RingPlus has announced its first promotional plan offerings of 2017 which include free and paid plans. The plans are set to open today, January 5th 2017 at 9:00 PM PST and will remain open "while supplies last."
Free Plans
- Mad Hot Chocolate Free Plan - features 100 minutes, texts, MMS, and MB of data with overages of 10¢ for each unit of service with a $5.00 auto top up required
- Mad Hot Chocolate Free Plan (Member+) - features 500 minutes and MB of data, with unlimited text and MMS with tethering included with a $30.00 auto top up required
Add Ons are required to use either of these plans and they are priced as follows in the infographic.
Paid Plans
RingPlus's paid plan promotional offerings are broken down into 2 groups.
Group 1
Group 2
Commentary
RingPlus's first promotional offerings of 2017 seem like a step backwards from what we've seen in the past. The plans have become more convoluted and in some instances have lost some of their value when compared to other cheap phone plan providers in the business.
First off let's examine the "free plans." The Mad Hot Chocolate free plan does in fact have no monthly bill associated with it, however if you want to have voicemail it will cost you 30¢ per month. Still not a bad deal for 100 minutes, text, MMS and MB of data for free each month.
The "free" Member+ plan includes a $30 top up charge, which is much higher than the $5.00 non Member+ free plan top up charge. Despite what the plan includes, this top up seems rather high considering the fee one must pay to sign up for Member+. Member+ subscriptions cost $99.99 per year, or $120.00 for a lifetime subscription. If you're a newly signed up Member+ subscriber, this "free plan" is rather quite expensive.
RingPlus's paid offerings don't seem as value priced as they used to be either but not all is lost. While the Mad Mocha plan priced at $9.99/month for unlimited talk, text, MMS and 1 GB of data still presents a good value to consumers, the Add Ons associated with that plan and the others in Group 1 seem like an afterthought for the company. Add On pricing starts at $9.99/month for unlimited throttled data with speeds at 32 Kbps and goes all the way up to $29.99/month for speeds at 128 Kbps. Will anyone actually pay these astronomically high prices for slow data speeds? Does RingPlus believe someone will actually pay $39.98/month for unlimited talk, text and data with the first 1 GB at high speed? That's a pricing scheme from years ago. RingPlus may want to rethink their strategy here.
The one plan that really seems to stand out in a positive way is the Mad Macchiato plan priced at $30/month with a $20 top up. That plan includes unlimited talk, text and 10 GB of high speed data. When you include the activation fee and top up fee for the plan you are paying just above an average cost of $32/month plus taxes. Nothing comes close from any other provider in terms of the amount of data you get at such a low price for a single line except from maybe Mint Sim. Mint SIM however requires you to hand over a large some of money and pay for service for a year in advance to get a similar plan as the RingPlus plan presented here.
What do you think of these new RingPlus promotions? Are you a current member that's going to switch to one of these plans or someone that wants to port in from another provider? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.
RingPlus has been posting today that services will cease on Feb 11, 2017, because of a lawsuit they have with Sprint. Sprint is forcing a termination of all Ringplus’s customers.
I just grabbed the Mad Hot Chocolate Free Plan. It cost me $5 ($7.64 including all taxes/fees) to signup. After that, I should get 100 free minutes, 100 free texts, 100 MB data for who knows how long. For my limited usage, I think its a good deal. I opted to skip the voice mail (30 cents a month) as I always answer my phone. Good luck and Happy New Year.
Re: Mint Sim. They offer a $60 3 month promo with 10 GB so it is more than a match for any of the recent or current 10 GB plans at RingPlus and beats the pants off them. It’s only a promo with no word on when it will end, but RingPlus is hellbent on going out of business by jacking the rates on their plans and often offering less than what you can go elsewhere or at best matching the price. Lately, they have gone to the nickel and dime you to death school of philosophy. Things that offered for free are now separate paid Add-Ons. Not the way to get 500K users. Throw the $20-35 Mandatory Top-ups that are almost a staple of most plans with another $5 – 20 Activation Fee for many of the plans and you are going to drive away potential customers. There is no guarantee they won’t pull another dump plans like they have done three times now and I count the two last year as separate events since they lied about having the first one last year weeks before they did it knowing they were going to do it. Worse, they compounded that lie with numerous reassurances they weren’t going to do a second wave only to “gotcha” shortly thereafter. It wasn’t a surprise to anybody with marketing experience since they pretty much followed a bad marketing textbook plan broadcasting what they were going to do. They went the opposite route with Mad BBQ which is still around, but they are mum on it which is the second option when you plan on dumping something (Option 1: repeatedly over-reassure your customers; Option 2: say nothing – think Sgt. Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes).
Much as I want RingPlus to succeed, they are heading down the bankruptcy path if they keep following the path they have been following for the last few years. If they aren’t careful, I will figure out a way to fund my blogging friend to start up his own MVNO and he will show RingPlus how to do it the right way because it can be done if you use some basic business sense which appears to be missing from upper management at RingPlus.