Ting Mobile has announced a new promotion. The promotion is being marketed as a "back to school sale." Customers that purchase a Moto G6 in the Ting store will receive $100 in Ting account credits.
Offer Fine Print
There's not much by way of fine print here. Customers simply need to purchase the phone which is sold unlocked for $249, and activate it on one of the two Ting partner networks. Ting is an MVNO partner of both Sprint and T-Mobile. One potential knock on the deal is that Ting is spreading out the $100 in account credits over the course of 10 months. So if you purchase the phone, you'll receive $10/month in account credits for 10 months.
Ting hasn't said how long this promotion will last but it will be available while supplies last. Account credits will start to be applied by September 4th, 2018.
Ting's blog post announcing the deal is also a bit confusing. The opening paragraph talks about purchasing a Moto G6 Play for the deal, and later talks about the deal being with the Moto G6. All links in the post lead to the Moto G6 as does the article headline, so I think that's what the deal is really for. I've reached out to Ting for clarification. (Update 8/7/18: Ting has clarified to me that the deal is only for the Moto G6 and is updating the blog post accordingly.)
Is It Really A Good Deal?
The regular price for a Moto G6 is $249.99. The Amazon Prime exclusive variant is currently on sale for $234.99. Best Buy has it for $199.99 with the purchase of select prepaid plans. So if you subtract the $100 in account credits from the regular price of $249.99 it's like you are getting the phone for $149.99. On the surface, it seems like a good deal. However, when you look at the cost of a Ting phone plan, depending on your needs, it may not be.
Ting does not sell any preconfigured phone plans. Subscribers custom build their own phone plans by choosing an allotment of talk, an allotment of text and allotment of data. A plan with just 100 minutes, 100 text messages and 100MB of data will run you $15/month plus taxes and fees. The minutes do include international calling minutes to over 60 countries at no additional charge. Still, that's not exactly bargain pricing. Tello for instance sells an unlimited talk and text plan with 1GB of high speed data for $14/month. Red Pocket Mobile has a by the month plan with 1,000 minutes, 1,000 text messages and 1GB of data for $15/month. Both companies use the same network(s) as Ting but offer much better pricing. So some folks may find buying the phone elsewhere for use on another network to be a better deal.
Those who find that money isn't everything and place a high value on a great customer service experience may want to keep Ting on their radar. The MVNO consistently ranks well in that department.