The Continued Benefits of Ting.com

Back in September, I wrote about our new phone plan search.  The Wife and I were longtime fans and users of Verizon, but our contract was expiring, and we just felt that we were getting charged way too much and that getting smart phones through them would cost and arm and a leg.  Since the writing of the last article, we bit the bullet, dropped Verizon and moved our numbers and plans onto the startup Ting.com which is owned by a domain provider called Tucows.

If you recall from my previous article, Ting seemed to make the most sense for what I was looking for in a phone provider; cheap bills, nationwide service, no prepaid minutes, and a reliable customer service experience.  With Verizon, my wife and I had to LG feature phones with texting disabled which cost us around $78/month.  All that is after you deduct 20% of the bill due to a corporate discount my company has with Verizon.  This seemed way too much money for what we were getting.  Sure, the phone service was great and I hardly ever had a dropped call, but we were living in the 90's and wanted to make the jump into at least 2005.

We signed up for Ting through their simple online form which basically consisted of telling them my old Verizon account numbers and our old phone numbers.  In a matter of a week, we got our first two LG Optimus' (Optimi?) and were on our way.  The setup was rather simple too, however there were a few problems along the way.  Since we were buying refurbished phones, mine didn't have any sound and my wife's broke down after about a week of use.  No worries, Ting has a year warranty on all phones, and so we promptly received two more at no cost.  They even supplied a return box which to send the old phones.  Ting does have better phones, but once a cheap guy always a cheap guy.  The initial purchase of the phones were only $68 a piece which is far from the top of the line models you see out there now.

Now the good news.  As the image at the top of the blog suggests, my new monthly payment was $46.79 netting me a savings of at least $30/month.  Ting has a graduated payment plan which means you pay for what you use on a step basis.  This first month, I used a bunch of minutes since I was downloading apps and playing around.  I expect this to go down drastically and will probably only be paying about $35-$40 per month.  Doing a little math, and I find out that in a little over 4 months, I have saved enough money to pay for the purchase of the two new smart phones, and over two years (which would have been signing onto a new contract) I will have saved $720.  Think of all the stuff you could use $720 for.  If you're not happy with your current phone plan or company, considering switching today.

Wonderful Moment of the Day: Had a delicious ham, salami, and capricola ham sub for dinner!