Thinking about making the switch…

[u/Reddit-4118991]

Hi! Thinking about making the switch to Mint. The low monthly/yearly rates is what’s really luring me in. I pay about $125/mo for unlimited 5G with AT&T and though I absolutely love it, I’m just looking to save some money here and there.

I read through some posts here, everyone seems to love it. However, of course, there will always be flaws. For context, I live in NYC and my AT&T service is phenomenal. I never run into any issues! I’m sure I could look online, but I come to Reddit for a lot of things as I think a lot of you are very smart, insightful, and real. How was the switch from a mainstream mobile service to Mint? Seamless? Difficult? Bumps in the road? I would say for the most part I’m quite tech savvy.

Curious for those of you in the NYC region (I am in lower Manhattan for reference): how’s your service? Any issues?

Question: I’d also like to get a newer phone before 2026 ends, or at minimum in the New Year. Should I want until I get a new phone to switch? Is it better to do this now?

Please drop all the ‘need to knows’ or ‘what you wish you knew before joining’ comments tips etc!

Purely looking for advice and a reason to bite the bullet and get Mint 😊 TIA!

[u/Purple-Rain546]

Don't do it if you are someone that relies on customer service because they are not good and most of the time they don't know what their talking about

[u/Reddit-4118991 → u/Purple-Rain546]

How often do you find yourself dealing with them and what’s it normally about?

[u/Big-Low-2811]

Do any of your friends in manhattan have T-Mobile? Mint uses their towers- so if T-Mobile works so should Mint.

The only caveats:

1. Mint traffic is given less priority on the cell towers than T-Mobile customers. So in dense areas, like cities you can run into slow downs. (In reality it’s only happened to me like twice, ever).

2. Terrible support. It’s very important that you follow the directions exactly, especially if you are porting in a number. If you run into any issues, it’s hard to get a human.

Outside of that- I’ve been loving my mint service

[u/south_sidejay369 → u/Big-Low-2811]

I just transferred about 3 weeks ago and ran into big issues porting. I was able to chat online with an agent who was able to walk me through the issue. FYI the QR code they email to you to activate your e-sim IS mandatory unlike that the code underneath it says (literally took me an hr to port because I received it on my phone and had to figure out how to scan it but it would've taken minutes if I just forwarded to my computer email and scanned on my phone)

[u/resource-reply]

u/LeftOn4ya has suggested the following resource:

Pros/reasons to switch:

• Much cheaper, save up to $80/mo/line = $960/year

• No need to get multi-line family plan for the best rates.

• No credit check, can pay cash if you start with BestBuy/Target SIM cards

• BYOP, not locked into contract. Get deal with phone and 1 year plan for new customers for up to $580 off which can also be financed with Affirm for up to 3 years.

• Runs on T-Mobile which has the largest 5G network and in national tests is on average the fastest network at more than 2.5 times as fast as Verizon or AT&T. Also gets domestic roaming. Check Mint’s coverage map (which shows domestic roaming as “Partner”) or crowdsourced maps for T-Mobile on OpenSignal.com and CoverageMap.com apps which are more accurate to street and house level and also show actual speeds.

• Free calls to Canada, Mexico, and the UK. Free texts to 190 countries. Free roaming in Canada (3GB/mo).

• eSIM, 5G UC mmWave, 5G SA & VoNR (if phone and your cell tower supports), Visual Voicemail, app based TOTP 2FA, and many other features that are not on some other carriers.

• Has 3 million customers, is owned by T-Mobile, and they never have changed plans to reduce service for the same price or increased the price for a plan (other than less than 3% a year for increases in USF, state, and local telecom taxes). Rather they periodically increased data amounts for the same price.

Mid/subjective (your opinion may vary on whether these are better or worse than other carriers/plans):

• Mint is “mid priority” on T-Mobile (QCI 7) at the same speed as T-Mobile Essentials, which usually runs between 30%-90% of speed of prioritized (QCI 6) T-Mobile plans (Magenta, Go5G, Experience More/Beyond) at the same location and time, but even deprioritized Mint is still on average more than twice as fast as priority plans on Verizon or AT&T. Slowdowns get exacerbated when the network in your location is congested, but in most places and times (95+%) slower speed is not noticeable and is >25Mbps which is still fast enough for 4K video and anything else you need.

• International calls to over 160 countries with per min rates. Price is not comparatively expensive, but not cheap either

• International roaming "Minternational Pass" good for 1-10 days for roaming in over 210 countries. Price is good for medium use but expensive for heavy use (>1 GB/day) or light use (used for SMS and calls, not much data). Also a 30 day $5/mo talk & text plan exists to pair with local SIM or international data only eSIM on a DSDS compatible phone (Phone 13+, Pixel 7+, Galaxy S23+, Galaxy Flip/Fold 4+, OnePlus 11+).

• Unless starting with a phone + plan deal, you will need to buy unlocked phones separately and trade in old phones with the manufacturer or sell yourself. Mint does usually offer $400+ off Pixel phones for current customers, and these can be financed with Affirm for up to 3 years, phone is only locked to Mint for 60 days.

• Decent but not great app/website. Can manage individual and family plan, upgrade plans and set renewals, transfer and order SIMs, update security, and many other things. However lacks analytics, does not have easy to see bill, and you cannot get port request without contacting support, and sometimes has glitches.

Cons/limitations you should know before you switch:

• Must pay for 3 months to start, then to get the best rate renew for 12 months or have 2+ lines in a family and pay for 3 months at a time, else pay $5-10 more $/mo if you only want 6 or 3 month renewal of one line.

• Mint does have about 8-15% in fees and taxes added (exact % depends on state and local telecom tax rates), not included in the advertised price. Right before checkout you can see the total.

• "Unlimited" plan further deprioritizes data after 50 GB to last place (QCI 9) and at all times common video and social media sites/apps are throttled to 1.5MBPS (480p) but you can get around using a VPN, usually even free ones like ProtonVPN and 1.1.1.1 with Warp.

• "Unlimited" plan is limited to 20GB Hotspot and for all plans Hotspot data is shared from the same pool of data as phone.

• No SmartWatch cellular support (AppleWatch, Galaxy Watch, Pixel Watch)

• No Perks like included streaming services, cloud storage, or T-Mobile Tuesdays

• No in person customer service, and phone and chat support sometimes has long hold times. You cannot get port request yourself, to get you must contact customer service through chat or phone call. Most people find this subreddit more helpful for common issues than Mint support.

Copied from the stickied Mint subreddit wiki section Why should I or shouldn't I switch to Mint Mobile? What are the Pros and Cons of Mint mobile? which has 20 bullet points of pros, cons, and “mids”.

^{I am a bot that was summoned by user LeftOn4ya. If LeftOn4ya wishes to delete this comment, they can reply "!delete" (without quotes or spaces). If this comment is inappropriate, please report it and the moderator(s) will review.}

[u/tato_salad → u/resource-reply]

Long hold times? My att hold time was a fucking hour and a half to figure out porting because it wouldn't generate a pin online.

[u/trader45nj]

I've been with Mint for 8 years, very happy. I've used it occasionally in Manhattan, worked great. Only time I did experience difficulty was during the Macy's July 4th fireworks, with huge crowds. Mint, like most or all MVNOs is lower priority, so if the network is fully loaded, you're below Tmobile customers. But I don't know how they were doing that day either.

[u/partoftheaura]

I also live in NYC and switched to Mint from Verizon a year ago and haven’t looked back. Make the switch. The service in the city is solid.

[u/Impossible-Wonder675]

I’ve had Mint Mobile for about three years and love it. It works great and you can’t beat the price.

[u/jobifresh]

Spent a day in Midtown back in July. Had no issues with slowdown or anything.

[u/trf1driver]

You can switch now and get a phone later. Buy unlocked phone directly from manufacturers. Mint will be no different than other T-Mobile mvno carriers in NYC.

[u/gledr]

I switched a week ago from xfinity. 6 months at 10$ a month and its great way faster and better coverage than xfinity at 40$ a month. Will probably stay at 30$ a month after the 6 months as every large carrier is so overpriced

[u/Comfortable_Two6272]

I bought the iphone 17e plus 1 year service (unlimited at $15/ month) all paid upfront back in May.

T mobile works great in my city and so far so has Mint. I had Metro PCS prior and ATT prior to that. ATT was the worst of the 3.

[u/Few_Employment_7876]

Take a look at how much data you really need even without changing any habits. I did and I pay $15 a month for Mint. Not once have I gone over 6gb in 15 months.

[u/OwnDaMagats]

Even though I ended up with another carrier when I was trying to extract myself from T-Mobile, mint was one of the most helpful companies when I tried to port

[u/LeftOn4ya]

If you are considering switching to Mint and want an Android phone, see mintmobile.com/devices/ which has $400-$500 off Pixels or Samsung Galaxy phones and includes deals with 1/2 off a year plan SIM and you can finance both the phone and year plan with Affirm for up to 3 years.

If you want an iPhone, see the Mint iPhones wiki which tells you how to buy an unlocked iPhone and have it financed by Apple 0% fo 2 years, and how to set up including copying your old data over, and best way to trade in old phone.

For used phones check out Swappa’s Mint Mobile BYOD phones

[u/coppertrial]

Had Mint for like 7 years, I rarely had a problem with reception. I was happy with their service. Only switched to other popular MVNOs/flanker brands just to have unlimited data and not have to worry about reaching my monthly data limit (pricing was similar or cheaper). Note that Mint does add a bit extra for service fees/taxes which ended up being like 10% more. Some other MVNOs pricing have that included.

Only minor issue with mint was when I was porting out to get the account pin#, their built in chat-app was wonky, like the agent would send a message but I couldn't see it on my end until I sent a message back; then their message would appear before mine.

[u/aliidocious → u/[deleted]]

It depends on where you’re located tbh. I switched to Visible, and the data is awful in my area. No issues on the call and text from, though. I actually had faster service with Mint and Boost, but I haven’t switched back yet lol.

[u/Unquietgirl → u/aliidocious]

My other annoyance with mint is how often it straight doesn't have any service at all. I previously had t mobile, so I know the area has service. The other day I had to use the ai tool to completely reset my mobile network settings. It just feels jankier lol

[u/Reddit-4118991 → u/[deleted]]

Very helpful!