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I've been a Mint customer for about 4 years, paying the annual upfront payment, which works out to $15/mo. And shaking my head at those who are paying double o

by jawns 4y ago

I've been a Mint customer for about 4 years, paying the annual upfront payment, which works out to $15/mo. And shaking my head at those who are paying double or triple that rate on T-Mobile, even though Mint uses the same exact network. In terms of why T-Mobile is making this purchase, I'm pretty sure it's to take out someone who was eating their lunch. I've always found it strange that an MVNO is able to operate on the T-Mobile network the entire time and undercut their rates so much that they become a threat. I guess T-Mobile thinks there are two ways to resolve this: lower their rates to compete with the MVNO, or buy the MVNO ... which I'm sure will result in rate increases, even though they say they have no immediate plans to do that.

jrootabega 4y ago
Stating you don't plan to increase prices means you are planning to increase prices, but you want to surprise people with it so they don't have time to find an alternative before their next renewal. You also get to control the PR narrative so the news of the price increase is separate from the news of the acquisition, and can lie to the government review board and say that the acquisition won't hurt customers.
nonethewiser 4y ago
Same network but TMobile users get preferred access.
- theGnuMe 4y ago
  Yeah I was going to say it works great until it doesn't which I find is a lot of time as in more than 2x per day. I get throttled and it is basically nonfunctional. That and dropped calls.
notwhereyouare 4y ago
I tried to give mint a chance, but I would get throttled so frequently that it was unusable to me
samtho 4y ago
> I've always found it strange that an MVNO is able to operate on the T-Mobile network the entire time and undercut their rates so much that they become a threat. Think about it less as a network operating on T-Mobile's network and more of being a customer on T-Mobile's network. It's the same economics dictating wholesaling. The manufacturer or operator (in this case), can give a good deal to a customer with a lot of volume, does not have provide support, brick and mortar locations, or anything with customer server, just a high-level tech support for getting their systems integrated with the network. You touched on a point that reminds of what Amazon does: let independent sellers create or list (and therefore assume all risk of) new products and copy them under the basics brand and undercut the original seller(s).
jjtheblunt 4y ago
Visible is the same for Verizon (and I think owned by Verizon): you get much cheaper rates, but you're prioritized lower for data traffic. In a season vacation homes part of the country, where peak capacity is unused much of the year, it works out great.
tempsy 4y ago
The unlimited plan on Mint is $30 a month not $15, which is similar as a bunch of other prepaid plans eg Visible (Verizon's prepaid brand) which is $25/mo.
ravenstine 4y ago
Either that or they don't change the rate for Mint, at least for a while, and keep their own rates the same knowing that most T-Mobile customers either won't put in the effort to switch to Mint or be totally oblivious to the whole thing. And they now have greater control. For T-Mobile, they win no matter what. They can afford $1.5 billion.
morninglight 4y ago
The Verge reported "The acquisition could let T-Mobile claw back the customers it lost when it sold Boost Mobile". It is especially interesting that this acquisition is taking place at the same time Boost Mobile is experiencing a major technical problem. The problem has persisted for many weeks and has even forced them to shut down payment processing. During this period, their support team has been totally useless. In other words, Boost has a lot of very unhappy customers looking to jump ship and you can be sure that T-Mobile is aware of the situation..
- jrmg 4y ago
  It is astounding how bad Boost’s problems have been. Their customer service basically hasn’t been working for almost three weeks now.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  Ting shares some of the same backend as well I believe.
selectodude 4y ago
>And shaking my head at those who are paying double or triple that rate on T-Mobile, even though Mint uses the same exact network. I tried every MVNO and find myself stuck on Verizon postpaid spending $90/mo because my phone actually works. If you live in a major city, throttling is the norm, not the exception, on these MVNOs.
- noahtallen 4y ago
  Mint was never a problem for me in both Portland and Seattle (downtown and about the city), except at massive sporting events
- temp2022account 4y ago
  Purely for the anecdata, I'm also in this group. Had Tracfone's $40/mo plan for a few years and then a cc change caused a missed payment. Within 8 hours my service was discontinued, which was a huge headache trying to 2-factor my way into my tracfone account to update cc details. In the end I decided to move to a verizon plan for twice as much but now I have unlimited data and a company that _sounds_ like it won't throw you around at the smallest paperwork hiccup.
  - fortytw2 4y ago
    Also anecdotally in this group - switched from AT&T yearly prepaid (25$/m or so) to post-paid Verizon because it got worse and worse over the three years I had it. Throttling got significantly worse over time and had a number of support issues with the yearly setup.
  - nebula8804 4y ago
    My nightmare story takes the cake. I tried to switch from Google Fi to "visible". I filled out the online signup, got mailed my sim card and when it came time to switch, their sign up website would just point me to a broken page. No problem right? I go to their support. It turns out the support is literally just a chat bot that you have to navigate correctly to finally get to a representative which is just a facebook messenger like window. (No phone support or address whatsoever). In the end they couldn't figure out why my transfer failed and why I was stuck in limbo. They said they would escalate to their "Technician" who never got back to me. Doing some research on Reddit I discovered that this is a common issue with that MVNO. So now here I was, never got onto visible while Google Fi is now informing me my service is about to be terminated because from their end I transfered out. Keep in mind this whole saga took many hours to get to this point. I decided at that point to get away from this MVNO as fast as I could. I call up Google and they said they are missing the pin and some details to initiate transfer back to Google. Visible says they dont have that data and to talk to google. I had no idea what to do and no one to ask for help so I decided to wait to see what would happen. Would I lose my number i've had for 15+ years? Turns out nope, Google Fi kept providing me service while keeping me in a perpetual state of "pending termination". I just stuck with them for the time being because I didn't want to deal with anymore headaches. Eventually I tried to sign up for T-Mobile proper and they managed to get the phone transfered. I've used multiple MVNOs (Ting, Tracfone,That Walmart MVNO,Mint,Xfinity mobile, visible and a few others). They all seem like they are gimped in some way whether it be delayed SMS, slow speeds, but now i've learned that another way they cut corners is with horrendous support and processes. As long as I can afford it, I will stay the hell away from these guys and I totally understand why so many others do as well.
pkulak 4y ago
> even though Mint uses the same exact network. It's the same network, but you get the capacity that's left over after everyone on T-Mobile has had their fill. Which is why I don't get why everyone is always so excited about these MVNOs. To me, it's like bragging about how cheap airfare is when you go standby: "It's the exact same planes!".
- kaslai 4y ago
  It's one of those things where if it works in your area, it works great. I've been on MVNOs for a decade now and the worst I've ever experienced was sometimes my data rate would drop to a couple mbps in crowded areas, but that's never been a material problem for me. I happily spend the $10-15/mo and get service that exceeds my needs. Sure it won't work for everyone in all cases, but you shouldn't discount MVNOs out of hand just because they are second class networks.
- wtallis 4y ago
  It's not hard to understand: many people simply don't need a high-speed unlimited data plan for their phones. Not everyone makes a habit of streaming video over their cellular connection.
  - pkulak 4y ago
    Are we sure that no matter how de-prioritized you are, some data is always available, with reasonable latency? I was just at a large sports stadium last night, and I was able to message my wife to tell her I was on my way home while looking up the best bus to take. I remember that not being possible a few years ago, but I don't know if that's because networks in general have gotten better, or because I'm now paying quite a lot of money for Verizon post-paid. EDIT: Oh, and I totally forgot about tethering. That can be severely restricted on MVNOs. And, at least for me, I don't need it. Until I need it. Then I NEED it. haha
    - starkparker 4y ago
      Odd to mention how restricted tethering is on MVNOs, in the comments of a post about Mint Mobile, which included tethering in every plan.
xylo 4y ago
I was a Mint customer before I moved to T-Mobile. I had to move because Mint network got severely deprioritized and was unusable in public/crowded places. I still pay $15 to Tmobile but I don’t get deprioritized anymore.
fghsqwads 4y ago
I've also been on Mint for about 4 years. Didn't realize this until a couple of days ago when I looked at my billing info. It's been mostly good, but MVNOs do get throttled traffic in some situations. When I lived in the SF Bay Area, it was somewhat annoying to frequently get throttled on a crowded BART train or just while walking around downtown in the middle of the day. But for the most part, it worked fine, and I adjusted to make things work better for me (download offline music and podcasts for commutes, that sort of thing). It's a great option for people who are cheap and patient about internet data speeds.
rqtwteye 4y ago
"which I'm sure will result in rate increases, even though they say they have no immediate plans to do that." If they say they have no "immediate" plans, it means they have medium-term plans already worked out. Gotta hate corporate doublespeak.
mdasen 4y ago
I wouldn't say that it's really a threat. Part of what you're offering Mint is a guarantee that you aren't going to churn for an entire year each time you renew along with an up-front payment so they don't have to worry about chasing down payments. I'd also note that the $15 annual plan is a 4GB plan. Normally, Mint charges $25/mo for that 4GB plan if you buy in a 3-month increment. It looks like Mint also doesn't include taxes and fees in their plans (See Taxes, Fees, and Surcharges https://www.mintmobile.com/plan-terms-and-conditions/ https://www.mintmobile.com/plan-terms-and-conditions/). Taxes and fees can easily become a large portion of one's bill. It looks like that 12-month 4GB plan will have a $14 recovery fee ($1.17/mo) plus 2.5% ($0.38/mo). On top of that, there's the Federal Universal Service Fee (~10%, ~$1.50/mo) and whatever state/local taxes and fees exist in your area (which are probably 10-15%, but might be above 20% if you live in a high-wireless-tax state like Illinois). So that $15 4GB plan is likely around $20/mo (a third higher). When you look at Mint's 12-month unlimited plan, it's $30/mo + taxes and fees - and it's not even unlimited! It's a 35GB plan! Plus, when you add in the taxes and fees, it's likely to cost over $38-40/mo. Heck, on the 3-month 4GB plan, you'd be paying $25/mo + $1.50/mo in recovery fees + 2.5% ($0.63/mo) + USF and state/local taxes and fees bringing the plan to around $32-33/mo for a 4GB plan. A big portion of your savings is that you're willing to pre-pay for a year. You can literally see that Mint values the 1-year advance payment as worth $10.58/mo to them (including the difference in recovery fees). So it's not just "Mint is $15 (really $20 with taxes/fees)." It's that pre-paid annual billing is probably worth $10-15/mo (given that I'm comparing a 3-month and 12-month plan and Mint's site doesn't seem to list 1-month plans). > shaking my head at those who are paying double or triple that rate on T-Mobile I think what a lot of people miss when thinking about plans is phone promos. If you don't want the latest phones, that's great and you shouldn't be on a plan offering phone promos. For example, let's say you want a new iPhone every 2 years. T-Mobile will give you $800 in credits when you trade in your device. The trade-in is likely worth $300 making the credits worth $500. Each month you'd be getting $20.83 in credits. Let's say you're on a family plan with 4 lines and paying $42.50/line. When you subtract out the phone promo, you're down to $21.67 which is almost the same price as the Mint plan once you factor in the taxes and fees that you're paying on Mint. Plus you don't have to pre-pay a year in advance. Plus you're getting unlimited data, 40GB of hotspot, a $15 Netflix credit, 5GB of high-speed data when traveling internationally, and more. Divide that $15 Netflix credit and it becomes $3.75/line dropping the price to $17.91/line and you're getting unlimited data instead of 4GB and a cheaper price. If you don't want fancy phones and don't want unlimited data, it might not be worth it to you. You can think of it as companies figuring out how to charge people the same money in different ways. Mint is giving you a very limited data bucket, adding taxes and fees onto the plan, and you have to buy your phone at full price. T-Mobile is offering phone promos and entertainment credits that can make the plan effectively cheaper than Mint while offering unlimited data and even international roaming. > In terms of why T-Mobile is making this purchase, I'm pretty sure it's to take out someone who was eating their lunch. It's highly unlikely that Mint was eating their lunch. It's more likely that T-Mobile wants a brand that can sell limited-data bundles to people like you who don't want to pay for an unlimited plan, pay for the overhead of stores, etc. The problem with your argument is that you're comparing apples and oranges. First, you discount how much you're paying by going with the nominal charge and ignoring taxes and fees. Then you ignore the fact that you're getting 4GB of data rather than unlimited data. If I compare Mint's "unlimited" plan (which is actually only a 35GB plan), it's suddenly the same price as offerings you can get from T-Mobile (on a family plan) or its Metro sub-brand (as an individual). If you price in phone promos, entertainment, etc. T-Mobile's offerings can be a lot cheaper. No, Mint isn't eating T-Mobile's lunch, but they have created a good following among people like yourself who aren't looking for an unlimited data bucket and want a low monthly fee and are willing to pay for a year in advance. If T-Mobile were concerned about Mint eating their lunch, they could just increase their MVNO fees. No, Mint has found a way to get people to pay for limited network access in advance which means a lot lower churn and a lot lower billing costs - Mint itself values annual billing at over $10/mo compared to quarterly billing! Mint's rates aren't really lower than T-Mobile's. You're just interested in saving money on a limited-data bulk-purchase product that T-Mobile doesn't sell (and doesn't want to clutter their current brands with).
ripvanwinkle 4y ago
Tmobile offers a 15$ prepaid plan too. They just don't promote it as much. I've been on it for about 3 years
- thayne 4y ago
  Their $15 has a little less data than the mint $15 plan, and has a hard cutoff instead of throttling if you exceed your data limit.

by jawns 4y ago

jrootabega 4y ago

Stating you don't plan to increase prices means you are planning to increase prices, but you want to surprise people with it so they don't have time to find an alternative before their next renewal. You also get to control the PR narrative so the news of the price increase is separate from the news of the acquisition, and can lie to the government review board and say that the acquisition won't hurt customers.

nonethewiser 4y ago

Same network but TMobile users get preferred access.

theGnuMe 4y ago
Yeah I was going to say it works great until it doesn't which I find is a lot of time as in more than 2x per day. I get throttled and it is basically nonfunctional. That and dropped calls.

notwhereyouare 4y ago

I tried to give mint a chance, but I would get throttled so frequently that it was unusable to me

samtho 4y ago

> I've always found it strange that an MVNO is able to operate on the T-Mobile network the entire time and undercut their rates so much that they become a threat. Think about it less as a network operating on T-Mobile's network and more of being a customer on T-Mobile's network. It's the same economics dictating wholesaling. The manufacturer or operator (in this case), can give a good deal to a customer with a lot of volume, does not have provide support, brick and mortar locations, or anything with customer server, just a high-level tech support for getting their systems integrated with the network. You touched on a point that reminds of what Amazon does: let independent sellers create or list (and therefore assume all risk of) new products and copy them under the basics brand and undercut the original seller(s).

jjtheblunt 4y ago

Visible is the same for Verizon (and I think owned by Verizon): you get much cheaper rates, but you're prioritized lower for data traffic. In a season vacation homes part of the country, where peak capacity is unused much of the year, it works out great.

tempsy 4y ago

The unlimited plan on Mint is $30 a month not $15, which is similar as a bunch of other prepaid plans eg Visible (Verizon's prepaid brand) which is $25/mo.

ravenstine 4y ago

Either that or they don't change the rate for Mint, at least for a while, and keep their own rates the same knowing that most T-Mobile customers either won't put in the effort to switch to Mint or be totally oblivious to the whole thing. And they now have greater control. For T-Mobile, they win no matter what. They can afford $1.5 billion.

morninglight 4y ago

The Verge reported "The acquisition could let T-Mobile claw back the customers it lost when it sold Boost Mobile". It is especially interesting that this acquisition is taking place at the same time Boost Mobile is experiencing a major technical problem. The problem has persisted for many weeks and has even forced them to shut down payment processing. During this period, their support team has been totally useless. In other words, Boost has a lot of very unhappy customers looking to jump ship and you can be sure that T-Mobile is aware of the situation..

jrmg 4y ago
It is astounding how bad Boost’s problems have been. Their customer service basically hasn’t been working for almost three weeks now.
selimthegrim 4y ago
Ting shares some of the same backend as well I believe.

selectodude 4y ago

>And shaking my head at those who are paying double or triple that rate on T-Mobile, even though Mint uses the same exact network. I tried every MVNO and find myself stuck on Verizon postpaid spending $90/mo because my phone actually works. If you live in a major city, throttling is the norm, not the exception, on these MVNOs.

noahtallen 4y ago
Mint was never a problem for me in both Portland and Seattle (downtown and about the city), except at massive sporting events
temp2022account 4y ago
Purely for the anecdata, I'm also in this group. Had Tracfone's $40/mo plan for a few years and then a cc change caused a missed payment. Within 8 hours my service was discontinued, which was a huge headache trying to 2-factor my way into my tracfone account to update cc details. In the end I decided to move to a verizon plan for twice as much but now I have unlimited data and a company that _sounds_ like it won't throw you around at the smallest paperwork hiccup.
- fortytw2 4y ago
  Also anecdotally in this group - switched from AT&T yearly prepaid (25$/m or so) to post-paid Verizon because it got worse and worse over the three years I had it. Throttling got significantly worse over time and had a number of support issues with the yearly setup.
- nebula8804 4y ago
  My nightmare story takes the cake. I tried to switch from Google Fi to "visible". I filled out the online signup, got mailed my sim card and when it came time to switch, their sign up website would just point me to a broken page. No problem right? I go to their support. It turns out the support is literally just a chat bot that you have to navigate correctly to finally get to a representative which is just a facebook messenger like window. (No phone support or address whatsoever). In the end they couldn't figure out why my transfer failed and why I was stuck in limbo. They said they would escalate to their "Technician" who never got back to me. Doing some research on Reddit I discovered that this is a common issue with that MVNO. So now here I was, never got onto visible while Google Fi is now informing me my service is about to be terminated because from their end I transfered out. Keep in mind this whole saga took many hours to get to this point. I decided at that point to get away from this MVNO as fast as I could. I call up Google and they said they are missing the pin and some details to initiate transfer back to Google. Visible says they dont have that data and to talk to google. I had no idea what to do and no one to ask for help so I decided to wait to see what would happen. Would I lose my number i've had for 15+ years? Turns out nope, Google Fi kept providing me service while keeping me in a perpetual state of "pending termination". I just stuck with them for the time being because I didn't want to deal with anymore headaches. Eventually I tried to sign up for T-Mobile proper and they managed to get the phone transfered. I've used multiple MVNOs (Ting, Tracfone,That Walmart MVNO,Mint,Xfinity mobile, visible and a few others). They all seem like they are gimped in some way whether it be delayed SMS, slow speeds, but now i've learned that another way they cut corners is with horrendous support and processes. As long as I can afford it, I will stay the hell away from these guys and I totally understand why so many others do as well.

pkulak 4y ago

> even though Mint uses the same exact network. It's the same network, but you get the capacity that's left over after everyone on T-Mobile has had their fill. Which is why I don't get why everyone is always so excited about these MVNOs. To me, it's like bragging about how cheap airfare is when you go standby: "It's the exact same planes!".

kaslai 4y ago
It's one of those things where if it works in your area, it works great. I've been on MVNOs for a decade now and the worst I've ever experienced was sometimes my data rate would drop to a couple mbps in crowded areas, but that's never been a material problem for me. I happily spend the $10-15/mo and get service that exceeds my needs. Sure it won't work for everyone in all cases, but you shouldn't discount MVNOs out of hand just because they are second class networks.
wtallis 4y ago
It's not hard to understand: many people simply don't need a high-speed unlimited data plan for their phones. Not everyone makes a habit of streaming video over their cellular connection.
- pkulak 4y ago
  Are we sure that no matter how de-prioritized you are, some data is always available, with reasonable latency? I was just at a large sports stadium last night, and I was able to message my wife to tell her I was on my way home while looking up the best bus to take. I remember that not being possible a few years ago, but I don't know if that's because networks in general have gotten better, or because I'm now paying quite a lot of money for Verizon post-paid. EDIT: Oh, and I totally forgot about tethering. That can be severely restricted on MVNOs. And, at least for me, I don't need it. Until I need it. Then I NEED it. haha
  - starkparker 4y ago
    Odd to mention how restricted tethering is on MVNOs, in the comments of a post about Mint Mobile, which included tethering in every plan.

xylo 4y ago

I was a Mint customer before I moved to T-Mobile. I had to move because Mint network got severely deprioritized and was unusable in public/crowded places. I still pay $15 to Tmobile but I don’t get deprioritized anymore.

fghsqwads 4y ago

I've also been on Mint for about 4 years. Didn't realize this until a couple of days ago when I looked at my billing info. It's been mostly good, but MVNOs do get throttled traffic in some situations. When I lived in the SF Bay Area, it was somewhat annoying to frequently get throttled on a crowded BART train or just while walking around downtown in the middle of the day. But for the most part, it worked fine, and I adjusted to make things work better for me (download offline music and podcasts for commutes, that sort of thing). It's a great option for people who are cheap and patient about internet data speeds.

rqtwteye 4y ago

"which I'm sure will result in rate increases, even though they say they have no immediate plans to do that." If they say they have no "immediate" plans, it means they have medium-term plans already worked out. Gotta hate corporate doublespeak.

mdasen 4y ago

I wouldn't say that it's really a threat. Part of what you're offering Mint is a guarantee that you aren't going to churn for an entire year each time you renew along with an up-front payment so they don't have to worry about chasing down payments. I'd also note that the $15 annual plan is a 4GB plan. Normally, Mint charges $25/mo for that 4GB plan if you buy in a 3-month increment. It looks like Mint also doesn't include taxes and fees in their plans (See Taxes, Fees, and Surcharges https://www.mintmobile.com/plan-terms-and-conditions/ https://www.mintmobile.com/plan-terms-and-conditions/). Taxes and fees can easily become a large portion of one's bill. It looks like that 12-month 4GB plan will have a $14 recovery fee ($1.17/mo) plus 2.5% ($0.38/mo). On top of that, there's the Federal Universal Service Fee (~10%, ~$1.50/mo) and whatever state/local taxes and fees exist in your area (which are probably 10-15%, but might be above 20% if you live in a high-wireless-tax state like Illinois). So that $15 4GB plan is likely around $20/mo (a third higher). When you look at Mint's 12-month unlimited plan, it's $30/mo + taxes and fees - and it's not even unlimited! It's a 35GB plan! Plus, when you add in the taxes and fees, it's likely to cost over $38-40/mo. Heck, on the 3-month 4GB plan, you'd be paying $25/mo + $1.50/mo in recovery fees + 2.5% ($0.63/mo) + USF and state/local taxes and fees bringing the plan to around $32-33/mo for a 4GB plan. A big portion of your savings is that you're willing to pre-pay for a year. You can literally see that Mint values the 1-year advance payment as worth $10.58/mo to them (including the difference in recovery fees). So it's not just "Mint is $15 (really $20 with taxes/fees)." It's that pre-paid annual billing is probably worth $10-15/mo (given that I'm comparing a 3-month and 12-month plan and Mint's site doesn't seem to list 1-month plans). > shaking my head at those who are paying double or triple that rate on T-Mobile I think what a lot of people miss when thinking about plans is phone promos. If you don't want the latest phones, that's great and you shouldn't be on a plan offering phone promos. For example, let's say you want a new iPhone every 2 years. T-Mobile will give you $800 in credits when you trade in your device. The trade-in is likely worth $300 making the credits worth $500. Each month you'd be getting $20.83 in credits. Let's say you're on a family plan with 4 lines and paying $42.50/line. When you subtract out the phone promo, you're down to $21.67 which is almost the same price as the Mint plan once you factor in the taxes and fees that you're paying on Mint. Plus you don't have to pre-pay a year in advance. Plus you're getting unlimited data, 40GB of hotspot, a $15 Netflix credit, 5GB of high-speed data when traveling internationally, and more. Divide that $15 Netflix credit and it becomes $3.75/line dropping the price to $17.91/line and you're getting unlimited data instead of 4GB and a cheaper price. If you don't want fancy phones and don't want unlimited data, it might not be worth it to you. You can think of it as companies figuring out how to charge people the same money in different ways. Mint is giving you a very limited data bucket, adding taxes and fees onto the plan, and you have to buy your phone at full price. T-Mobile is offering phone promos and entertainment credits that can make the plan effectively cheaper than Mint while offering unlimited data and even international roaming. > In terms of why T-Mobile is making this purchase, I'm pretty sure it's to take out someone who was eating their lunch. It's highly unlikely that Mint was eating their lunch. It's more likely that T-Mobile wants a brand that can sell limited-data bundles to people like you who don't want to pay for an unlimited plan, pay for the overhead of stores, etc. The problem with your argument is that you're comparing apples and oranges. First, you discount how much you're paying by going with the nominal charge and ignoring taxes and fees. Then you ignore the fact that you're getting 4GB of data rather than unlimited data. If I compare Mint's "unlimited" plan (which is actually only a 35GB plan), it's suddenly the same price as offerings you can get from T-Mobile (on a family plan) or its Metro sub-brand (as an individual). If you price in phone promos, entertainment, etc. T-Mobile's offerings can be a lot cheaper. No, Mint isn't eating T-Mobile's lunch, but they have created a good following among people like yourself who aren't looking for an unlimited data bucket and want a low monthly fee and are willing to pay for a year in advance. If T-Mobile were concerned about Mint eating their lunch, they could just increase their MVNO fees. No, Mint has found a way to get people to pay for limited network access in advance which means a lot lower churn and a lot lower billing costs - Mint itself values annual billing at over $10/mo compared to quarterly billing! Mint's rates aren't really lower than T-Mobile's. You're just interested in saving money on a limited-data bulk-purchase product that T-Mobile doesn't sell (and doesn't want to clutter their current brands with).

ripvanwinkle 4y ago

Tmobile offers a 15$ prepaid plan too. They just don't promote it as much. I've been on it for about 3 years

thayne 4y ago
Their $15 has a little less data than the mint $15 plan, and has a hard cutoff instead of throttling if you exceed your data limit.