Ting vs. Straight Talk – Ting Saved Me $138 Last Month

Last month my Ting cellular bill was very low considering I have 4 phones.  Here is how my last month’s bill broke down:

Ting Actual Bill (Nov 13 – Dec 12)

Combined Minutes   (medium):  $ 9.00
Combined Messages  (medium):  $ 5.00
Combined Megabytes (medium):  $ 3.00
4 Phone Devices:              $24.00
Usage Total:                  $41.00
Taxes and Fees:               $ 3.91
Total:                        $44.91

StraightTalk Hypothetical Bill

Android Device 1:             $ 45.00
Android Device 2:             $ 45.00
Android Device 3:             $ 45.00
Android Device 4:             $ 45.00
Usage Total:                  $180.00
Taxes and Fees:               $  3.91
Total:                        $183.91

Ting Saved Me $138 Last Month

If my four android devices were on StraightTalk each with their $45 unlimited plan instead of Ting it would have cost me at least $180.  I suspect that I have underestimated the taxes on the StraightTalk accounts because each account would have to pay the same taxes and fees.  I would have been able to use more minutes and more data and more text messages on StraightTalk but I didn’t.  Our actual usage was pretty  low because we are always on wifi as a family and we don’t talk on our cell phones that much.

How Did That Happen?

As I have explained in previous posts, we are heavy wifi users.  Our kids are young so their phones are mostly for emergencies or occasionally when they go over a friend’s house.  The kids use almost no minutes, messages or megabytes but both of their phones are active.  My wife is home on wifi a lot but she does text a lot.  She also uses her cell phone from time to time.   I’m home all the time so I use wifi for most things including voip calls over wifi.  I do text a lot – usually with my wife so that counts as 2 texts (me sending and her receiving).   We fit the perfect profile for a Ting user who saves a ton of money on cell usage.  We text plenty, don’t talk that much and don’t use much data (since we’re always on wifi).

Does That Mean That StraightTalk is A Bad Service?

No.  StraightTalk is a pretty good service (so I’ve heard).   For some people it is probably a better choice than Ting too!  If you use a lot of data or you talk on the phone a lot then it might save you money compared to Ting.  The other upside to StraightTalk is that you always know what your bill is going to be so you don’t have to worry about it being more than expected.  Heavy talkers or data users should consider StraightTalk.  Since my family doesn’t use much data or talk that much, we are better off with Ting.

Sign Up for Ting And Get a $25 Credit (I’ll get a $25 Credit Too)

If you find my blog posts about Ting helpful and are considering signing up for Ting, please consider using this link. If you use this link to sign up, we will both get a $25 credit in our Ting accounts (thanks!) https://zejffn1eh54.ting.com/

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Ting vs. Boost Mobile – Ting Saved Me $175 Last Month

Last month my Ting cellular bill was amazingly low considering I have 4 phones.  Here is how my last month’s bill broke down:

Ting Actual Bill (Oct 13 – Nov 12)

Combined Minutes   (medium):  $ 9.00
Combined Messages  (medium):  $ 5.00
Combined Megabytes (medium):  $ 3.00
4 Phone Devices:              $24.00
Usage Total:                  $41.00
Taxes and Fees:               $ 3.91
Total:                        $44.91

Boost Mobile Hypothetical Bill

Android Device 1:             $ 55.00
Android Device 2:             $ 55.00
Android Device 3:             $ 55.00
Android Device 4:             $ 55.00
Usage Total:                  $220.00
Taxes and Fees:               $  3.91
Total:                        $223.91

Ting Saved Me $175 Last Month

If my four android devices were on Boost Mobile with unlimited plans instead of Ting it would have cost me at least $223 (assuming none of my payments had shrunk yet).  It is true that I would have been able to use more minutes and more data and more text message on Boost.  This isn’t about what I could have done.  This is about what I actually did.  My actual usage was low because we are always on wifi as a family and we don’t talk on our cell phones that much.

How Did That Happen?

As I have explained in previous posts, we are heavy wifi users.  Our kids are young so their phones are mostly for emergencies or occasionally when they go over a friend’s house.  The kids use almost no minutes, messages or megabytes but both of their phones are active.  My wife is home on wifi a lot but she does text a lot.  She also uses her cell phone from time to time.   I’m home all the time so I use wifi for most things including voip calls over wifi.  I do text a lot – usually with my wife so that counts as 2 texts (me sending and her receiving).   We fit the perfect profile for a Ting user who saves a ton of money on cell usage.  We text plenty, don’t talk that much and don’t use much data (since we’re always on wifi).

Sign Up for Ting And Get a $25 Credit (I’ll get a $25 Credit Too)

If you find my blog posts about Ting helpful and are considering signing up for Ting, please consider using this link. If you use this link to sign up, we will both get a $25 credit in our Ting accounts (thanks!) https://zejffn1eh54.ting.com/

Ting vs. Virgin Mobile – Ting Saved Me $85 Last Month

I have recently blogged about Ting and Virgin Mobile and I have compared the two services.  To read more about the comparisons you can see the category here.

This post is about how much money I saved with Ting last month.

Ting Bill

Last month (from Sept. 13 – Oct 12, 2013) my Ting bill was:

Combined Minutes   (medium):  $ 9.00
Combined Messages  (medium):  $ 5.00
Combined Megabytes (medium):  $13.00
4 Phone Devices:              $23.80
Usage Total:                  $50.80
Taxes and Fees:               $ 3.91
Total:                        $54.71

Virgin Mobile (Hypothetical Bill)

My Virgin Mobile Bill would have been:

Beyond Talk phone 1:  $35 + taxes and fees
Beyond Talk phone 2:  $35 + taxes and fees
Beyond Talk phone 3:  $35 + taxes and fees
Beyond Talk phone 4:  $35 + taxes and fees
Total:                $140 + taxes and fees for 4 accounts

Ting Saved Me $85 Last Month

Not including the taxes and fees from Virgin Mobile, I saved at least $85 by switching to Ting.  Those taxes probably add up to another $12 so the real savings is probably closer to $97.

How Did That Happen?

As I have explained in previous posts, we are heavy wifi users.  Our kids are young so their phones are mostly for emergencies or occasionally when they go over a friend’s house.  The kids use almost no minutes, messages or megabytes but both of their phones are active.  My wife is home on wifi a lot but she does text a lot.  She also uses her cell phone from time to time.   I’m home all the time so I use wifi for most things including voip calls over wifi.  I do text a lot – usually with my wife so that counts as 2 texts (me sending and her receiving).   We fit the perfect profile for a Ting user who saves a ton of money on cell usage.  We text plenty, don’t talk that much and don’t use much data (since we’re always on wifi).

Sign Up for Ting And Get a $25 Credit (I’ll get a $25 Credit Too)

If you find my blog posts about Ting helpful and are considering signing up for Ting, please consider using this link. If you use this link to sign up, we will both get a $25 credit in our Ting accounts (thanks!) https://zejffn1eh54.ting.com/

M’s Glasses Saga

Two years ago, M got glasses (age 9).  He broke them within the year and they were replaced for free because they were under warranty.  He broke them again just after a year (age 10) and they were replaced again by Skyvision.  This time Skyvision told us they would cost $25 but that they were still under warranty.  They charged our insurance for frames and lenses to replace the glasses which was very shady after having told us they were still under warranty.  After many angry calls to Skyvision, they refunded the lenses but left the insurance charge for the frames because they were over a year old and not covered by the replacement warranty as they had claimed.

Unfortunately a month ago, M broke his glasses again (age 11).  This time I decided to vote with my wallet and take my business elsewhere since Skyvision tried to secretly charge our insurance company for glasses while claiming it was a free warranty replacement.

This time we went to Target.  M’s glasses were priced at $266.  Insurance covered certain lens charges but not the frames.  I had forgotten about what was covered and what was not covered so I put the glasses on hold and called the insurance company.  They reminded me that the frames would not be covered this year because they had already covered frames earlier in the year.  I was not happy with the price so I decided to shop around.

Finally we went to Walmart to price out glasses.  Wow, what a huge price difference!  At Walmart, the same types of frames with the sames type of poly-thin lenses cost me $103 before any insurance reimbursement.  After the out of network reimbursement it will cost just $75.  How do places like Skyvision and Target stay in business selling glasses when Walmart can offer them for so much less?  I’m not always a fan of Walmart but in this case it was an easy decision.

Busy Summer

I haven’t blogged in a while but I was just reflecting on how busy our summer was so I decided to write a quick blog post.  I had a trip to Raleigh, NC for work.  The kids had two different basketball camps, each a week long.  We took half week to go to a local water-park resort as a family trip.  As usual we had a bunch of summer birthdays to celebrate and we had some family come to town to visit.

The weather was hot.  It got hot early and stayed hot all summer long.  Unfortunately that meant that the kids spent most of their free time inside.  I took advantage by giving them summer writing assignments because both of them could use some work on their writing.  They improved a bit and mostly got over the pain of writing which was the biggest gain from my point of view.  Hopefully now when their teachers give them writing assignments they won’t worry about it as much.

School started up last week for the kids and school will start next week for my wife.  Pretty soon I’ll be sitting in my home office in a quiet house all day.

AT&T Uverse Billing Problems

I’m starting to think it is me.  Maybe I’m the only person in the world that checks their bills.  Maybe I’m unlucky and companies always magically over bill me.  Either way, I’m caught in the same cycle of incorrect billing again with AT&T Uverse.  They gave me a promo code last Sept for a free on-demand movie.  I used it.  They charged me for the movie.  I called and got the credit fixed.  They offered me a free upgrade for 12 months to their fastest internet with no strings attached.  Since then, they have over-billed me every month – 6 months in a row.  Every month I call and they credit the difference and then we move on to another month.  This time, the customer service representative I spoke with told me that I had been over credited so I would continue to be over billed until the system worked it out. Also, my bill would never show the proper credits but that was OK because they were billing me correctly.  Wow!  My head almost exploded.  I got disconnected as I was about to freak out but when I called back I was immediately directed to the customer retention department.  That is where they send people who are canceling their service.  I was not going to cancel but luckily the retention department rep actually looked at my account and saw how screwed up the billing was.  They worked backwards and figured out the credits I still was owed.  They downgraded my internet back to what I originally had because the system was incapable of billing me correctly.  They told me the CSR I spoke with was lying about the over credit or the bill never showing credits.  So, I’m going on month 7.. will my bill be correct this time?  I’m pretty skeptical.

Addonics NAS 3.0 Adapter Review

Well, I had high hopes for this little thing.  It seems easy enough – connect you USB drive to the NAS 3.0; connect the NAS 3.0 to your router; tada you now have a network drive that you can reach from all your networked computers.   Well, it didn’t go that well for me.  I connected my NTFS formatted 1TB Fantom drive to the USB port on the NAS 3.0 adapater.  I could reach the web interface and see that it said ‘No drive found’.  Disconnect, reconnect, same thing.  I tried my FAT32 formatted 350GB  external drive.  Same thing.  I tried my 1GB USB memory stick.  Same thing.  Then I tried connecting my drives to the printer port.   All of them worked.  Unfortunately when you connect a drive to the printer port it only allows read-only access to the drive.  Fail!

I called tech support and was routed around several times before leaving a message.  I kept calling and eventually reached a person.  He diagnosed it as defective and transferred me to sales.

At this point my options were to cross ship a new product meaning they would charge me for a second product and then refund me once I shipped mine back OR return the item and have them ship me a new one OR return the item and give up.  I gave up.

Some observations:

• The UI is easy to use and basically intuitive
• The device is very small and comes with a network cable and power cable
• The drive access just worked fine when in read-only printer port mode
• The instructions that come with the device are pretty good
• The company is very small (~17 people).  Usually this means great service like – oh, sorry it doesn’t work we’ll ship you a new one asap and you can discard the defective one we just sent you.  Instead they wanted to charge me for a 2nd one or have me wait for my return to go through before sending me a new one
• The reviews of the 2.0 were sketchy.  Most sites don’t even have reviews of the 3.0.  That should have tipped me off to potential quality issues.
• I hope my product was just defective and that most of the NAS 3.0 adapters they sell work.  I would like little companies like this to succeed selling a useful product.
• This is the 2nd NAS adapter type device I’ve tried.  Someone please make a non-crappy NAS adapter – there is a market for one!!  I know because I keep wasting money returning products that don’t work.

Verbatim MediaShare Home Network Storage Server NAS server – 1 TB Review

I read the reviews that say this thing has a bad UI but wow that really isn’t saying enough.  For me, I could not get almost anything to work.  It turned on and I could get to the completely pathetic and clumsy UI but:

• I could not get the printer to work in anything other than Normal mode.  I have a HP 5610 all in one.  I only cared about getting the printing to work.  It did work but not in Fast Draft mode – despite the half hour I spent trying to make it use Fast Draft
• I could not get it to show my connected external hard drive (all 3 that I tried)
• The UI blows.  It is stunningly bad – non-intuitive, confusion, ugly
• There is absolutely no documentation at all for this product.  It doesn’t come with any and as far as I could tell there isn’t any on the makers site.  Fail!
• Returned to Amazon for a refund within 1 day

Android Phone

I am trying out the WordPress app on my android phone to see how it works.  It works pretty good.  Now I can blog from my phone which is cool – not sure how much I’ll use it because typing on a phone isn’t nearly as fast as typing on a keyboard.

So far I’m pretty happy with my LG Optimus V from Virgin Mobile.  The phone was $150 and the accessories added another $50.  I like that I can keep up with my personal email and business email from the phone and Facebook is nice too.  Blogging is just a small plus.

My only real gripe so far with the phone is the battery life.  I’ve been trying out apps like JuiceDefender and GreenPower and I do notice an improvement in battery life.

The only thing that seems strange to me is that you don’t exit apps.. you just back out of them and then they seem to keep running so you have to run some other software to kill running apps – strange.

Update:   The LG Optimus V with Virgin Mobile has major problems with 3G not working.  Unfortunately, it is not being resolved in a timely manner by Virgin Mobile.

You can follow my progress (and pain) in this category: https://montykamath.wordpress.com/category/optimusvsucks/

Small savings add up

I recently made some changes that should some money over the current year:

• Downgraded my VPS hosting plan at VPSLand.com to the starter package since I wasn’t using the extra memory or disk space (saved $6/mo)
• Dropped Callcentric softphone as our business voicemail even though their service was good.  Instead switched to googlevoice since this line is almost never used (saved $2/mo)
• Swithed from Time Warner Cable to AT&T Uverse.  (saved $40/mo over this yr)
• Switched from paper to electronic statements for amex and wells fargo merchant accounts (saved $12.50/mo)

It is  a continuous effort but so far I’m pretty happy with the savings.