As a community service, I wanted to let even the people on home.repair know more about MintMobile. And of course I'm also posting to comp.mobile.android, where I've learned a lot about cellphones.
1) MintMobile doesn't have monthly billing. They have 3 months, 6 months, and yearly, and it's a cheaper the longer in advance you pay, a lot more than the amount you lose on interest in the bank, even when interest rates were higher.My year is expiring in 5 days and they sent me a reminder, AND they added that since I use so little data, I might want to get the cheaper plan. Not many vendors of anything do that.
I'm paying $240 a year and the cheapest plan, that they are suggesting is $180. When I signed up 2 years ago, less data was included in my plan, but last January or so they increased the data for maybe every plan so that now the cheaper plan has almost as much data as mine first did.
2) Of course, my password for their webpage didn't work, even though I never changed it. This happens with a lot of webpages. They're changing it without asking me, right, to increase "security"??What I do then is follow their procedure but change it to whatever it had been, so I don't have to update my notes.
But look at their ridiculous rules: "Please enter a password at least 8 characters long, containing at least 1 uppercase letter, 1 lowercase letter, 1 number, and 1 special character."
And they live up to their own standards. This was the ridiculous temporary password: g_*tgsBV7*
3) they also have Wifi Talk and Text, which they promote for places with bad cellular service, but maybe you can use it anywhere there is wifi and thus not use up your data. Is that right? They don't say a word about whether it is free or not. Is it typically free? And it's only for some models of phone. I don't see how they can keep their list current. And I don't see on my phone how to turn it on. Maybe that means I haven't got it?4) Another interesting thing about them: I was trying to make whatsapp calls to two foreign countries, one where my nephew is living, and afaict, you can't use whatsapp unless you've already put the number in your contact list. I hadn't done that and I'm 99% sure that some of the
5 calls I ended up just dialing. (They wouldn't be listed as calls at all if I'd used Whatsapp, right?) I wondered who paid for them, and by golly their webpage has a list.I made 3 calls totaling 9 minutes at 2.5c a minute to one, and 2 calls totaling 3 minutes at 1.5c a minute, and yet they charged me 0.00 for each of them. Huh? I thought they had no way to charge me until I was reminded today they have a Wallet where you deposit $5, 10 in advance to pay for extra data AND international phone calls. But I've never put any money in. So maybe they gave me the calls for free anyhow, only 27 cents' worth, but I would have expected a text or email saying that, and urging me to put money in the Wallet. Or insisting for next time.
But I'd be glad to pay. The rates are certainly low enough.
On the yearly plan I'm on there is a $17.75 Recovery Fee and 3.46 per year in fed, state, and local taxes**. I guess it's worth $18 to recover from that prostate procedure I had. Or what is the Recovery Fee? It went up in 2019 from $10.25 in 2018. The taxes went up from $2.68.
**I read 18 months ago that the Baltimore County budget was suggesting a $3.50/month tax on cell phones, and I wondered how they would find me to tax me. But maybe they will. Maybe they have, unless 3.46 is just a federal tax**. The proposal is per phone line, so if you have a spouse and two children, that's $168/year. So some say people would be taxed for having more kids. (Really, if the service only is 20/month, $3.50 is a 17% tax. This might have not been regressive when only rich people had cell phones but now there are iiac more cellphones than real phones.) OTOH, Baltimore County has lost $5 million a year in taxes on landlines. OT3H, with 800,000 people and what, at least 400,000 cell phones, at $3.50, they'd take in over 12 million. Wait, my estimate is way low: it says 700,00 cell phones and 83,000 prepaid phones would yield $30 million. 783,000 cell phones for a litle more than 800,000 people. Even if they use different standards for who lives in Balt. County, that's amazing.)**I read that in 2013, the fed tax was 5.8%. That alone would be $16 in tax but mine is only $3.46. So is the $16 tax embedded in the 240 charge, or whose tax is $3.46? Maybe no one's, they're just keeping it?