In yet another marketing shift, DISH has discontinued the Boost Infinite brand and will offer both prepaid and postpaid options under the Boost Mobile brand. But; the customer doesn’t exactly get to choose their prepaid or postpaid status:
Account Types
We’ll have two different account types, prepaid and postpaid. Any account with at least one financed device as well as existing Boost Infinite customers will be postpaid, and will continue to pay their bill 15 days into their billing cycle.
Any new customer that does not finance at least one device as well as existing Boost Mobile customers will be prepaid. These customers will pay their bill on the first day of their billing cycle.
Edit: Well, that didn’t last long - Currently unavailable.
We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock. In fact, all of their products are currently unavailable on Amazon and searching Amazon for “Boost Infinite” yields no results. I guess Amazon got the memo.
We can now use the boost mobile website to login to our account instead of being told to use the infinite app.
I called today to get my porting PIN because the card I gave them last year when switching from Republic expires next month. They of course wanted to know why I was switching and I told them US Mobile offers lite plan for $10 month and has website to manage account instead of forcing to use an app.
They offered me 50% off for 6 months to stay and when I reminded them that I don’t have any way to update my payment info because I’m not going to download their app, they informed me that boost infinite customers can now use boostmobiledotcom to manage account.
Was super easy to login just entered mobile# and then they send code to phone or email and then you are in the account.
So I guess I’ll stick around longer. From what I understood of the 50% offer was discounting from the base price of $25 and he said I’d continue to receive my credit as a former Republic Wireless customer on top of that. From what I can tell it will end up being just $1 plus tax for next 6 months.
And I guess since I rarely use data I thought this entire time that I was limited to 2GB but apparently it’s unlimited data also plus the hotspot service for free that I never use.
$1/month for “unlimited” service is certainly hard to beat. How DISH/Boost intends to make money at that price point is a mystery. For now, they seem more interested in not continuing to lose customers.
Yes, the former Boost Infinite (now Boost Mobile) plan Republic members were moved to is “unlimited”, however, it’s the first 30 GB at high-speed. After that, speeds are reduced to 512 Kbps. It doesn’t sound as if that’s an issue for you given your use case. And, yes, former Republic members are supposed to have free hotspot, which ordinarily is an extra cost add-on.
I would suggest those still with DISH/Boost pay some heightened attention going forward as DISH/Boost’s corporate parent Echostar is flirting with bankruptcy. The balance sheet is highly leveraged and, to date, no one has been publicly identified as being willing to provide the financing needed for Echostar and its subsidiaries to continue operating past November of this year. In the event Echostar is ultimately unable to refinance its debt, a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing would appear inevitable.
There is no need to take immediate action. Chapter 11, in and of itself, does not mean a company ceases to operate. Chapter 11 is often used by companies to more favorably restructure their debt when other means of doing so fail.
Still, I would suggest to my fellow former Republic members they have a plan B identified should it become necessary. It’s better to have and not need than need and not have. Our Reviews may be helpful in that regard.
Thanks for the warning, @rolandh! I’m old and a member of AARP, so I’m considering Consumer Cellular as a backup. I believe they use AT&T, which has a better signal near me than other carriers. For now, Boost has been all right.
I opened my Boost Infinite app and was prompted to update to the new Boost Mobile app. They still use SMS for 2FA. Why do most of the companies I deal with still engage in this level of stupid? Boost also offers e-mail as an option, for all the good that does. Are authenticator apps/hardware tokens really that hard?
Oh wow! Thanks for the heads up about the financial situation and possibility of bankruptcy. I’ve got an account that was caught up in the synapse bankruptcy and evolve bank & trust locking those accounts. So glad that wasn’t my main bank account. It’s been over 2 months and still waiting on getting that money back.
I could imagine Dish creating a negative situation for customers. I’ll definitely pay more attention now and I’ve already got the sim card from US Mobile so will be ready to port out my number.
I just received notification of an account credit from Boost Mobile, the same amount as I’d been getting from Boost Infinite. So at least that feature survived the name change.
Authenticator apps and hardware tokens are another hurdle for less technically inclined folks. So, many if not most companies choose to engage in the security theater that is multi-factor authentication (MFA) via SMS. I suppose it’s better than nothing (though if strong randomly generated passwords are used nothing might be better than weak MFA).
Alas, strong randomly generated passwords are too much of a hurdle for some of those less technically inclined. A shocking number of people still use the same password across multiple websites.
I tried to see how much data I had used this period, and the old Boost Infinite app coaxed me to install the Boost Mobile app. I did that, and I was shocked that it worked. Hopefully Boost Mobile stays in business, because for $20 a line, this does everything I need. I need to test the hotspot again to make sure it is still working though. I have not gone in via the web portal yet.
Hopefully it is: https://www.boostmobile.com/
Maybe they can get voicemail working via the default Pixel phone app instead of that add-on. I never installed it on my phone, but I did on my spouses’.
I normally just wait for that text message to arrive that says I have a voice mail.
Thanks!
The old BI app also coaxed me into installing the Boost Mobile app. All went well and it is working for us with no problems so far We have gone to the web portal and it also works. The app does not work on one of the tablets we have, but that is not a show stopper!
We also hope they stay in business. We get both phones for a grand total of a little over $21/mo. Only catch - no hotspots. We use to call every month to get the hotspot credits straightened out and simply gave up. Some how through all of the “support” calls the hotspots got dropped.
The other upside for us - the phones are on AT&T which gives us great coverage here at home and most of the places we have traveled to.
We have gotten so use to not having Visual voicemail that we’re not even sure if we want to try the Boost Mobile visual voicemail app. Quite a few discouraging reviews. Hoping someone here will try it and report their success or failure
Interesting development overnight. In the wee hours of the morning, my Boost SIM rebooted twice. Later in the day I noticed that my carrier flag for my second line, long reporting as “Republic”, now says “Boost”.
The last time I saw a SIM reboot was back in the days before Cingular bought the AT&T name and proceeded to live down to it. Since my Boost service is on the AT&T network, this is not surprising. I wonder what else might have changed,
I am on the T-Mobile side of Boost Mobile, and under “Calls & SMS” and “SIMs” on my Pixel 6a Android phone it says “Boost Mobile”, I don’t know if it ever said “Boost Infinite”. I need to test the Hotspot and see if it still works. Update 7/26/2024
I tested both phones on our Boost “Mobile” account and the hotspot feature works still.
