Author Topic: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?  (Read 5157 times)

Trudie

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Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« on: December 15, 2017, 11:40:05 AM »
Curious what others' experiences have been like with Ting Wireless?  Please give me the good, the bad, and the ugly -- especially if you live in a more rural area.

I'm getting ready to give up my heretofore free cell service through my job and need a replacement.  I'm not a big-time user and will probably buy an unlocked phone from Costco.

I've ruled out Republic Wireless and Consumer Cellular because they don't have coverage in my area.  Ting does, although it is limited to talk and text and might be spotty.  Still, as long as the talk and text is solid, I'll go with them.


ixtap

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #1 on: December 15, 2017, 11:45:11 AM »
Figure out which major networks have coverage in your area, then figure out which is the best reseller for them.

For us, TMobile has good coverage, so Mint works well. Virgin Mobile (Sprint) was OK, but often dropped calls in my office.

kaizen soze

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #2 on: December 15, 2017, 11:55:28 AM »
I use Ting.  It works fine in areas I usually frequent.  But in rural areas, it's usually pretty spotty. Sometimes I show a signal, but still can't call or text.  I've never sorted that out, maybe it's a phone configuration issue. I think this will come down to whether you happen to get good service in your area.  I sometimes get a LTE signal in the middle of nowhere.  You could try it for a month, it's not expensive to buy a SIM card and get set up.  Of course, if you're also buying a phone, you might want to sort out first whether you want CDMA (Verizon, Sprint) or GSM (ATT, T-Mobile).  Hope this helps at least a little.

The good includes a decent app for your phone to track your usage, good website security (they allow two-factor authentication).  The bad? Mostly what I said above.  I get spotty service in rural areas.

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #3 on: December 15, 2017, 12:04:04 PM »
Not in a rural area for home base, but have traveled to moderately rural heartland areas. Small towns in the central U.S., a bit of farm land type areas. The phone signal was still decent in my experience. No idea about texting tho as I don't text.

Love Ting, had zero issues. My bill is below $18/month for two phones, no texts (we hate the concept) and low voice/data usage (we use wifi as much as possible).

And they did stuff like give everyone in the Gulf coast region (whole states as I understood it) a $60 credit back during the hurricane mess - not just put the bills on hold like some places (where they'd not charge you late fees/interest) they just gave away $60 credits to everyone so they wouldn't have to think about their bills at all for a few months.

They've also lowered the fees on some things and let us know. They are a class act.

Is it possible that you could try them out (get a cheapy phone or one that might port to one of the other candidates you're considering?) as they have no contract and change over if they end up not working for you. It is easy to port numbers now from what I can tell, but if you're starting from scratch as you have a work phone right now, you'd likely not be able to keep that work number anyway.

They also do a $25 referral program - if you use the link (like what's in my sig line) you get $25 and I get $25. And you get a personalized link yourself you can then use for any friends/family/strangers to get more credits if they activate a line with Ting. (no pressure at all, just though I'd point it out - use whomever you like if you already know someone that has a Ting referral link)

ketchup

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #4 on: December 15, 2017, 12:32:07 PM »
Ting was great for us.  Exactly what they said it would be.  T-mobile coverage, so look into that.  No roaming though, which inflates the T-mobile map a bit.

Daley

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #5 on: December 15, 2017, 12:32:40 PM »
What network were you on with your employer? Were you happy with that coverage at home? That's going to inform which provider you'd best go with first and foremost.

If you're still in Iowa, either Sprint or T-Mobile based service is going to be awful for you, and you'll be on roaming most of the time with Ting's service, either GSM or CDMA. I'm also a little shocked that you've said what you have about Consumer Cellular, given they offer either AT&T or T-Mobile coverage; because I can see the T-Mobile coverage being a problem, but the AT&T coverage should be quite decent outside of three smaller, mostly rural roaming patches... areas, I might add, that if you can't get AT&T coverage with, T-Mobile or Sprint will provide no improvement. AT&T coverage, with or without off-network roaming, should be a solid choice in the region with a similar footprint to Verizon.

Points to consider, but I'd recommend based on current network coverage. Ting, for better or worse, probably isn't that choice if you're still in Hawkeye country. Something like Puretalk USA or Consumer Cellular (AT&T SIM, specifically) would probably be the safer choice.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2017, 12:34:37 PM by Daley »

Trudie

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #6 on: December 15, 2017, 02:40:22 PM »
What network were you on with your employer? Were you happy with that coverage at home? That's going to inform which provider you'd best go with first and foremost.

If you're still in Iowa, either Sprint or T-Mobile based service is going to be awful for you, and you'll be on roaming most of the time with Ting's service, either GSM or CDMA. I'm also a little shocked that you've said what you have about Consumer Cellular, given they offer either AT&T or T-Mobile coverage; because I can see the T-Mobile coverage being a problem, but the AT&T coverage should be quite decent outside of three smaller, mostly rural roaming patches... areas, I might add, that if you can't get AT&T coverage with, T-Mobile or Sprint will provide no improvement. AT&T coverage, with or without off-network roaming, should be a solid choice in the region with a similar footprint to Verizon.

Points to consider, but I'd recommend based on current network coverage. Ting, for better or worse, probably isn't that choice if you're still in Hawkeye country. Something like Puretalk USA or Consumer Cellular (AT&T SIM, specifically) would probably be the safer choice.

I'm currently on U.S. Cellular.  My husband is on Verizon.  Both have worked well for us. When I pulled up Consumer Cellular and punched in my zip code it said service was not available.

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #7 on: December 15, 2017, 03:19:56 PM »
I don't know why Cricket doesn't get more love on this forum. I am on an account with 3 lines and we pay $90 total for unlimited talk, text, and data. It's more than I need, but for only $30 a line it's a great deal. And if we add just one more line we will get 4 lines for $100, or $25 per line.

They also had a pretty sweet referral system too up until very recently. I got probably $100-$125 off my phone bill just for referring new people.

Daley

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #8 on: December 15, 2017, 04:05:58 PM »
I'm currently on U.S. Cellular.  My husband is on Verizon.  Both have worked well for us. When I pulled up Consumer Cellular and punched in my zip code it said service was not available.

PM me your ZIP code if you're willing... I'll be happy to do a little research.

Otherwise, your best choice will be a Verizon MVNO such as Selectel or US Mobile. If you're looking for a smartphone, best bang for buck would be a Moto G4 Play XT1609, if you're looking at actually needing a Verizon MVNO. If you buy used, make sure the ESN is clean, it's carrier unlocked, and can be activated with a Verizon MVNO. Not too big, decent battery life (for a smartphone), user replaceable battery, mostly vanilla Android build, no real show-stopper hardware bugs, reasonable update cycle, easy aftermarket ROM support if needed to extend life further. Basic Verizon non-smartphone handsets are a bit taller of an order (though the list is quite short and not very good, honestly) if you want to ensure future calling support post CDMA shutdown.



I don't know why Cricket doesn't get more love on this forum.

Cricket gets way more love around here than you think, but even that is too much, IMHO.

This said, I'm partially responsible for that lack of consideration in these parts. I've made several observations over the years about AT&T's past practices and their business model with Cricket that brings forward a lot of ethical concerns for others, from their anti-competitive wholesale pricing to other MVNOs due to a lack of regulation in an effort to starve out the competition, to the inexcusable litany of poor taxes that Cricket will charge customers for handling account related issues that literally no other mobile provider on the planet charges for.

Carrier brands like Cricket, MetroPCS and Boost are doing a great deal of damage to the very market diversity and businesses that finally forced the hands of these companies to drop prices and open up the prepaid market in this country in the first place. It's kinda messed up that it took wholesalers reselling airtime to actually provide cheaper and more affordable mobile service calling plans in this country, but it's how it happened... but once those wholesalers stopped providing an extra revenue stream and started to erode the major carriers' ridiculous profit margins and positive growth, they declared open war to reclaim those users; and the MVNO market is no longer as healthy as it once was, and per month prices are rising once more as competition keeps dying off. Unfortunately, we have no regulation to mandate fair wholesale market access to the mobile networks for competitors, like so many other countries who actually do have affordable mobile calling plans have. As such, we have to literally vote with our wallets if we want to preserve actual choice (not that I think this is even a remotely winnable fight anymore after the past six weeks of FCC policy changes). That means not making deals directly with the major carriers who've built their empires on customer abuse and overcharging, and supporting the MVNOs that actually treat their customers well and provide actual affordable alternative calling plans...

The community is supposed to value making the world a better place. Not supporting an unscrupulous company that abuses their customer base and market position should be one of those values embraced.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2017, 04:07:43 PM by Daley »

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #9 on: December 16, 2017, 01:27:38 AM »
My Ting bill at most hits ~ $35 a month despite my iPhone addiction.  It would be $30 without the addiction. I think they might pay me if I went hard core and got a flip phone. Most people I know in my HCOL burg pay ~ $70 - $100 a month. 

I only only have two beefs with Ting. One is relevant: their coverage can be spotty.  Not an issue for me but if you’re the type who has to have 100% coverage all the time for some reason, that’s a problem. Lately I’ve noticed coverage is slowly improving. 

The other thing is just an old grudge: Ting is part of T-Mobile.  T-Mobile is a subsidiary of Deutsch Telekom.  Deutsch Telekom was the single nastiest, thieving company in Germany when I lived there.  The best I could say at the time was they weren’t Anti-American.  They treated Germans just like shit too.  I actually said this to a Soldier in their customer screwage line in front of a dozen Germans and they all agreed. 

But that was many years ago.  Ting has exhibited none of that behavior. 

kpd905

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #10 on: December 16, 2017, 06:40:17 AM »
My wife and I have been with Ting for about 2 years now, we average around $40 a month since we don't use data.  We have one GSM phone and one CDMA phone with them, so it seems to give us good coverage pretty much anywhere.

drudgep

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #11 on: December 17, 2017, 08:53:04 AM »
New ting user- 28 total with taxes and fees for 2 lines. No good service in our particular apartment, but we will be moving soon and knew that going in... we supplement with google voice, which we love. I trust them in terms of their measuring of our usage- and I can check it in real time- which is something the big 4 don't always let you do.

CheapScholar

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #12 on: December 17, 2017, 09:32:15 AM »
My Ting bill is typically $15-$18 per month.  I rarely use my phone but at least now I don't feel like I'm getting ripped off.  Phone works when I need it.  Got the Motorola that Ting sold for $60 and works great.

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #13 on: December 17, 2017, 05:11:22 PM »
We have several phones on Ting  - all use the Sprint network and we have no coverage problems at all.  I have to mention that Ting customer service is, in our experience, absolutely outstanding. They are a complete pleasure to deal with - friendly, accessible, no attitude, and have even tried to help me with problems that have nothing to do with their service (e.g. problems with our router) - they are just so nice and helpful in every aspect, whether it be billing questions, technical, new phone, whatever. I would pay extra for their level of customer service - but in fact we pay way less than we would with pretty much any other company.

Blackeagle

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #14 on: December 17, 2017, 08:18:37 PM »
My parents are on Ting.  It's generally worked well for them, though I can second the earlier posts about spotty coverage in rural areas (especially out west).

netskyblue

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #15 on: December 22, 2017, 02:22:35 PM »
Somebody said you're in Iowa?  I'm in Iowa and on Ting.  I get perfectly fine service in the Des Moines area, where I live, but get about 30 minutes out from the interstates and I have next to no service (often none at all when I visit my family, who are rural.)  US Cellular is the only thing that works reliably in their area.

marshmallowaddict

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #16 on: December 24, 2017, 03:38:34 PM »
Ting works well enough for me in NJ. I don't get many voice calls, but sometimes have connection issues when I'm at work. No problem with texts.

Frankies Girl

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #17 on: December 24, 2017, 04:39:08 PM »
My Ting bill at most hits ~ $35 a month despite my iPhone addiction.  It would be $30 without the addiction. I think they might pay me if I went hard core and got a flip phone. Most people I know in my HCOL burg pay ~ $70 - $100 a month. 

I only only have two beefs with Ting. One is relevant: their coverage can be spotty.  Not an issue for me but if you’re the type who has to have 100% coverage all the time for some reason, that’s a problem. Lately I’ve noticed coverage is slowly improving. 

The other thing is just an old grudge: Ting is part of T-Mobile.  T-Mobile is a subsidiary of Deutsch Telekom.  Deutsch Telekom was the single nastiest, thieving company in Germany when I lived there.  The best I could say at the time was they weren’t Anti-American.  They treated Germans just like shit too.  I actually said this to a Soldier in their customer screwage line in front of a dozen Germans and they all agreed. 

But that was many years ago.  Ting has exhibited none of that behavior.

I'm pretty sure this is incorrect. Ting is owed by the company Tucows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucows
They use Sprint and T-Mobile networks for their GSM/CDMA cellular maps, basially renting usage for their customers, but they are not owned by T-Mobile at all according to anything I found. They are a completely independent company, and have a fantastic reputation for providing great service and being aimed at responsible corporate practices.

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #18 on: December 24, 2017, 05:06:31 PM »
Overall I'm very happy with Ting.  I was a previous Sprint customer, so I already knew my coverage was okay near my home.

My bill is typically in the $15-$22 range, but it might go up to $30 in months I travel.

The biggest benefit is one I hadn't anticipated.  Now that data is something I pay for, I turn it off most of the time.  My phone is no longer a distraction when I'm away from wifi.

I have had an occasional issue with voicemails not showing up for a day or even a week after being left.  I have no idea what causes this, but I think it's related to the Spring network.  Thankfully it's never happened to important voicemails, but it's only a matter of time.

Daley

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #19 on: December 24, 2017, 05:30:00 PM »
My Ting bill at most hits ~ $35 a month despite my iPhone addiction.  It would be $30 without the addiction. I think they might pay me if I went hard core and got a flip phone. Most people I know in my HCOL burg pay ~ $70 - $100 a month. 

I only only have two beefs with Ting. One is relevant: their coverage can be spotty.  Not an issue for me but if you’re the type who has to have 100% coverage all the time for some reason, that’s a problem. Lately I’ve noticed coverage is slowly improving. 

The other thing is just an old grudge: Ting is part of T-Mobile.  T-Mobile is a subsidiary of Deutsch Telekom.  Deutsch Telekom was the single nastiest, thieving company in Germany when I lived there.  The best I could say at the time was they weren’t Anti-American.  They treated Germans just like shit too.  I actually said this to a Soldier in their customer screwage line in front of a dozen Germans and they all agreed. 

But that was many years ago.  Ting has exhibited none of that behavior.

I'm pretty sure this is incorrect. Ting is owed by the company Tucows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucows
They use Sprint and T-Mobile networks for their GSM/CDMA cellular maps, basially renting usage for their customers, but they are not owned by T-Mobile at all according to anything I found. They are a completely independent company, and have a fantastic reputation for providing great service and being aimed at responsible corporate practices.

Correct. Ting isn't owned by anyone other than Tucows. The only affiliation they have with T-Mobile and Sprint is that they're bulk wholesale clients. That makes them an MVNO, not a subsidiary and sub-brand. MetroPCS and GoSmart, however, are owned by T-Mobile.
« Last Edit: December 24, 2017, 05:32:19 PM by Daley »

Case

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #20 on: December 24, 2017, 06:56:21 PM »
Curious what others' experiences have been like with Ting Wireless?  Please give me the good, the bad, and the ugly -- especially if you live in a more rural area.

I'm getting ready to give up my heretofore free cell service through my job and need a replacement.  I'm not a big-time user and will probably buy an unlocked phone from Costco.

I've ruled out Republic Wireless and Consumer Cellular because they don't have coverage in my area.  Ting does, although it is limited to talk and text and might be spotty.  Still, as long as the talk and text is solid, I'll go with them.

I live in a medium sized town.  I have tried both tings gsm and cdma networks.  Both are supposed to give me good coverage (on their map).  In practice, i occasional get calls dropped.

Ting is inexpensive, flexible, and has good customer service.  Thats about where the pros stop.  I am considering switching services, but dragging my feet.

MatthewK

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Re: Ting Wireless - Your Experiences? Good or Bad?
« Reply #21 on: December 25, 2017, 06:46:29 AM »
Have had Ting service for about a year. Use to have AT&T, service was fine but damn do you pay for it! Also, customer service sucked ass, sooo glad I no longer have service through them, my wife does but that's a whole different post in itself )-:
Originally I used my Iphone from At&t on ting and it didn't work so great. It could only use GSM and it wasn't the right band to pick up Tmobile long range band so service was not good.
 I then bought a new phone, Moto g4 play with amazon adds for >$100! Went with the CDMA card and service was pretty good, road tripped out west to Montanna/Wyoming and still had Text/talk most of the time, no data though. Where I live is fairly rural in Southern Michigan so coverage was only ok when inside my house. Decided to try GSM again since my new phone supports both GSM and CDMA also the long range band that Tmobile uses. Now coverage is great, no complaints. They are wonderful to work with if you need any help, and their dash board app is awesome, you have full control of everything! I don't see myself ever switching from them as long as they keep up the great support and service.