Making the switch to Ting

Why we chose Ting

Part of our new year budget project was to do some maintenance on some of our bills and see if we could save money anywhere.  I have been with Sprint mobile for 15 years and have never had a problem, but with our contract expiring and not needing new phones I wanted to see if there were any other options.

I looked into a few different companies.  The other big two, AT&T and Verizon, were more expensive than what we were paying at the time so I was able to rule them out right away.  We had two main categories of options.  I averaged out our actual usage with Sprint over the past year so I could compare how much we used our phones.

• Minutes
  • 1200
• Texts (we were using google voice so all but 20 of our texts were free; we lost that ability and I had NO idea how many texts we sent)
  • 20
• MB of data
  • 2600

We compared and several different companies’ plans and Ting was our best option.  First, because we didn’t have to pay full price for new phones to get started.  Ting works on the Sprint network which means we could BYOD (Bring your own devices)  Secondly, there is no contract required so we can test it out with no commitment.  And finally because it would save us a bunch of money.

Ting is different

Ting‘s billing is different from the traditional cell phone carrier.  Instead of deciding on a plan up front and either over paying for usage you don’t actually use or under planning and paying overage fees; Ting has a flat set of rates.  You pay for what you use.  When we compared their rates to our usage (assuming XL for the texts I wasn’t sure about) for two lines we would be paying $96 which is $30 a month less than we were paying with Sprint (for the same cell network).  This is a little strange to get used to after having more unlimited options.  But it looks like we were over paying.

Although we are still in our first month things are going well.  Tings app and website let you keep track of your usage and we are paying a little more attention to how we are using our phones.  I am not using my navigation just for kicks anymore, for example.

We may switch it up if this doesn’t work or when our phones are ready to be replaced, republic wireless offers a better plan but $800 for two phones it would take almost two years for us to make back the initial investment in savings.

Head over to Ting and see how much you could save with their hand savings calculator, you may be glad you did.