How to get “free” phone service using Ring Plus

Introduction

I had heard about Ring Plus from a Slickdeals thread about a Best Buy Moto E phone for $39.95.  What is Ring Plus you ask?  Essentially, it’s a free phone service on the Sprint network.  I think their business model is that they make money by playing ringtones when you are dialing someone.  I think this is ironic since customers used to pay to play a song while they are calling someone.  Now the carrier is getting paid to play these songs.  Anyhow, that’s my guess to how they are getting paid.

 

So why do you want to do this?

1. Uber/Lyft referrals
2. Any other referrals that require a unique phone number that GV won’t work
3. Free Chipotle burritos
4. Did you get banned from eBay/Paypal and need a new phone number?
5. To set up a hotline bling

Those are just a handful of examples.  I’m sure you can think of some more ideas.

 

Phones

I suggest you buy that Sprint Moto E phone.  I wouldn’t spend more than $40 on the phone.  Ring Plus has a compatibility checker if you want to use a different phone.

 

Rate Plans

This is half of the current rate plans.  This is as of February 2016.  I’m sure things will change (possibly get rid of the free phone plans down the road.)  I signed up for the Michelangelo rate plan myself since that’s a free monthly plan.  The auto top up works kind of like a deposit.  So I added $10 to my account balance, and once that hits zero, my credit card gets billed for another $10.  Have I mentioned I used my Chase Ink card?  It’s such a small amount that I’m too lazy to even check if it gets billed as a 5X utility.  You do have to make one phone call a month to keep your account active.

 

My experience so far

Let’s talk about the auto top-up.  I so far have been billed $.04 for an MMS.  The guy who had this phone number before me forgot to notify his friends and grandmother (no joke), and so I got random messages from them.  One message was past the character limit and was received as an MMS.  I haven’t bothered to look into preventing MMS messages.  Once it becomes a big problem, I’ll look into it.

The service itself is on the Sprint network.  To be honest, the only time I’ve used it is to refer myself to Uber and that worked just fine.  I make a phone call a month on it over Wifi calling just to keep it alive.  So I have no idea how good the call service is.  Sorry.

The phone itself does hold the battery for almost a week when I don’t use it.  I then usually charge it overnight and I’m good for another week or so.

 

Conclusion

So far, I’ve paid $50 plus tax for both the phone and service so far.  I’ve made $20 on the Uber referral already.  I’m sure I’ll eventually extract over $50 in value from the phone and phone number.  You can’t really go wrong for having one of these at your disposal.