Ringplus going away

[bluecollarmusician]

Hey All-

Curious if there are any other Ringplus users trying to decide what they are going to do next.

My wife and I have been very happy with Ringplus over the last couple of years.  No complaints at all.... we had been using S3's with all the minutes/texts/data we needed.  My total cell phone bill over the last couple of years was maybe $20. 

This last week there was an announcement that Spring is going to shut off Ringplus due to some ongoing litigation.

I tried Freedompop, but really wasn't happy with it.  I may go back, but my wife (for my sanity) needs reliable cell phone service.  Maybe Tello?    Who are you all happy with???  Just curious... I have read the super guide... but wanted to post this to also hear from others who are sad about Ringplus going away....

[pbnj]

Depending on your usage, I would recommend either Airvoice or Ting.  If you go with Ting there is a referral thread here somewhere, you would get $25 credit.  Ring has great customer service, Airvoice ,average.

I read IP's guide and then checked out the individual websites I was interested in.  I think consumer Cellular is also worth a look, that would have been my choice had I not gone with Ting.  Selling point on ting (this was the plan I chose for my son) : he's a light user and I can call Canada for 1cent/minute.

[CptCool]

I've been a happy ringplus user for a couple years now too - it's unfortunate that the free ride is finally over, but it was fun while it lasted.

I just got a notification last night that numbers will be ported over to Ting and that all users will get a $35 credit to Ting, plus whatever top-off balance they had. That's a pretty dang good deal and my wife and I don't use a whole lot of min/text/data, so I will probably be giving them a shot.

[bluecollarmusician]

Depending on your usage, I would recommend either Airvoice or Ting.  If you go with Ting there is a referral thread here somewhere, you would get $25 credit.  Ring has great customer service, Airvoice ,average.

Thanks for the tip!

I've been a happy ringplus user for a couple years now too - it's unfortunate that the free ride is finally over, but it was fun while it lasted.

I just got a notification last night that numbers will be ported over to Ting and that all users will get a $35 credit to Ting, plus whatever top-off balance they had. That's a pretty dang good deal and my wife and I don't use a whole lot of min/text/data, so I will probably be giving them a shot.

I hadn't seen that message yet... going to go look for it.  That does sound like a good deal and worth giving it a try...!

[Daley]

A newer Sprint MVNO crossed my radar earlier today, might be worth mentioning as a Ting alternative for the rats fleeing the SS RingPlus.

Twigby.

Still kind of new and launched around May 2016. Parent company is SI Wireless, who owns MobileNation - a regional Kentucky/Tennessee network operator going back to 2010 with about 30k users. Their terms of service are reasonably benign for a Sprint MVNO. Their plan pricing structure is similar to Consumer Cellular, they're running postpaid model pricing (so there's undisclosed additional fees), and they offer free voice roaming on Verizon/USCC/regionals (like Ting). Plans start at $9/month+tax for 200 minutes and "unlimited" SMS messages, with data plans extra (starts at $3 for 150MB), and plan overages either bump you up to the next bucket or you can restrict data speeds to 2G after the high speed allotment. Haven't talked with anyone at customer support, nor have I found any reliable reviews for Twigby or MobileNation, but there are a couple employee reviews of MobileNation over at Glassdoor which is a bit of a mixed bag and a bit dated. There aren't any red flags, but I am a bit reserved none the less, mostly due to the lack of reviews and age of the MVNO itself. They also blow many trumpets about "care and respect" of customers, which could potentially be a good thing if they follow through, and easy to detect if they don't over time.

They're also offering the first month of service for free with RingPlus ports.

I don't normally mention newer providers, but the parent company is reasonably established and the Sprint MVNO landscape is slim pickens and a bit of a privacy trainwreck these days, especially with more affordable, low-end, single line plans. Worth investigating at the very least.

[bluecollarmusician]

Thanks IP... I know you are more familiar with the ins and outs of this stuff than most!

I will look into Twigby.  Since it will require pretty much nothing for me to try out Ting (as things have turned out) I will probably give them a try... but we will see.


Thanks again!

[Daley]

Bevakasha. Glad to help!

All I ask is that you try to be respectful of the financial kindness any MVNO offers you for the migration out, and give them a chance to recover some of that money first if you still choose and plan to switch afterward. Account turnover hurts everyone. :)

[marielle]

I already started my service on Ting. More expensive but maybe I'll find something better eventually. I got a year of service on Ringplus for like...$60 maybe? so I can't complain.

[NorthernBlitz]

Obviously it depends on your phone usage.

My wife and I both moved to Ting after PTel closed shop. For her, it made sense to stay there long term because she sends many texts per month. We've had no issues with service since we started and they seem like a good alternative for moderate users (we don't use any data). I think she usually pays between $15-20.

For her that makes sense, but it was hard for me to pay that much after being at about $2/month with PTel. I use my phone far less frequently (a few texts a month, maybe 3-5 minutes, and no data since I'm usually on wifi or listening to podcasts I downloaded previously). So, I moved again to H2O Wireless. Their pay as you go is $10 for 90 days and I usually don't even spend that much. There was a pretty long outage (maybe a week) over the holidays, but I don't use my phone much so it didn't affect me too badly. I raised the issue with them and they credited my account $10 (I would have rather had a credit of time than money since I don't deplete my account as it). The one thing I don't like about this service is that you need to be paying monthly to auto-renew. So, I need to add a calendar reminder every time I re-up (although I wouldn't really care if I lost the accumulated credit since I'll probably never use it anyway). So, we've found that the service / product at Ting is better, but I'm happy to pay 10 times less and live with a worse product. People who are more reliant on their phones may feel differently than I do.

[GrumpyPenguin]

I had a great experience with R+ and I'm a bit sad to see it go.  At the end it seemed like their paid options would have been good enough and sustainable, but oh well.  I'm on GV switching between any plan is incredibly easy.

Charge.co is intriguing.  Their plan is $3/month and a flat $13/GB for data that rolls over, on the Sprint network. Tethering included, and as many devices as you want included on the same bundle of data.  For people who don't care about traditional phone calls and texting (VOIP and text is "free" using data anyway), this seems like a pretty good option.  Close to Google Fi's data only SIM, minus the need for a $20/month initial account.  Also it is Sprint instead of T-Mobile (I actually have had good experience with Sprint's network). 

Does anyone here have any direct experience with Charge.co at all?