topic Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date in Get Support

Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

youngwon — Thu, 06 Jan 2022 08:02:30 GMT

I've had my autopay running for several months now without a problem. Yesterday (the 19th) my service was cut off, stating a 'late payment'... ~~but autopay is set up to pay on the 21st of every month~~ But I have autopay set up. Why is this suddenly an issue now?

If I manually pay now, do I risk getting overcharged if the autopayment still goes through on the 21st?

I currently have no service and am not sure I can wait another day, just wanted to reach out and see if anyone had advice.

Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 18:50:00 GMT

@youngwon : 1. It's 30 days...not monthly. It might the same day a few times a year. 2. You can make another payment and it won't charge you again. There's only ever one attempt made.

Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

youngwon — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 18:58:55 GMT

Ok, 30 days. Semantics.

The main concern is that autopayment was paying off no problem for almost a year until yesterday. Do I need to cancel autopayment and re-enable it or something to prevent this happening in the future?

Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

ShawnC13 — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 18:59:04 GMT

@youngwon wrote:
I've had my autopay running for several months now without a problem. Yesterday (the 19th) my service was cut off, stating a 'late payment'... but autopay is set up to pay on the 21st of every month. Why is this suddenly an issue now?

If I manually pay now, do I risk getting overcharged if the autopayment still goes through on the 21st?

I currently have no service and am not sure I can wait another day, just wanted to reach out and see if anyone had advice.

@youngwon, Public Mobile is on 30-day terms, not the say billing date each month. The payment date changes every month except the month following one with 30 days

Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

ShawnC13 — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 19:02:02 GMT

@youngwon, sorry I was caught on the cut-off of the service and focused on the date and not the autopay. Did your credit card expire and hasn't been updated yet? If nothing has changed I would try to do a manual top-up and after the plan is back active I would reach out to the mods to make sure everything is set up correctly.

Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

youngwon — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 19:05:00 GMT

@ShawnC13

Clearly I mispoke about the payment times. Every 30 days then. I only glanced at the past couple months where the payments were on the 21st.

Can I have advice for the actual issue where the autopayment failed me? Do I just manually pay? Do I need to cancel and then re-enable autopayment?

EDIT: Posted this right after your second message. I don't know why it failed, the credit card is active and working fine. I've just changed my autopay to my visa-debit card hoping that it will help.

Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

barndoor — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 19:03:09 GMT

@Anonymous .. but why would @youngwon 's service have been cut off ? and why the late payment warning unless there was an issue with the card ..... or with PM's ability to read the card .

Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

youngwon — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 19:12:20 GMT

I just manually paid off the amount to reactivate my account. I won't know if autopay will work until next month, but here's hoping it doesn't randomly deactivate my service during a workday again.

I'm fairly new to the forums, do I need to close this somehow or 'accept a solution' from one of these replies?

Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

ShawnC13 — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 19:23:39 GMT

@youngwon wrote:
I just manually paid off the amount to reactivate my account. I won't know if autopay will work until next month, but here's hoping it doesn't randomly deactivate my service during a workday again.

I'm fairly new to the forums, do I need to close this somehow or 'accept a solution' from one of these replies?

@youngwon, when you select a solution it does help people in the future who have the same issue who may do a search. They can quickly see what worked to resolve the issue.

I would suggest contacting the mods through the chat bubble in the lower right and see if they can verify that everything looks good on that end. They may see an error as to why it didn't auto-renew

Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 19:20:40 GMT

@youngwon : You're not required to do anything. Your service is working now. Good. Unfortunately, sometimes autopay fails. And when it does the service stops. I don't know of other prepaid providers that let the service go on when unpaid. Postpaid might give you some grace. But not prepaid.

It doesn't randomly deactivate either. Only when unpaid. For some reason. Loss of service could happen at any time. But lack of payment happens at the end of your 30 days.

Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

youngwon — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 19:30:06 GMT

@ShawnC13 @Anonymous

Alright, thank you both for the fast responses and info!

Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

darlicious — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 19:32:50 GMT

@youngwon

Overall autopay works perfectly well but there are a few failures in the system and you won the lottery this time. Many regulars choose to pay manually a day or two before renewal just to ensure they aren't the lucky winner. When doing so I recommend a screenshot of your overview and transaction page and one after renewal to make sure everything renews correctly....that's my personal preference.

Upon renewal the system will apply rewards into your available funds. This happens at midnight eastern along with your account resetting to a new 30 day cycle.

Then at 2am eastern it will take out of your available funds your plan amount. If you don't have sufficient funds to cover your plan amount it will attempt a one time charge of the balance owing to your credit card on file.

This is where autopay could fail if there is a power surge or another transaction on your card etc..... if this happens then your plan amount will not get charged or recorded in your payment history.

If no manual payment is made by 6am eastern your account services will be suspended at that time.

Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

youngwon — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 19:39:36 GMT

@darliciousThank you for the thorough explanation! I'm going to save this process to reference later. I did submit a ticket to the mods just to be safe, here's hoping it's as simple as reactivating my plan via payment and leaving the autopay function alone.

Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 19:45:16 GMT

@darlicious wrote:

This is where autopay could fail if there is a power surge or another transaction on your card etc..... if this happens then your plan amount will not get charged or recorded in your payment history.

@darlicious : Power surge? Have you heard this to be a thing with the taking of payments here? (or anywhere) Is there an employee sitting in some room somewhere with reams of accounts and manually punching in payment info on a plain ol' pinpad plugged in to any random power outlet? 🙂

I suppose another transaction is an interesting possibility.

Edit: @youngwon : autopay works perfectly fine year after year for the vast majority of customers. Now that you've had this experience, be aware for your next renewal and if it trips up again then you'll know it soon enough and now you know how to get it going again. After that then entertain the other manual methods.

Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

darlicious — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 19:52:18 GMT

@Anonymous

There is a myriad of possibilities....it wouldn't surprise me if pm still uses dial up for autopay. The week before xmas the interac system would go down at work around 1pm on a Friday causing chaos because no one carries cash anymore. Or the wifi would go down or get overloaded with users. There are many things that can cause a split second interruption to a signal that will cause the transmission of the transaction charge to fail.....and without a human to redo the transaction it fails.

Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

barndoor — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 20:34:21 GMT

Even in the brief time i have been here there seem to have been enough of these fails on cards in good standing that WHY would they not set the default at three tries rather than one ? You"d think even two may significantly reduce the issues .

Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 20:38:25 GMT

@barndoor : You'd think. Things move at a snails pace around here though. While it's ridiculous that a company would have issues taking money from customers...here we are.

Edit: Always remember though...we see all the complaints here. Rarely does anybody go to the effort of signing up just to post something about how great it all works.

Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

darlicious — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 20:43:08 GMT

@barndoor

Autopay is not a pre-authorized payment I believe pm is allowed to make one time payment charges not multiple attempts.

https://www.payments.ca/paying-pre-authorized-debit

Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

youngwon — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 20:41:46 GMT

All things considered, I think I'd rather only deal with a single attempt at a charge rather than the potential nightmare of dealing with the refunding of multiple charges when the customer service is so community reliant.

Re: Service cut off early before usual Autopay date

softech — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 20:43:26 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:

Is there an employee sitting in some room somewhere with reams of accounts and manually punching in payment info on a plain ol' pinpad plugged in to any random power outlet? 🙂

any job opening?

We always wonder here why Autopay fails.. honest, how hard to program it to re-attempt after 5 mins and do it for 3 times?

Even though we keep saying to everyone the overall Autopay failure rate is low.. but who knows, also, I won't be surprise 5% of those failed were so upset and gone elsewhere