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>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

>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.
  - kevinkeller 4y ago
    What made you switch from Google Fi?
    - nebula8804 4y ago
      I found myself using up a lot of data every other month or so. Price kinda got really high. Other than that its a alright service.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
vel0city 4y ago
I've used Mint a good bit in 5 of the top 15 cities in the US population-wise. Other than some events like sporting events or concerts its been acceptable for my needs. Honestly its the smaller towns way out there that usually means I get absolutely no service while a larger network like AT&T or Verizon would give acceptable performance. And yeah, its "throttled". Doing a speed test right now on a Pixel 6a with good 5G signal I'm only getting 11Mbit down/21Mbit up while I'm sure the same phone on T-Mo proper would be getting >50Mbit, probably 100Mbit easy. But for my needs, that doesn't really matter. I'm not trying to stream a non-transcoded Blu-Ray rip from my NAS to my phone while I'm out and about and without WiFi. Usually if I'm without WiFi its because I'm out doing something, and I'm just wanting to look up something on an app like Google Maps or stream music or look up which aisle some product is supposed to be or get an email/IM or something along those lines. Which, 10Mbit is plenty for all of those needs. Obviously everyone's usage is going to be different. Some people practically live their digital life entirely relying on their cellular connection and are rarely around WiFi, and its worth it for them to pay more for more performance. Different carriers have different amount of coverage and customers in different parts of even the same city. But for a lot of people like me, I'd practically get no difference in my normal experiences whether I paid $15 or $80 in my usage even if that meant my speeds on the go went from 10Mbit to 1000Mbit, except for my bank account being $780 lighter at the end of the year.
- selectodude 4y ago
  Ah, in places like New York/Chicago/Los Angeles/Miami it wasn't "slow", it was 5 bars of service and zero network access.
rockostrich 4y ago
I have Mint and live in a major city and have never had any noticeable issues. If you're talking about power users, i.e. people using their phones constantly on network to do a wide range of network intensive things like watching videos, then sure it makes sense to not use a MVNO. If you're the average person that spends 90% of their time on wifi and uses their network data occasionally when not at the home or office then MVNOs are a godsend.

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.
- kevinkeller 4y ago
  What made you switch from Google Fi?
  - nebula8804 4y ago
    I found myself using up a lot of data every other month or so. Price kinda got really high. Other than that its a alright service.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

vel0city 4y ago

I've used Mint a good bit in 5 of the top 15 cities in the US population-wise. Other than some events like sporting events or concerts its been acceptable for my needs. Honestly its the smaller towns way out there that usually means I get absolutely no service while a larger network like AT&T or Verizon would give acceptable performance. And yeah, its "throttled". Doing a speed test right now on a Pixel 6a with good 5G signal I'm only getting 11Mbit down/21Mbit up while I'm sure the same phone on T-Mo proper would be getting >50Mbit, probably 100Mbit easy. But for my needs, that doesn't really matter. I'm not trying to stream a non-transcoded Blu-Ray rip from my NAS to my phone while I'm out and about and without WiFi. Usually if I'm without WiFi its because I'm out doing something, and I'm just wanting to look up something on an app like Google Maps or stream music or look up which aisle some product is supposed to be or get an email/IM or something along those lines. Which, 10Mbit is plenty for all of those needs. Obviously everyone's usage is going to be different. Some people practically live their digital life entirely relying on their cellular connection and are rarely around WiFi, and its worth it for them to pay more for more performance. Different carriers have different amount of coverage and customers in different parts of even the same city. But for a lot of people like me, I'd practically get no difference in my normal experiences whether I paid $15 or $80 in my usage even if that meant my speeds on the go went from 10Mbit to 1000Mbit, except for my bank account being $780 lighter at the end of the year.

selectodude 4y ago
Ah, in places like New York/Chicago/Los Angeles/Miami it wasn't "slow", it was 5 bars of service and zero network access.

rockostrich 4y ago

I have Mint and live in a major city and have never had any noticeable issues. If you're talking about power users, i.e. people using their phones constantly on network to do a wide range of network intensive things like watching videos, then sure it makes sense to not use a MVNO. If you're the average person that spends 90% of their time on wifi and uses their network data occasionally when not at the home or office then MVNOs are a godsend.