this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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Thanks for not saying "look it up". We can't seem to keep anything nice. We were just about to leave for Mint. Do you like it?
I have mint: The connection sucks, you get deprioritized against other traffic so bandwidth is usually garbage. It's fine if you just need text and phone calls though.
Is that what’s going on? So often since I switched to Mint I’ll have full bars and can’t do anything online.
Anything that is not AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile will most always rely on one of these three and their towers. Which means you will be deprioritized for their customers. There are some smaller companies that have their own towers but they are few and far between and cover a very small area. Google Fi for example, uses the T-Mobile network and a smaller network that only covers a small patch in the Midwest somewhere.
That's every third party lease phone service and the difference between paying for a company that owns their own towers or network like Verizon, t mobile, and at&t, compared to any of the ones like mint who just use the towers that any of the above carriers own. If you use anything like Mint, you get bumped to the bottom of the bandwidth availability.
Otherwise why would anyone pay more for the same service?
I have mint too and haven't had much trouble with bandwidth. But to be fair I don't use my phone for very much while not on wifi, mostly just streaming music and Google maps.
I think this experience might be region-dependant. I'm in a major city on Mint and I routinely see 900Mbps+ down and never have any issues with streaming. I think the lowest speed test I ever saw was around 200Mbps.
In my city 90% of the time it's perfectly fine. Then there are a few dead spots in the t mobile network that are really frustrating and I'm usually in those spots once a week.
Then I visited some family in Colorado and it was awful and my phone was essentially useless without Wi-Fi. T mobiles network is very hit or miss but no way am I paying $70 / month or whether the going rate for Verizon, etc.
I was worried about that since they buy access to towers, thank you for sharing your experience. Are able to see when that happens in a concrete way, or is more just the noticable lag?
I switched from T-Mobile to mint not long ago and only two things changed, how much and who I pay, but like he said they'll come for us soon enough now that they bought mint.
That's how it feels
Mint got sold when Ryan Reynolds needed more money to buy that soccer team
Ha, good point! They had to replace the entire pitch, twice!
Mints fine in my experience, but my time is almost up (december) and have been using them since 2018. Im considering moving onto US Mobile which offers better plans (and option of which towers you want to use, they offer tmobile or verison, so pick based on phone specs/area) or a Google fi family plan
Thx, I'll look into it, see if it's my area
If Verizon is good where you are look at us mobile. “Warp 5g” is Verizon. The gsm carrier they offer is T-Mobile. There’s also visible but they’re owned by Verizon.
I also have Mint - it’s fine. I pay $66 for 3 months at a time of 15gb data per month. It’s a little annoying you have to buy in 3 month increments using the family plan discount, but still way better than the 2 year contracts of most providers. My service experience has been alright - every once in while it’ll be slow on me but that’s pretty rare. I’d cautiously recommend it if you’re looking to switch. Worst case scenario you’re only out a few dollars if you don’t buy the year long plan.
I got in on a $45 for three months, unlimited everything. So far so good in LA, but I definitely get the “full bars but where’s my bandwidth?” at least once a day. They’ll put me on an unlimited everything for $120/3mos and I’m not sure I’d be happy with the slowdowns at that price.
tbf that "When did they buy Mint?" could just have easily been typed as a search query
You're right, I wrote it out, hit send them thought to myself, I should've googled that. But, it was in the ether already, and we're trying to build a bigger community through interactions. So it was a win-win as I see it. Plus it got us talking, too.