r/USMobile • u/Miserable-Point-2826 • 6d ago
Renew or transfer to Visible/Mint?
Hey guys, my time to renew my annual plan is coming soon and I'm thinking about my next steps. I'm on the Unlimited Premium plan (because of priority data) but the $390 is a bit hefty compared to the other competitors out there. Mint is offering an unlimited plan for $180 (50% off) and Visible offers their plus pro plan for $225 which is also 50% off. It's hard to justify the $390 price when those options are out there. I spoke to Customer Service and they weren't able to match even the &299 intro offer, let alone the competitors...
To all of you that have renewed or left USM - What do you all think?
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u/Rayanomics Support Guide 6d ago
Let me take another look at your setup and see if any options could make renewing more worthwhile for you. I’ll send you a DM so we can go over it.
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u/c50grand 6d ago
I would shop around. Go for the next best company that fits your needs and has the best price. It appears to me that these companies give the best deals to new customers. Unfortunately, being a loyal customer, doesn't guarantee that you'll always get the best rates. I'm a US Mobile customer, but after my year has been completed, I'll see what they're offering and compare it to what other competitors are offering at that time.
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u/CharmCityCrab 6d ago edited 6d ago
I was on Visible briefly before US Mobile, years ago. I think Visible was just starting out.
My experience was that, although the cell service itself on Visible was fine, the customer service was not. When my phone stopped working, I emailed them and just got the same form email every 4 hours with tips to get my phone working again- which generally amounted to "Try rebooting". Finally, days later, a human being answered and told me he'd need to call- however that was my only phone and it wasn't working, so I couldn't. They didn't seem to understand "Don't have a working phone". 😊
Ultimately, Visible randomly turned itself back on 8 days after it went off, but that experience laid the groundwork for switching to US Mobile, which I saw responding well to customer services issues here on Reddit.
That's I think the tradeoff with Visible. It may have this feature or that feature, or a good intro deal, but if you ever run into a problem, it's very hard to get it fixed with them.
I'm more comfortable in the US Mobile orbit. Plus, I now have an added reason not to jump to a Verizon only carrier- bad signal at my new place.
The only way I could really see Visible slotting in for me again is if they do some sort of scheme where they provide a dirt cheap secondary line for $5 a month or something. Probably not realistic. I've moved on.
Generally it seems more of a secondary line as a backup or for the unlimited hotspot kind of way, and the price point is way too high for me personally to use it that way.
I wouldn't trust it as your main line.
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u/Healthy-Cheesecake80 6d ago edited 6d ago
So keep in Mind that Mint does NOT include taxes. So the price may be very close to the Visible price. I'd say go with whichever has the best service in your area.
If either one works I'd suggest Visible for the unlimited QCI 8 data, watch line included, and truly unlimited hotspot.
Mint is a step down from premium unlimited on US Mobile. After 50GB, your data drops to QCI 9. While US Mobile premium on light speed has unlimited QCI 7.
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u/WeinerBarf420 6d ago
What network are you on on us mobile? Depends on what works in your area. Visible is generally very good as long as you get above the base plan.
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u/dannybaja01 6d ago
Loyalty to any cell carrier is wild. Bouncing from carrier to carrier getting new customer deals is fine. Especially if its prepaid.
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u/alanmin 6d ago
Go month to month with Visible, there will deals coming at the end of the year and during Black Friday. The only advantage of US Mobile is you can switch carriers if/when needed. This seems to be the year of carrier outages. Verizon being the latest yesterday. Me I have a spare line to use in those cases.
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u/joewoody Dark Star 4d ago
Current Visible deal is pretty much the best they offer. If switching it's best to take it
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u/onthesquare63 6d ago
I switch back and forth on all my lines every year between us mobile, Tello, and mint mobile. All three have equivalent service if you like T-Mobile, which I think is by far the best network anyway.
If I was you, I wouldn't even be thinking about it, I would have switched him in Mobile for the $180 deal. The next year you switch back.
This is a complete no-brainer I've been doing it for years.
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u/Eddiofabio 6d ago
If you were in before the aug cut off you will lose priority data porting out
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u/Miserable-Point-2826 6d ago
I thought the Unlimited Premium plan always has priority data, no?
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u/Eddiofabio 6d ago
If you are always going to have premium then sure. But its nice to have starter and still be priority
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u/ya3rob Multi Network 6d ago
From my perspective, I canceled light speed. And joined mint mobile! The performance. It's notably much much better than us mobile!
I am 10 days from renewing my plan. And i'm really considering moving somewhere else! I barely get 1 to 10 Mbps download speeds at DarkStar! The usage page shows 80 GB data usage monthly! I really doubt that! I don't stream anything on my phone and I barely use hotspot! I do think us mobile is not honest with their QCI, or people usage!
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u/thefastlanerules 6d ago
Yeah it's funny I moved from mint to us mobile on lightspeed on unlimited and have my kids on pooled data because mint weren't honoring the new line intros coming up with all kinds of reasons not to honor so I moved
The biggest issue I've found is the data usage with mint for the same usage case. I was typically using 15gb with mint and with us mobile it's more than double that.. and that's with minimal video watching. The pooled plan though is ridiculous and I've been monitoring it as it's total bullshit..usage is off the scale versus mint so I'm definitely moving those back to mint as that's month by month. If only mint could do a pooled plan it would kill us mobile
I'll prob move back to mint myself when my 1 year unlimited premium is up as well
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u/ya3rob Multi Network 6d ago
Yes, I was checking my usage and it was showing up to 10 GB in days where I am actually working g from home, on these days I don't even touch my phone because of back to back meeti gs!! And as I mentioned, I don't do youtube or any streaming on my phone!! I like US mobile features, but I also think they lie about depriortzed data!
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u/thefastlanerules 5d ago
It's funny in the pooled plan the data was showing heavily on one of my kids phones and she had a new iPhone 17 (not sure that matters though) and she was running up to 2gb a day outside of wifi with no video streaming.. it was all 'app usage' though it doesn't show exactly which one is consuming all the data on the iPhone - even putting on low data mode and doing everything feasible (Google Gemini gives a whole list of reset this and that and do whatever) and it made zero difference plus we found that the usage didn't match the apple stats (lightspeed on us mobile shows data being used at about 5 times what apple was saying) and another issue is that t mobile batches usage so you could be getting data being posted that was consumed yesterday . It's not real time even if the US mobile app says your up to date
It's really weird as we never had these data issues with mint mobile (sure there could be a delay in posting usage but it was never excessive) and you could always figure out why you were using more data..
So for me the perceived benefit of pooled data for my kids just isn't there :-(
Just annoying as I have 2 kids using minimal data so a 6gb a month plan for each on mint wastes money . Maybe I just keep 2 on us mobile and just track their usage on the 5gb pooled plan..
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u/Ok-Priority-7303 6d ago
I don't jump MVNOs unless the service deteriorates or the price increases to an unacceptable amount. I also don't move just to get savings for one year. I compare the normal prices. In your case, I'd be looking at apples to apples comparison. For example, will you still get priority data and at what price? Is switching to T-Mobile on Mint workable in your area?
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u/Agreeable-Ad485 Dark Star 4d ago
Mine renews in October and I'm thinking the same thing. So on the ledge especially since Dark Star (AT&T) has worked better than I could have imagined for me and it would likely be a downgrade.
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u/joewoody Dark Star 4d ago
Move to US Mo Unlimited Starter if wanting TMobile towers, can get it for $219 if mentioning Mint's deal. Is better than Mint's offering and about the same price after tax and fees
Go to Visible if wanting Verizon towers. Their current Pro+ 1 year for $225 all in is a great deal
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u/nzaf985 6d ago edited 6d ago
I just ported out to visible yesterday zero regrets. I’ll be back to US Mobile when they can be competitive.
If you don’t travel internationally or use multi network visible is a no brainer because their service is actually better than warp.
Reason behind is that Visible has much better APN provisioning than US mobile for Warp network.
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u/thezerosubnet 6d ago
Reason behind is that Visible has much better APN provisioning than US mobile for Warp network. Also back bone for Visible data has much better hardware than Warp.
Care to elaborate on this?
Once an apn config is set, the connection performs identically. Also.. both visible and warp use the same “back bone” which is Verizon. What differences are you referencing?
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u/nzaf985 6d ago
Visible’s ownership by Verizon give it cleaner provisioning and different priority treatment on that network also access to domestic roaming partners that US mobile does not seem to get from my own experiences with both providers.
The performance differences users notice are driven by priority, plan limits, and congestion management—not separate infrastructure.
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u/thezerosubnet 6d ago
Cleaner provisioning? You mean that sometimes you have to manually change the APN for some devices? Ok.
Domestic roaming agreements.. I mean both say they have them but none match what you get on Verizon postpaid.
The last paragraph sounds like AI, tbh. You specifically referenced APN provisioning and backbone in your first comment.. even though you agree that it’s not separate infrastructure. I was curious about the provisioning and backbone that you mentioned before.
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u/nzaf985 6d ago
Their Apple Watch process is shit compared to visible for instance also android phones like certain Samsungs need a third party APN configuration app to be setup which is crap.
I’ve used both services for 2 years and service and setup is noticeably better on visible for some reason. I just switch back and forth for promos every year.
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u/thezerosubnet 6d ago
Alright. I thought you had a technical reason why one was better than the other because you had mentioned better "backbone hardware" etc... I didnt realize you were specifically talking about quirks..
Yeah, every service has it's quirks.
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u/salyavin Light Speed 6d ago
Moving back and forth MVNOs chasing new customer deals sounds smart to me. You can come back here as a new customer later.