Effective March 17, Legacy customer will no longer be able to use the call centre

[Alan_K]

Hey Community,

We have some important information to share with our Legacy/Pioneer customers. As a reminder, Legacy/Pioneer customers are those who continue to have access to the call centre and are on one of the five plans listed below.

• $25 Province-Wide Talk
• $33 Canada-Wide Talk + Text
• $45 Canada-Wide Talk + Text + 1GB Data
• $50 Canadian & U.S. Talk + Text + 1GB Data
• $65 Canadian & U.S. Talk + Text + 2GB Data

On March 17, 2019 the call centre that Legacy Public Mobile customers have access to will be removed. Why you ask? Well, as many of you know, Public Mobile has been on a journey to provide online-first support. Removing our Legacy call centre is one more step in that journey. We want to reassure you that this doesn’t mean we’re shutting down; we’re growing and we have exciting plans for our future that continue to reward Canadians who want to take back control of their wireless service.

More importantly, we have options for you because we know that change is always better when we can decide how it affects us. To learn more and make an informed decision, please visit publicmobile.ca/serviceupdate.

If you have any questions, please let us know! We appreciate your continued support as we continue to grow and evolve.

-The Public Mobile Team

[Dahlia]

You have made several excellent points here, i am glad i took the time to read your entire post. Thank you

[Lieux]

@Hbarbarah13 here it's a public forum. It's better to not post personal info. You can change that click on the 3 dots right up in your message.

[Lieux]

@ShawnC13  phone number to hide...

@Hbarbarah13 Don't worry the moderator will help you with that. https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/notes/composepage/note-to-user-id/22437 and explain your problem. They will answer you in few hours to 2 days. Be patient.

[Hbarbarah13]

But who will help us with problems,I never use before my account on line,forget my password,cannot get in ,who will help me to get to my account,you obligated people to switch to other providers,they help me to do community account and that so,how to recuperated  my account only with my phone number,it’s impossible my n.is 4********0,please help me with that

Edited by ShawnC: removed phone number

[SkimGuy]

To be honest, I didn't even know these were available as options

[Lag333]

@stonechucker How do you want me to prove it? Photos of my last trip with 2 friends that are guatemala Telus mobility call center agents? I have those photos. I also have a story of how I met them over the phone and then went down there on vacation. Almost everything is super cheap there and Telus has a huge building downtown. We dropped off a friend at work for his call centre shift and there's actually metal detectors and security guards at the front. Strange to see when you're used to Canadian life. Oh and here's the google map address. Put in Telus international Guatemala and you can look at the call center yourself. If you look at the google photos, a lot of the pictures are just employees taking pictures from their cubicles.

18 Calle 25-86 Zona 10 Torre Pradera, Pan-American Highway, Guatemala

Koodo is in Santa Tecla, just outside of Salvador City, but it's still under Telus international. And yes I do plan on road tripping there next time. Type into google maps, Telus International El Salvador and have a look at the call centre building. I dont know what more proof you need because you can clearly see central american employees hanging around the Telus campus.

Calle Chiltiupan y, 17 Av. Nte., Santa Tecla, El Salvador

It's really easy to figure out where these agents are from. All you have to do is ask and sometimes you even make a new friend. 

[danielj]

@mimmo you are missing my main point.

I understand that PM has been going away from call centers and it is in order to save money. It is disappointing that they are doing so and to such extremes while they are spending lots of money on advertising.

The majority of customers I believe value customer service over advertising. I have referred somebody to Public Mobile and the fact that there was not anybody to really directly talk to for support directly from the company has been his only complaint. Yes, I could help them or they could use the community or the moderators but for them it is not the same.

I am not adjust them saving money. To my point if they want to save money on call centers they are not going to get rid of all of their call centers for Telus and Koodo, Public Mobile’s sister and parent companies. They can use the infrastructure and just invest a little of all that advertising money on training them to be cross company knowledgeable for Telus, Koodo and Public Mobile. All three to save money all use the same network infrastructure why not in call centers. They could also sell SIMs at Koodo and Telus store locations.

Legacy customers having options to some lower price plans and rewards does not necessary make up for the loss of the call centers for those customers, especially if they are not computer literate to switch plans or monitor rewards on their own.

[mimmo]

@danielj the thing is PM is going away from call centers completely, and have for a long time. This is their goal. Maintaining any portion of  a call center is a cost they no longer want to have.

Legasy customers were given 2 opportunities to switch. I believe their current plans cost more than regular plans  and they are not eligible for rewards.  If they switch voluntarily they will maximize their loyalty rewards, and have access to cheaper plans. 

[danielj]

Legacy customers their most loyal customers they will take away from.

But they give concerts, cookie dough, ice cream and commercials to potential new customers. Giving these things to those in their most infostructure developed markets. Yet we still are getting mixed message about the whole less for less thing.

To grow they have to get new customers while retaining the ones they have. Have to try to view what customers truely value. Advertising might bring in new customers but is not truely valued by customers overall and will not retain them for the long run.

They could just merge call centers between Kodo, Telus and Public Mobile and have only slightly higher training costs.

[Tmd28]

Modernize??   What stop being able to talk to real people and get real answers instead of the robot answers of that they dint understand the question?!  Haha

[stonechucker]

Prove it @Lag333.  I’m betting call centres are in Montreal, Toronto, or Vancouver.

[pY]

time to modernize people!

[Lag333]

It's supposedly "huge expensive call centres." They would like you to believe that, but in reality, it's not that much because they pay their workers 30 dollars a day in Guatemala City for Telus and same with Koodo in neighboring El Salvador. In fact it's just outside Salvador City. I have friends working at both centres and travelled before. The sad part is, these call centers pay a little more than regular jobs there due to needing english profiency. I guess if Telus slapped a large call center in one of the large cities in Canada with Canadian workers, I would start considering that as huge and expensive. haha. 

[EdmondY]

Online chat would be better, but the thing is that they are using private messages (can be treated as a ticket basically) and they don’t respond real time because there’s only a small team managing this, unlike the huge expensive call centres.

At least the legacy customers will soon move into inmarket plans that are better since there’s no more call centres to use.

[Cyber]

Online chat is way better than phone !

[MoreYummy]

they need more mod to operate in a quicker fashion.  

How is the ticket system btw.  

[computergeek541]

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@dna2016 wrote:

Shutting down the call centre eh, does that mean more savings for PM, which in turn means more hiring of MODS?  If not then does some of those savings get passed on to us the consumers (i.e. larger community rewards, more promo deals).  I'm going to assume not, but I guess we'll see what happens.

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We can only hope, but discussions that they hold and the reasonings behimd their exact decisions probably aren't going to be public knowledge.

[dna2016]

Shutting down the call centre eh, does that mean more savings for PM, which in turn means more hiring of MODS?  If not then does some of those savings get passed on to us the consumers (i.e. larger community rewards, more promo deals).  I'm going to assume not, but I guess we'll see what happens.

[kav2001c]

@srlawren

Call centre means you can call them

Having to receive a silly virtual assistant (which is impossible btw if your data connection is down or you are roaming)

Oh and virtual assistant will often cancel your callback request if you dont jump through correct hoops

Many options are wrong and result in being removed from queue

As for long hold times pick your poison

It is quite rare to be able to schedule a call back on same day (which is annoying because most of us do not know exactly what we will be doing at 2:30, 3:00 and 3:30 pm tomorrow)

And as an added inconveniance; I have used this system multiple times (between 5 to 10)

Never once has the scheduled callback actually happened at scheduled time

Now admitably an avg of 5 to 10 minutes late is not a huge deal but system is still not predicting properly

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@srlawren wrote:

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@kav2001c wrote:

My point was Koodo assist blocks you from calling call centre

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@kav2001c uhm, no, it doesn't.  If anything it saves you from sitting on hold for long periods of time, but you can still talk to someone when they call you.  How is that preventing you from using the call centre?

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[srlawren]

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@1Dani wrote:

And if a extremely happy legacy customer refers one new customer a month....

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@1Dani nothing stopping them from doing that. Every 30 days thereafter, these happy legacy customers will receive $1 off for each of the people they referred whom are still active customers, for an unlimited time.  

[srlawren]

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@kav2001c wrote:

My point was Koodo assist blocks you from calling call centre

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@kav2001c uhm, no, it doesn't.  If anything it saves you from sitting on hold for long periods of time, but you can still talk to someone when they call you.  How is that preventing you from using the call centre?

[1Dani]

I totally agree, but I thought PM was different. no phones to sell. And if a extremely happy legacy customer refers one new customer a month....

[kav2001c]

@Jessica_T

As you can see from the "no surprise" bit you quoted, that is very old

Stuff like Siren dissapeared years ago

Also note that back then Public Mobile was officially only in ON + QC (there was a cheat for this if you wanted an out of province plan but coverage was non existant and you would have been constantly roaming)

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@Jessica_T wrote:

"Public Mobile Inc. was formerly known as BMV Holdings, Inc."

"Public Mobile is owned by Thomvest Capital and Cartesian Capital Group. "

"As of November 29, 2013, Public Mobile Inc. operates as a subsidiary of TELUS Corporation."

"About Public Mobile
Formed in 2008, Public Mobile provides unlimited talk, text, Android data services and Siren music to value conscious customers in Ontario and Quebec. There are no contracts, no credit checks and no surprises."

..."no suprises"

*SUPRISE* your call center is being closed lol 😉

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[kav2001c]

@NDesai

My point was Koodo assist blocks you from calling call centre

Public used to allow this

Their ONLY option is migrating up to Telus if they want call centre access now

First Koodo and now Public have killed off support

PS I have used / cursed / complained about Koodo assist many times

It is a major PITA at the best of times, don't think about using it during a busy high call volume time

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@NDesai wrote:

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@kav2001c wrote:

@NDesai

Koodo has already killed off call centre support in favour of a virtual assistant

As well most of the legacy plans would cost more on Koodo (unless another migration is offered, but they have resisted all changes so far so not likely) 

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"With Koodo Assist, you don’t have to worry about waiting on hold. Koodo Assist saves you time and answers your questions right on your phone. And if more information is required, Koodo Assist will schedule a call-back with a rep at a time that works best for you. "

If legacy customers want to move to Koodo, they will be on postpaid plans and so they will have access to call center. 

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[ShawnC13]

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@1Dani wrote:

That would be expected as well they are losing a service..... maybe $5 is crazy but something to recognize the originals would be appropriate. Again I have no idea how many members we are talking about.

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What do the Big 3 do for their long term customers to show them thanks for their Loyalty.  Here get a subsidized phone from us for free and you only have to be on a plan that costs $XXX.XX  The companies don't want people on old plans  they want to update them and have them on more expensive plans

[computergeek541]

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@1Dani wrote:

I am not legacy but why not give the legacy members an ongoing discount on the original plan to replace the personal service they are losing. I think $5 would be reasonable. PM is saving way more than that? (I am not sure how many legacies there are), by not having to run a call center. Pass that saving on to the legacy members to keep them with the network. It could be called "legacy discount"

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They will be automatically receiving discounts and paying less than before. But as I said, unless you are on those $45 or $50 legacy plans, it doesn't make sense to keep these plans.

However, assuming these Pioneers stay put and don't change plans, they will be receiving a discount without needing to do anything on their ends.

[Jessica_T]

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@1Dani wrote:

That would be expected as well they are losing a service.....

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@1Dani

So another $5 should do the trick? $5 on $25plan is worth more than $5 on a $65 plan so if they get a discount I would suggest making it percentage based to make it fair for all.

Definitely will be interesting to see what, if anything happens.

[1Dani]

That would be expected as well they are losing a service..... maybe $5 is crazy but something to recognize the originals would be appropriate. Again I have no idea how many members we are talking about.

[Jessica_T]

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@1Dani wrote:

I am not legacy but why not give the legacy members an ongoing discount on the original plan to replace the personal service they are losing. I think $5 would be reasonable. PM is saving way more than that? (I am not sure how many legacies there are), by not having to run a call center. Pass that saving on to the legacy members to keep them with the network. 

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@1Dani"Your account will automatically be enabled for Public Mobile Rewards on your next renewal date after March 17, 2019, allowing you to start saving even more with retroactive Loyalty Rewards. You will continue to have your original plan features."

They were not eligble for rewards before, but are now. So they can be getting an easy $2 for autopay and atleast $4? maybe even $5 for loyalty depending on when the signed up. Plus they can get referrals and community rewards. We might see a wave of new helpers soon.

[1Dani]

I am not legacy but why not give the legacy members an ongoing discount on the original plan to replace the personal service they are losing. I think $5 would be reasonable. PM is saving way more than that? (I am not sure how many legacies there are), by not having to run a call center. Pass that saving on to the legacy members to keep them with the network. It could be called "legacy discount"