topic Re: Does anyone else find the billing and payment layout confusing? in Get Support

Does anyone else find the billing and payment layout confusing?

DDM69 — Thu, 06 Jan 2022 07:14:33 GMT

I love Public Mobile and all it has to offer. However when looking at my charges, rewards, credits and balance, I find it quite confusing. Could there be a clearer condensed way of showing this information?

Has this issue been mentioned before?

Thanks

Re: Does anyone else find the billing and payment layout confusing?

computergeek541 — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 05:20:41 GMT

@DDM69 wrote:
I love Public Mobile and all it has to offer. However when looking at my charges, rewards, credits and balance, I find it quite confusing. Could there be a clearer condensed way of showing this information?
Has this issue been mentioned before?
Thanks

Hi. Yes, this has been talked about before. As it is now, customers will often see multiple plan fee entries, $10 plan fee entries, and sometimes other discounts listed as payments. The customer then has to add up the totals on one side and sometimes subtract some entries on the other side of the ledger to figure out the total before-tax plan price.

Re: Does anyone else find the billing and payment layout confusing?

DDM69 — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 05:25:49 GMT

Certainly there is a better way than this...

Re: Does anyone else find the billing and payment layout confusing?

softech — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 05:35:01 GMT

Totally agree... I hate accounting and never good at understanding bills.. PM bill is certainly one of the worst.

Also, if thry are going to charge tax, why can't they show it on Self-Serve?? I think at least 3 to 5 posts were about this tax confusion..

Re: Does anyone else find the billing and payment layout confusing?

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 05:36:36 GMT

@DDM69 : Once you're settled in, you won't really be needing to look at the details. For me, I log in the day before renewal to remember where my account is at. Then I know what to expect the morning of the renewal when I log in to verify and nod yup alrighty then and carry on. If not, then it doesn't take much to figure out where something went amiss and get the moderators on it. Or see my error. Or see why something went amiss. This time, I was surprised to see an extra 20 bucks and another dollar to which I concluded that I evidently got a referral. The 20 bucks was a referral bonus for February for those customers that had few referrals (waving hand).

You'll get there.

Re: Does anyone else find the billing and payment layout confusing?

computergeek541 — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 05:40:26 GMT

@DDM69 wrote:
Certainly there is a better way than this...

Ideally, it should just show the plan price and payments. However, after a while, customers get used to it and while it is confusing, the system does generally work. There are other things that Public Mobile I belive that should be fixed or changed. I do agree with you, but this issue is cosmetic.

Re: Does anyone else find the billing and payment layout confusing?

gpixel — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 06:22:03 GMT

it's seems pretty straight forward to me...

credit is money/rewards that has been added to the account.

PM uses a credit based system for payment. that's why there aren't any taxes shown.

debit is the credit withdrawn from the account

it's best not to think of it as money.

Re: Does anyone else find the billing and payment layout confusing?

Korth — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 11:50:38 GMT

The billing system is inherited from Telus, presented from a big corporate accounting perspective. Not from a customer's perspective.

People are not interested in working backwards from the total to derive internalized and itemized costs for the things they're buying.

People are interested in seeing which items they're buying, what they're getting, what they're paying.

Yeah, it's not hard to ask questions or do the math. The whole thing may seem like a trivial argument. Or like an incomprehensible/inconsequential difference to certain business-focussed mindsets.

But some of Public Mobile customers have been confused or complaining about this convoluted billing system for years. While some of Public Mobile's competitors have been doing a far better job with their thoughtfully-easy-to-read-everything-at-a-glance billing systems for years.

Re: Does anyone else find the billing and payment layout confusing?

HALIMACS — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 14:07:12 GMT

I agree, @DDM69

Looking like this,

it's not difficult to understand why some can't follow.

For instance, the Plan Charges (which Public Mobile separates into two segments - the Plan $10 + the Data $15) likely leads to confusion for folks.

Adding to that, the fact all amounts are net before tax, causes a fair number of users to question why the amounts don't match their payment card transaction.

It could be a significant improvement if all values represented actual total values paid and charged on both Transaction History and Payment Card history.

Will that happen anytime soon - i doubt it.