You really will save that much money with Ting. I went from spending $100 to $35. The coverage is worse than Verizon - I had pretty much zero in remote western Wisconsin. But it's fine at my home and work and anywhere I go in my major metro area. I would buy an ePIRB for your husband with the money you save.
posted by desjardins at 12:39 PM on October 26, 2015

Ting, depending upon what device you use, uses either the T-Mobile or Sprint networks. Both of these networks have significantly poorer coverage than Verizon (or AT&T, for that matter).
posted by Juffo-Wup at 12:50 PM on October 26, 2015

I asked a similar question before, and one big difference is when you contract with Sprint, you get their special-use contracts with other providers which reduces roaming situations; cheapo services get only the core Sprint network, everything else is roaming -- and there's lower quality-of-service guarantees, so you don't get the same quality like a fully contracted user will, even on Sprint towers. I opted to stick with Sprint since we live in the boonies and travel a lot, which means we'll benefit more from having service more than a mile from the freeway. So, you may not have as good a signal when you're out hiking.

That said, my daughter has the el-cheapo-cheapiest service she can get and never has any trouble with it because she lives in the shadow of a celtower and rarely leaves town. Ting might be fine for you if you're always in range.
posted by AzraelBrown at 1:09 PM on October 26, 2015

Ting's sprint coverage roams for voice, but not for data. Last time I looked into it for a friend (at least a year ago) it was the only MVNO I found that roamed at all.
posted by HermitDog at 1:12 PM on October 26, 2015

I save about $70/month with Ting.
posted by harrietthespy at 2:33 PM on October 26, 2015

But the quality of the calls is not nearly as good as with Verizon. I get several dropped or "can you hear me now??" calls each week.
posted by harrietthespy at 2:45 PM on October 26, 2015

Best answer: Traditional Verizon compared to anything is expensive. I don't think there is a plan out there that costs more, so it's not a surprise that you could save by switching to, literally, anyone else, even Verizon's prepaid plans. Verizon has the best coverage, especially in rural areas, due to the fact that it has low-frequency (and therefore high range) spectrum that the other companies don't have access to. That is changing in a couple years as the old analog TV spectrum (remember those converter boxes?) is being auctioned off, but right now they pretty much have a monopoloy on rural cell service and charge accordingly. The other three carriers are all, understandably, focused on urban and dense suburban coverage right now, because they can offer high data speeds (which low-frequency is bad for).

However, if you really want wilderness coverage, you might find that a bare-bonesIridium satellite plan plus a regular cellphone plan might still be cheaper than Verizon.
posted by wnissen at 3:12 PM on October 26, 2015

It definitely depends on your usage. We went from 2 phones on a shared T-Mo plan ($120/month) to both phones on Ting ($42/month average), and our service feels pretty much the same. But we don't talk all that much on the phone, don't text at all, and try to keep the heavy data use for when we're home and on the wi-fi.

(I don't even actually know my Ting phone number -- I've had a Google Voice number that I use for calls and texts for at least 5 years.)
posted by themissy at 3:45 PM on October 26, 2015

I suspect Ting makes money, in part, because people way underestimate how much they use their phone and end up paying premiums when they go over their plan. With Ting, you also pay for the phone up front, so that cost that normally is absorbed into your contract is passed off to you. But yes, I had Verizon on a two year contract and I realized I could get better service at a cheaper price with Virgin Mobile. I vowed from then on to never do a contract phone service ever again.
posted by AppleTurnover at 12:05 AM on October 27, 2015

Best answer: Yes, Ting is cheaper than Verizon, but you should really compare like-for-like: compare Ting vs other prepaid services, like Cricket, Virgin Mobile, Google Project Fi, Straight Talk, etc. and they're all drastically cheaper than Verizon.

Here's some comparison with other prepaid providers: How Google’s Project Fi pricing stacks up to the competition. The comparison chart including Ting is about 3/4 down the page, and you can see that all the carriers will save you money.

If it were me, I'd be concerned about the choice of networks: a friend has T-Mobile and it works poorly indoors or in the suburbs. Sprint is well-known for having a slower network, and phones that work on Sprint often don't work on anyone else's network. Your coverage will undoubtedly be affected, but only you can decide how much that is worth.
posted by meowzilla at 3:15 AM on October 27, 2015

Response by poster: Thanks for the input everyone! Just to follow up on a few things...we own our phones and have a month-to-month contract with Verizon, so no issue there. Also, no carrier will give us good service at our house. We're just in a weird little valley on our particular street, so we use our landline as much as our cell. We tend to text more often than talk, and average about .3GB data/month.

Given all of that, and some great feedback from a local, we're going to make the leap! I'll check back in a few months to post our thoughts.
posted by Gusaroo at 8:01 AM on October 27, 2015

If you've got poor Sprint and T-Mobile reception at home, the Wi-Fi calling resolves that problem. Republic Wireless, Ting and Google Project Fi all perform Wi-Fi calls while you're at home and the clarity approaches corded landline. Wi-Fi calls don't count against your minutes on Ting.
posted by dlwr300 at 8:57 AM on October 27, 2015

Yeah, what dlwr300 said. My iPhone is set to automatically connect to WiFi at home and at my office, so for huge chunks of a typical day I am not even on 3g. It really helps keep the costs down.
posted by pinetree at 1:17 PM on October 27, 2015

Ting is awesome. My fiance and I switched from Sprint and AT&T, respectively, and to make a long story short we now pay less for 4 lines than he did for 1 line. However, my GSM phone (came from AT&T) has much worse coverage in more remote hiking areas than I did with AT&T. My fiance's line (CDMA from Sprint) never had that coverage to begin with. So your service range when switching from Verizon to Ting might indeed be significantly worse, since Verizon has really good coverage in general. It was worth it to save over a thousand dollars a year since we would only really go hiking together and not need to call anyone from there. The only other downside is that now it's time for my fiance to get a new phone and he has to buy one without it being subsidized by a carrier. But I pointed out to him how much money we saved this year from switching and he stopped being sad about the cost of the new phone. We did have to start being mindful about making sure we are connected to wifi when possible to keep the cost down.

Is your phone unlocked already? I don't remember how phones and contracts work, but if you are month to month with Verizon, would it be possible to try Ting out and keep your Verizon contract? It might be possible with an unlocked phone that has a SIM card without a big loss (just 1 month of overlapping service + the cost of a SIM card), but I don't know how that would work with a Verizon phone.

Ting's customer service is REALLY really good, maybe they have some solutions to this since you can't be the first person hesitant to switch from Verizon because of coverage.
posted by never.was.and.never.will.be. at 8:55 PM on October 27, 2015

Response by poster: Checking back in with an update:
We've been using Ting for a few months now. I'm using an unlocked iphone 6 on the GSM network and so far, although the coverage isn't quite as good as Verizon, it's more than adequate for 99% of what I need. I also now have 3 bars of coverage at our house, whereas with Verizon we were lucky to get one. Go figure.

My husband uses an iphone 4 on the CDMA network and isn't quite as happy with his coverage. We're both OK with little or no coverage in more rural areas, as long as we're good in the general Bay area (we live in Sonoma County CA).

But here's the big thing...our bill went from $150 down to $31 for the past month. For that kind of savings I'm a happy camper!
posted by Gusaroo at 1:53 PM on February 3, 2016 [1 favorite]