Ting vs T-Mobile: One Year Later

Summary

Pros

• Pay only for what you use
• They will credit 25% of your early termination fees, up to $75/device
• Still offer $25 credit
• Can BYOD from Sprint, including iPads

Cons

• Relatively expensive texting and data
• Sprint coverage, no data roaming
• Cannot BYOD devices from carriers other than Sprint
• The psychology of rationing usage

Code for $25 credit

The current Ting homepage. I'm glad to see my $10/month per device is below the average $21.

Introduction

As you can read from my earlier posts here, here, and here, I've had a lot of (mostly positive) experiences with Ting. Now, after a year of use, I wanted to go back and provide updates on the service, and what has changed. 

Discussion

While Ting has continued to accept more and more devices (e.g. iPhones, iPads), I'm glad they have continued to save a lot of money with them, and they have excellent customer service. Here's an example they've put up on Youtube:

Note: accurate hold time is accurate

Unlike other companies that run ads such as the one above, Ting actually lives up to the its portrayal of itself as a fun, quirkly company. For example, here is an article that the CEO posted on the Ting blog year: T-Mobile CEO John Legere stole my 2012 brand strategy and my 1987 hair.

Despite not taking itself too seriously, Ting has been making major improvements over the past, and is working on addressing concerns. Here is another article on their blog that came out a few days ago: You Asked: How to block unwanted callers.

The user interface has also been updated on the website:

The Latest Ting Dashboard

Ting has also put their money where they're mouth is, and have offered their ETF credit on a permanent basis now. I guess a lot of people must have been using this, because they changed the terms of the program from paying 100% to paying 25% of the ETF (within certain limits in both cases). Nevertheless, I would have liked to take advantage of this myself, but sadly,Ting only offered ETF credits sporadically at that time.

Coverage continues to be be fine: I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and have never had problems with reception, even on BART. The buzz is that Sprint is continuing to expand their network, and the fact that they don't have as good of a presence as other big carriers outside of large cities. Because of Ting's deal with Sprint, BYOD is limited Sprint devices, and there is no data roaming outside of the Sprint network.

The biggest drawback I experience is from how Ting has implemented is its main selling point: you only pay for what you use. Ting charges people a certain amount of money for a certain range of service. If you go above or below that range, you'll be charged the appropriate fee for that range. There's no question that this setup is way cheaper than traditional plans for my family and I, but this sometimes leads to rationing towards the end of the billing cycle, if we are close to the limit of a minute/text/data bucket, to avoid the extra fee associated with the next level.

$3 for 0-100 texts per month is pretty good...unless you only send/receive 10

A solution would be to bill based solely on each minute/text/MB used. I've seen similar suggestions on the Ting blog, but as I understand the response from the Ting team, this would be a lot more complicated and expensive than the current system they have, and they've designed the ranges of their bucket system to accommodate most users. I agree that this works well with minutes, but as you can see from the screenshot of my Ting dashboard above, its frustrating when we use only a handful of text messages per month, and are charged the flat $3 for 0-100 texts.

Conclusion

By expanding their device offerings, continuously updating their website and services based on customer feedback, and saving people even more money with ETF credits, Ting has kept improving itself. I am definitely happy with my service with Ting over the past year, and will keep you all updated if that changes in the future.

Code for $25 credit

Thanks for reading! You get a Ting $25 credit code! 

Credit card authorized user - Accumulate reward points and cash back faster!

Summary

Pros

• No need to open multiple/redundant lines of credit
• All users can build credit history/score
• Spending by different users can be used to accumulate points/cash back on a single account

Cons

• Primary account holder is liable for all charges
• Can negatively impact all users' credit history/score
• Moral hazard; authorized users are not ultimately responsible for charges

Plastic > Paper for spender ROI

Introduction

The reason I began looking into adding authorized users on my credit card account was because Costco only accepts American Express credit cards, yet doesn't allow non-members to pay for purchases. Thus, even if I'm standing next to my mom at the checkout, they won't allow me to pay for our purchases (and thus get the reward points/cash). Since my mom doesn't have an American Express card, she instead has to pay by debit card (limited rewards, if any), or cash.

Where there's a will, there's a way, and I found out that it is possible to add authorized users to my credit card accounts. Each user will get their own card with their name on it, and will not necessarily have to impact their own credit score by applying/carrying for too many credit cards since only I will be responsible for the balance.

Costco only accept American Express, PIN-based debit cards, Costco cards, cash, checks, and EBT cards, and only members may pay for items. This policy is what prompted my research into authorized users.

Discussion

Credit cards have allowed primary account holders to add authorized users for quite some time. In theory it sounds like a great idea: you can allow the people you trust to help you earn rewards, and the credit card companies get more revenue from all this spending.

Before adding an authorized user, I cannot stress enough how important it is that you trust this person. At worst, be prepared to cover all bills he or she might run up on your account.

Other reasons to add an authorized user to your account is to help them (re)build their credit—if FICO will also track this account under the authorized user if they provide their social security number when you add them to your credit card account. And, for younger users, it may be a good way to give them access to emergency funds.

On these same topics, there are quite a lot of reasons why adding authorized users to your credit cards can be a bad idea. While everyone's credit can be built up by responsible credit card usage, one person's mistake can lower everyone's credit. Similarly, mixing money with friends and family can be a disaster waiting to happen when relationships change, or may even be the trigger itself to those changes. My advice is to put a limit on the amount your authorized users can spend (ask your credit card comapny to do this)

Conclusion

There's a lot of pros and cons with adding authorized users to your credit card account. Think long and hard to see if the rewards outweigh the risk.

As much as I dislike not giving a clear recommendation, this is a situation that really will depend on each individual situation.