Buyer beware on Ting

[LighthammerX]

I've actually been meaning to make an account on this forum for some time. I've been following LTT for about 4 years or so now and have often found some really great products through you guys (Synergy, PIA and Privacy.com are among the two best ones I've jumped into, thanks to LTT's recommendations).

I finally am jumping on the forums because of Ting, however. It was another service I heard through LTT and seemed to fit many of the things I wanted.

- I live in a town with city wide WIFI.
- My apartment complex has campus wide WIFI.
- I get WIFI through Xfinity (while I'm not a fan of Comcast's practices, I have to admit this is fantastic boon).
- Any place I'm at for work generally has great WIFI.

I only need a cellular provide to fill in the gaps of places I'm at that doesn't have WIFI, typically on the road.

Ting seemed like a good fit for my needs. I only get 2g in my city despite TMO having HPSE towers everywhere; but c'est la vie --- I only need gap coverage and 2g is fine just for those instances where I need to send texts via Google Voice or get map coordinates. I could easily live with the 2g coverage for that use case.

However, all my problems with Ting have had literally nothing to do with the coverage they told me upfront I was going to get. While coverage is spottier at best then they told me I was going to get (and I'm in the third largest city in my state), that's still really not what grievances with Ting has been --- not at all.

The problem(s) I'm having with Ting is mostly on the engineering side of their SIMs. 

The first SIM I got looked like the exact sim I needed, not just due to size, but the specifications included with it looked correct too. Low and behold, it didn't work. I couldn't register it, my phone didn't recognize it and really, after a fashion, the sim card and punchout looked like some sort of tech demo. I really didn't think much of it as I figured "Hey, they're new; they are probably still working through unbranded stock". Upon contacting Ting, they informed me that it was "the wrong sim", but after hearing that and piecing together everything, I realized the sim probably was never flashed. Since it was 'their fault', they stated they'd send me another free sim to make up for it.

What I got in the mail was a much nicer branded SIM but they also provided me two --- one for a GSM and one that was "branded" CDMA. TBH, I've never heard of a CDMA phone using a SIM, but I shrugged my shoulders and figured "Hmmm, maybe their advances/normalizations where CDMA started using SIMs", so I didn't think much of it.

This set of sims, however, were ABSOLUTELY terrible. They were milled incorrectly so that when you punched the sim out down to the Micro Sim my phone used, the sim itself was too big by about 1-2 cm. Trying to "push the sim in" resulted in the edge of it breaking off in the sim tray. I had to pull out my tools and attempt to fish out the little pieces that were lodged in the sim tray. 

I promptly got on the phone and complained to Ting about this and they said "Go to Best Buys and get another Sim --- we'll give you $30 credit for it". I didn't realize at the time, but this was simply their normal activation promo.

I got the sim up and running only to find out that some of the pieces that broke off int he sim tray damaged and/or bent the pins to my SDCard. I've screwed around with it for hours and did everything short of taking the phone completely apart to try to fix it. I'm a product software UI designer and I really DONT have time to pull the phone apart to do this kind of surgery to fix the sim tray despite having the physical capability to do so. I decided to check with some local shops what they'd charge for this repair. Every single one quoted higher then the value of the phone. For the record, I'm using a Note3 as my daily driver and haven't seen ample reason to upgrade beyond that. As LTT has done a good job illustrating, there's nothing so much better on the market that's worth the money to upgrade --- especially in exchange for losing a swappable battery.

When I explained this to Ting, they just shrugged their shoulders and offered me a $6 credit despite their defective product causing over $100 in repair costs.

I've experienced some really asinine things in my years over technology. While I can't remotely claim this takes the cake, this is certainly one of the worst customer experiences I've ever had.

I'm kind of beyond words at how bad this entire experience has been with them. It's wasted more time then benefit I've gotten out of it.

I hope LTT Media Group takes this example to Ting and makes some serious consideration weather to keep them as a sponsor or not. I always feel like LTT keeps a very high standard for products they advertise and have been almost taken back at how much better products they are advertising do compared to my current array of tools. Because of LTT I:

- Switched from Avast Secure line to PIA
- Switched from VNC as my remote access tool to Synergy while working with computers around me (Yes, I realize VNC is kind of jenky for that use case).
- Finally found a good service to do what I've been trying to do with online payments through Privacy.com

But Ting, man --- what a disappointment.

[TetraSky]

2 hours ago, LighthammerX said:

the sim itself was too big by about 1-2 cm.

I think you mean mm here. 1 cm is 10mm, which is like 2/5 of an inch.

 

In any case, sure sounds rough that they made many mistakes like that, which ultimately resulted in you damaging your phone.

 

But the damage to your phone can't truly be solely put on Ting's shoulders. If it doesn't fit... don't force it. Why didn't you try simply cutting it down to size yourself with an exacto knife or something instead of forcefully shoving it in there?

 

I can't say much about Ting, other than I once wished they'd come to Canada... But we now have a few low cost phone services here from the likes of Lucky Mobile, Public Mobile or Chatr with plans that have data for as low as 15$ and unlimited texting.

[ZXR]

What phone are you using? This seems very strange to me.

[LighthammerX]

2 hours ago, Zeddex said:

What phone are you using? This seems very strange to me.

As I mentioned (but, fairly didn't highlight), I'm using a Galaxy Note 3. It uses the Micro Sim.

The punch card in question had punches for Standard (original) Sims, Micro Sims and Nano Sims.

Basically, it seems like the cards were off center when they were milled/punched.

 

2 hours ago, TetraSky said:

I think you mean mm here. 1 cm is 10mm, which is like 2/5 of an inch.

 

Perhaps you're right, I was trying to think how far off it was. Being a stupid American, we still use English here, of course.

My main point I was trying to make that it was off by a small amount, but enough to be problematic.

[dizmo]

I can see why you'd be frustrated about the SIMs not being that great, but really, the damage done to your phone is totally on you. You shouldn't have tried to force it, and you should have made sure that it fit properly before forcing it into the phone. This issue is not the company's fault at all.

[Drak3]

5 hours ago, LighthammerX said:

I've never heard of a CDMA phone using a SIM,

Any SIM phone on Verizon and Sprint uses CDMA.

 

But the part about breaking the phone's SIM tray by forcing a SIM that's too large is on you, especially if it was a centimeter too big. Are you sure that they sent you the correct SIM size? There's standard SIM, MicroSIM, and NanoSIM.

[LighthammerX]

17 hours ago, Drak3 said:

But the part about breaking the phone's SIM tray by forcing a SIM that's too large is on you, especially if it was a centimeter too big. Are you sure that they sent you the correct SIM size? There's standard SIM, MicroSIM, and NanoSIM.

To be absolutely clear, I'm an Android App Developer and have a fantastic understanding of phone hardware. I used to be able to disassemble a Galaxy S2 - S6 in a few minutes. I could easily muddle through disassembling my current phone, especially with the incredible resources available today.

Also, to be clear, the portion that broke off in the phone is the plastic in the punchdown board. That broke off from trying to firmly insert the sim in CORRECTLY, not from forcing it, jamming it in or some other ill conceived, stupid maneuver. 

I am just about as far away from novice on these issues as I could possibly be. That's why I felt it was important to bring this issue up here.