A few months ago when I reviewed Mint Mobile, a popular pay-as-you-go cellular service in the United States, I noted there was some lost data. Meaning that the amount of cellular data usage from my phone once Mint was activated skyrocketed, resulting in a lot of unexplained data usage.
It’s a mystery I’ve been testing and investigating since it’s come up and I’ve got some answers but now a few more questions. Here’s the latest.
Gigabytes On Up
Prior to using Mint Mobile, I was averaging about 2.5-3 Gigabytes of cellular data usage a month. Primarily tied to WiFi in most cases, I’m not a heavy user. So it made sense to get a $15 a month 4GB plan to test on for a minimum 3 month term. Yet a week or two into my plan though I hit that data limit and got a notification I’d have to purchase more data – so I got 5 GB for an $15 extra dollars. And then 10 days later, guess what? The same thing happened.
In fact this happened each month so at the next 3 month interval, I went with a 10 GB plan. Same thing, went over my data limits, had to buy more. Then I went with the unlimited plan and well, that’s when things got weird.
Looking For Leaks
Prior to this I had tried to find if there was some data leak on my phone. I made sure WiFi Assist was off on my iPhone, a feature which uses cellular data when you’re on a weak WiFi connection. iCloud and iCloud Drive were off too, which they always are. Apps were checked for data consumption and my phone was left in airplane mode for days at a time.
Still, I went from averaging 3 GB a month, getting Mint Mobile, then averaging 15 GB or more a month. That is until I switched to an unlimited plan.
No Records
I reached out to Mint Mobile to see if they could share a history of my data usage over the months but they replied that since they’re a prepaid service, they don’t have such records. If that’s true, it would make it very difficult, if there was some sort of data issue, for Mint Mobile to investigate it since they wouldn’t have any records to go back and check.
Whether they have the information but don’t share it, or could access such records but don’t have the data parsed, or just don’t keep such records at all, in all 3 cases that’s a bad look. It means as a consumer you have to track all of your data usage by month and record it. Should there be a potential issue you noticed last month, well Mint Mobile wouldn’t be able to help you much since they can’t verify or cross reference the data usage you’re seeing from your phone to any records on their side.
And here we are. So far this month I’ve used a small amount of data and am wondering, what will happen when I go back to a 4GB plan or 10GB? We’ll see and I’ll update you in a few weeks with those results.
I’m on the 4 GB plan for the first time and using 2x the data than with any other carrier!
I just switched to Mint a day before and I already have used about 1 GB out of my allowed10GB, I’m very careful not to use much data and my previous data usage from T-mobile is less than 8 GB per month on average. This seems suspicious that they are bloating up the usage and forcing users to pay for additional data. I never exceeded 10GB usage with T-mobile in the last 3 years. I mostly have Wi-fi where ever I go, so seems I have to turn off the data to avoid rip-off
Same here. Switched 2 of our phones from T-Mobile to Mint and cellular data usage skyrocketed.
My daughter has averaged 4-5Gb per month for the last 2 years. Switched to Mint and is using 10 Gb in 6 days. And it’s accelerating. New billing period shows over 7 Gb usage in 3 days despite being diligent about staying in WiFi coverage.
A few more days of this and we’ll be switching back to T-Mobile. Mint is no savings if I have to constantly pay for more data.
Just switched to MInt on January 12th and within 5 days it said I had used 1.65 GB of data when that is the total I would use an entire month on At&T as I use Wi-Fi at home for data. Right away I became suspect of Mint gobbling data to make people have to buy more data. This is extremely disappointing as I was so happy to be enjoying the savings and the service has been good on my phone. I had planned to stay on with Mint at the end of my plan term, but I am now rethinking that.
Same. Used 5GB data on T-mbobile for about a decade, and could count one 1 hand how many times I went over. On Mint, I’m hitting 80% of the 4GB cap in 1-2 weeks.
I’ve only been on mint mobile for a few days and my data usage has increased significantly.
Same, here switched my wife and daughter to Mint from Tmobile. My wife never crossed 3GB a month for years on TMo and each month since switching to Mint she has had to add more GB of data multiple times. The fact that Mint can’t show you what your data usage is is very troubling.
Switched over the Holydays to Mint from T-Mobile , 5 plans , on the new lines we pretty much double the amount of data available on the program , with T-Mobile rarely anybody went over the limits , now with double the amount of data most months at least 3 of the lines go over the limit, what is going on ?
I too am seeing an irregularity with Mint. Two days as a new user. Never used more than 1 gig in a month on AT&T for over 5 years. Already at 400mb in 2 days. Something is wrong. I’m going to file a complaint with both FCC and SEC. There is something seriously wrong with their accounting.
I switched yesterday at 630pm, and was on wifi starting at 9pm. By 8am, still on wfi, my usage was 2.5 gigs. In under 3 hours, that was the amount of data consumption, when I used 15 gigs per month on average prior. At this rate, I will need 120 gigs a month. I reached out to mint and they gave a stupid canned excuse that it was the phone usage of food and social media apps. I guess when Ryan Reynolds sold to TMobile, they wanted to do everything they could to kill the company.
Any update on this? Mint Mobile did this to me too! In under a week, they told me that I had already used 5 G of data. There’s no way. I’ve never used over 3 G of data in 5 years.
Here’s an update: https://youtu.be/rQrEoScTIzE
Happy with Mint Mobile 4G for several years. But as soon as I upgraded to a 5G phone and set it to use 5G, that’s exactly when my plan was eaten up to fast. I simply set the phone to use 4G/LTE only and I never had that over data limit issue again.
i even 5G speed tested today, just before my plan was to be renewed. I had 0.8GB remaining prior. After the speed test, I had 0.6GB remaining. Using 5G setting, I used 0.8-0.6 = 0.2GB = 200MB data.
So, advice to all: If you really don’t need 5G, set your phone to 4G/LTE and you’ll probably not go over too often.
Cheers!