[olug] OT: Ting

[Obi-Wan]

Let's try this without the screenshot & see if it goes out to the list 
any faster...

On 04/02/2014 11:34 PM, Joseph Gulizia wrote:
> I'm looking at Ting for phone service.  Any referrals for it or reasons NOT
> to switch to it?

I've been using Ting (my referral code: https://znt1he1mog3.ting.com) 
since last summer.  It's great for low-usage users, as long as you don't 
travel outside the main metro areas very often.  Sprint's service sucks 
in rural Nebraska.

Our family of 3 smartphones typically pays $52 per month combined.  That 
saves us about $130/mo vs Verizon.  Pricing for service is a tiered 
approach based on what your entire family uses that month.  There's a 
$6/mo flat fee to have each line activated, plus some small regulatory 
taxes (totaling about $8/mo for our family of 3 phones).  After that, 
you pay separately for voice minutes, texts, and megabytes.  If you 
don't use one of those at all during a month, you don't pay for it (you 
can turn off services per device, too).  My family typically sits in the 
medium tier of all three categories, though we have occasionally jumped 
into the large tier for data when my son forgets what he's doing. View 
their tier pricing and use their rate calculator at:
https://ting.com/rates

Their customer service is unlike anything you've ever experienced in the 
cell phone industry.  I actually enjoy interacting with them!  Very fast 
response via phone or email, and they've got a great sense of humor.  
You can setup alerts so you automatically get notified if certain usage 
amounts are surpassed, which is nice.  You also have detailed reports 
available online or on a smartphone app.  I'll attach a screenshot of my 
dashboard as an example (or not; the OLUG moderates any message over 
40KB).  It's updated daily.

I live most of my life in a WiFi zone, so I'm actually the lightest user 
in our family.  Ting's great for low-usage customers who don't leave 
major metro areas all that often.  If you travel all over the state, you 
need to go with Verizon.  If you're a power user that talks for 
thousands of minutes or downloads many GB of data every month, then you 
should find an unlimited plan. If you must stick with Verizon's network, 
I'm told that Straight Talk is decent, at about $45/mo per line for 
unlimited usage. Using a pay-what-you-use account has encouraged us to 
adjust our behavior a bit.  For example, when we're at home or work, we 
make voice calls to/from the land line instead of the cell as a first 
option, even if we're looking up the number in our cell phone contacts.  
We also avoid watching YouTube or other high-volume services over 4G 
without good reason.  Those are pretty small sacrifices to keep our 
payments low, IMHO.

If you do sign up, please use my referral link 
(https://znt1he1mog3.ting.com), which will save you and me each $25 off 
our next bill.

-- 
*Ben "Obi-Wan" Hollingsworth* obiwan at jedi.com <mailto:obiwan at jedi.com> 
www.Jedi.com <http://www.jedi.com>
The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the
Giver of all good things, so if I stand, let me stand on the
promise that You will pull me through. /-- Rich Mullins/