topic Re: My first day on Public Mobile in Get Support

My first day on Public Mobile

brownpau — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 07:27:31 GMT

Just wanted to share with you my amazing first day on Public Mobile!

I'm a fresh transplant to Canada, in Halifax for a few days to rent a house and register a Canadian phone number before I run back to the US to wrap up affairs. Having a Canadian phone number was especially important since we need to contact the immigration office about some additional steps related to our permanent residency, and they require a Canada area code.

A friend in Toronto recommended Public Mobile and I was happy to give her the referral. I picked up a SIM at Walmart but skipped setup for later as I was in a rush at the time.

Since I don't have a Canadian credit card yet I went to Shoppers that night and asked for a "payment voucher" -- and got confused looks. Multiple retail staff in different stores thought I was asking for a money order and told me to wait till Canada Post was open. I only learned the next day back at a Walmart mobile counter that I should have been asking for a prepaid top-up slip; the documentation I've seen on Public Mobile's site seems unclear on this. I purchased a $60 voucher.

I started activation and selected a $50 plan that includes Canada/US calling and 3G data. Activation process went smoothly until I got to payment: after I submited the voucher PIN, the site froze. After several minutes of nonactivity I refreshed the payment page and tried submitting again. Same result. My phone then chimed and showed me an SMS with a PIN code that was different from the PIN I had specified on the activation form.

It seemed the SIM had been activated during the timeout so I went to log in to my account with the username and password I had specified in activation. Login failed. Again, maybe I entered password wrong? Login failed.

I tried creating an account to see if I'd missed a step due to not reaching the last page of the Activation process. Registration sent me two confirmation messages each with a different authentication code. Only the first one worked.

On login I was presented with an angry "account suspended for nonpayment" box that said to disregard if I had actually paid, and my "amount due" was $0. However when I tried to make a call, I received a recorded suspension notice. Mobile internet was blocked. Quite a welcome to the service.

I tried the "phone lost/found" workaround and that successfully removes the suspension. I tried calling my wife in the US and received a new error message recording stating that I needed a long distance addon -- even though I had US calling enabled. I tried calling a Canadian number and got the same message -- even though this was not a long distance call.

I logged back into my selfserve account and the "amount due" had suddenly changed to $40.

I went to the Community site to register an account. The first two tries, the registration form timed out and returned security certificate errors. Finally I got in and tried to submit a mod message -- and got more timeouts.

I slept on it. This morning the phone actually [kind of] works for Canadian calls, still tells me US calls will incur long distance charges, and lets me use the internet -- but my "amount due" has changed to $20. It should be zero until 8 Dec.

I need to add roaming before I head back to the US in 2 days (I'm back and forth a lot till Dec) but my balances keep changing on the selfserve site and I worry I'll break something else when I do the add-on. Do I really want to stay with a buggy service that can't even give me base-level reliability and welcomes a new customer with an undeserved suspension? This was just the first day.

Update: my "amount due" is now $30. Why does it keep changing?

Re: My first day on Public Mobile

will13am — Sat, 10 Nov 2018 13:00:12 GMT

@brownpau, thanks for sharing your story. I must say you seemed to have run into practically every pitfall that the self serve portal has to offer. I commend you for your resoucefulness in navigating through all the problems that you have encountered. It would be great if you could post a snapshot of your payment history and overview. Something must be changing all the time to make the amount due change. By the way if you do decide to stay, you can use recharge.com to buy vouchers which is a little more convenient than going out to stores.

Re: My first day on Public Mobile

smp99 — Sat, 10 Nov 2018 13:06:26 GMT

Wow. Sounds like a busy day.

The amount due is likely the amount due on your next renewal in 30 days or so. That would be your plan cost less any available funds. So I am guessing you have $20 for available funds.

I dont know why some have issues every step of the way while others sign up and don’t have any problems. As to staying with PM that’s up to you but I would try it for at least this month. I hope you get the calling issue worked out.

Does data and texts work?

Re: My first day on Public Mobile

rrgg0615 — Sat, 10 Nov 2018 14:21:18 GMT

Not sure about the rest of your troubles, but the $40 to $30 might come from the new user credit. If you filled in your friend's number as a referral, you will get a 10$ credit on your account.

Re: My first day on Public Mobile

ashleyb — Sat, 10 Nov 2018 14:47:16 GMT

Welcome to the community! Did you happen to check and see if you had any referral rewards from your friend refering you? Right now they're giving a 10.00 off for new sign ups with a friends code. That is likely why you see a difference.

Re: My first day on Public Mobile

brownpau — Sat, 10 Nov 2018 15:57:10 GMT

@will13am Status as of now:

Calls: still unable to call, error 8UM1
Data: Works fine, getting 7mbps down and 2 mbps up on 3G which is very nice.
Text: Inconclusive as most of my contacts are on iMessage so it bypasses network SMS

Payment history attached, and @ashleyb was right: the latest change was due to my $10 referral bonus.

I'm really not sure I can stay. There are calls I need to make today before Remembrance Day closures. I feel like it's perfectly reasonable to expect the ability to make local calls on a cell phone after a day, and Public Mobile has not even met that minimum base-level expectation.

Re: My first day on Public Mobile

Wonder_why — Sat, 10 Nov 2018 16:36:19 GMT

@brownpau Welcome to PM and Great White North you will be happy here

Re: My first day on Public Mobile

mimmo — Sat, 10 Nov 2018 17:24:34 GMT

@brownpau both Canadian and USA credit cards should accepted. It's credit cards from outside north america that are not accepted.

Re: My first day on Public Mobile

dumbdobie1 — Sat, 10 Nov 2018 19:51:20 GMT

Wow that is an unfortunate experience. My condolences.

Perhaps it would be less risky next time to let the store activate it if possible. I know Walmart and London Drugs can activate on the spot.

Once you get the service running it works very well and is a good value.

Re: My first day on Public Mobile

will13am — Sat, 10 Nov 2018 20:04:49 GMT

@brownpau, I am guessing that the problem with calling not working is due to account provisioning which seems to happen from time to time. In this situation, the area codes you are able to call based on the calling feature in the plan has not been loaded properly into the account. As a result you get a message about needing a calling add-on. You will need to seek moderator team assistance to address this issue. The moderator team can be reached via private message using this link. Please include in the private message account number and PIN code along with a detailed description of the issue and the required resolution. This will speed up problem resolution significantly. Refer to the following knowledge base link for additional information on contacting the moderator team.

Re: My first day on Public Mobile

brownpau — Sat, 10 Nov 2018 21:30:20 GMT

Update: Line is now fully functional: voice (US and Canada), text, and data. I was literally in the car en route to a competing mobile store when I started receiving text messages. I had messaged the mod team this morning and still have no response but I suppose a working phone is response enough, and Public Mobile has earned at least a month's reprieve. Thank you all for your help, encouragement, and well-wishes. 📱

Thanks @will13am for the pointer to Recharge.com; that'll be extremely useful!

Re: My first day on Public Mobile

will13am — Sat, 10 Nov 2018 23:55:13 GMT

@brownpau wrote:
Update: Line is now fully functional: voice (US and Canada), text, and data. I was literally in the car en route to a competing mobile store when I started receiving text messages. I had messaged the mod team this morning and still have no response but I suppose a working phone is response enough, and Public Mobile has earned at least a month's reprieve. Thank you all for your help, encouragement, and well-wishes. 📱

Thanks @will13am for the pointer to Recharge.com; that'll be extremely useful!

Weird things are happening with the self serve. There seems to be issues that self heal with time. I had renewal problems in a couple of accounts and while waiting for moderator team assistance, my problem went away before they were able to look into the problem. This may have happened here.