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Upcoming Changes to our Old Rewards Program

J_PM
Public Mobile
Public Mobile

Hey Community,

We have an important announcement to share with our subscribers who are currently enrolled in our old Rewards program.

We’re making changes to our rewards program and are sharing how these changes impact some of our subscribers. Starting in May, we’ll be retiring our old Rewards program and moving all subscribers to our Public Points™ program. 

We launched the Public Points™ program in January 2022 to provide our subscribers with more ways to earn and spend rewards, with greater flexibility. As part of our commitment to continuously evolve our products and services, it's time to retire our old Rewards program and shift our focus on enhancing our Points program.

To show our appreciation for your continued loyalty, subscribers on our old Rewards program will receive a special thank you. We'll send you a text message when it has been added to your account by March 31st. 

We’re excited to continue providing you, our valued subscribers, more opportunities to earn and spend rewards with Public Points™ moving forward.

To learn more about your move to Public Points, check out our FAQ here.

The Public Mobile Team

5,601 REPLIES 5,601

HALIMACS
Mayor / Maire

For any of you who think Customer Support Agents (or maybe Oracles, are you???) are moving or removing posts, perhaps check here first as your post may be rejected for other reasons.

Sometimes removing certain things in the post allows it to not become 'rejected':

https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/premod/moderationitemspage/tab/rejected

OSH2024
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

@hTideGnow wrote:

@LizfromCanada wrote:

It says something when a community post has 0 Bravos, I think! Even the announcement on scheduled maintenance for March 5th has 9. 😅


HI @LizfromCanada 

but the community post has 2 bravos now (no, they weren't from me 🙂 )


Wow, single-digit bravos after 10s of thousands of views and 900+ replies.  What a flex for propaganda!

@ShawnC13     Speaking for myself, I don't think it would make a lot pf difference to how this decision  was relayed to customers if the end result is that many of us will be paying almost double what are presently are.  Of course, it would have been classier to be more honest but that doesn't change the intent of this decision.

I'm also going to disagree that whether this policy change was always to be expected.  Maybe I was being naive but I took at face value when J_PM declared that the new points system would not be forced on any customer with legacy rewards who did not wish to join in her thread for the introduction of the new points.  Also many of community users regularly reassured other customers who wanted to change their plans, that changing plans would not mean they would be enrolled into the new points system and would instead stay with their legacy rewards.  This was being told to customers right upto just before this announcement was made.

I was hoping to link to J_PM's thread on the introduction of the new points system since I'm quite sure there were assurances that we would not be forced to join the points system going forward, however, that announcement is missing as J_PM's threads, for some strange reason, only go back to 14th April, 2022.  Maybe it's being edited for whatever reason or maybe now I'm just being too cynical about all of this...

fixin
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire

@HALIMACS wrote:

@Chalupa_Batman wrote:

Hello Folks. Let's not crap on @J_PM as she's merely an employee of the company who has no say in what management decides. This is above her pay grade. She's merely a conduit for information from the powers that be.  I am in no way defending Public Mobile on this poor decision. 


While I generally agree with the 'don't shoot the messenger' thinking ,  @J_PM is our only real point of contact with PM other than the customer support agents.   And we all know they are not the folks to be sharing our displeasure with.

So while I agree no one should be rude or berating to her, there is no one else to make their displeasure and frustrations known to.  Given that, I expect she's capable of handling the tags and knows what her role is and isn't in this massive change.

I'm thinking at some level, this is not easy for her as well, yet she has a job to do.   I cannot imagine drafting and releasing this announcement was a particularly easy one for her to do.


Yes, people are experiencing their displeasure on J_PM (Not tagging her so then she doesn't get notified) but maybe call a high up at Telus and tell their displeasure with PM now.

Chrissyrioux12
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

Just moved my mom to freedom mobile 


@Chalupa_Batman wrote:

Hello Folks. Let's not crap on @J_PM as she's merely an employee of the company who has no say in what management decides. This is above her pay grade. She's merely a conduit for information from the powers that be.  I am in no way defending Public Mobile on this poor decision. 


While I generally agree with the 'don't shoot the messenger' thinking ,  @J_PM is our only real point of contact with PM other than the customer support agents.   And we all know they are not the folks to be sharing our displeasure with.

So while I agree no one should be rude or berating to her, there is no one else to make their displeasure and frustrations known to.  Given that, I expect she's capable of handling the tags and knows what her role is and isn't in this massive change.

I'm thinking at some level, this is not easy for her as well, yet she has a job to do.   I cannot imagine drafting and releasing this announcement was a particularly easy one for her to do.

TrustLess
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

Horrible decision. I tried to believe that Public Mobile would hold onto their integrity by not hiking prices and removing rewards once they reached their targeted user base. Guess I was greatly mistaken to have such misguided faith. Not happy with this change at all. 

terrywkw
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

It actually throws an error when I tried to use it actually. But yea unlikely to be honoured. 

golffan
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

@terrywkw wrote:

They even removed the bonus points for voluntarily switching to the new rewards system for people on the old system. Clearly our loyalty is a joke 🤡

 

 


The mobile app *still* has the 1 month = 1 point listed..  Wont be honoured, but the fact its still listed is pretty sad.

C'mon @Slick66 , I know this sucks, but ....

You have $2163 in available funds ... and you're upset?

Some might be happy to have built up such a credit for years of rewards.

 

on2wheels
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

Care to share those screenshots?

terrywkw
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

They even removed the bonus points for voluntarily switching to the new rewards system for people on the old system. Clearly our loyalty is a joke 🤡

 

 

@JJLuke1 great post.  I honeslly think the way this news was presented could have been better.  People would still be upset, but if they came out and didn't try and tell us that this is a good thing and better for us.  Giving us more flexibility and ways to save and just said, due to the increasing costs of the legacy reward program we unfortunately came to the very tough decision that we need to retire it and move everyone over to the Points Reward System.  We plan to give more options and ways to redeem your points and get you as much value with those points you earn!  Something like that might have been a bit better messaging.

 


I am happy to help, but I am not a Customer Support Agent please do not include any personal info in a message to me. Click HERE to create a trouble ticket through SIMon the Chatbot *

Sandblast81
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

Well it was a good run with Public Mobile, time to shop around now that they have degraded the program

jor123
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

Downgrading means missing out on promo plans that likely won't be around in 150 days too 😕


@Zahir_h wrote:

They are shills.  They know full well this is not going to be a significant impact to them because of the amount of points they are getting from PM. 


@Zahir_h this has a huge affect on my family finances with the lines my family has.  Do I think I can find equivalent plans for the same price?  Not hopeful but I will look, as I have done it before when a better offer that worked better for my family was there we took it.  Then came back when it was better back here.

 


I am happy to help, but I am not a Customer Support Agent please do not include any personal info in a message to me. Click HERE to create a trouble ticket through SIMon the Chatbot *

JJLuke1
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

I normally don’t post on this forum, but thought I’d chime in a few points here, albeit from a different angle.

I am a long-term heavily invested Telus shareholder so I understand this move is meant to in theory increase overall average revenue per user (ARPU) by converting a direct discount into extra revenues two ways: 1. By sidelining cash savings to points which need to be applied by the customer, and 2. By squeezing margin from existing customers. Telus with their Optik Internet/TV and Mobile plans do something similar by periodically adjusting their prices to create greater profitability from the existing customer base, churn aside and all else equal.

I strongly feel this decision was made without considering the strategy of what Public Mobile was/is SUPPOSED to be, and this is a knee-jerk reaction from Telus management to overcome their recent performance slumps. By design, PM is positioned to be a higher volume, low cost/margin “fighter” or “flanker” brand, meaning they capture the price-conscious, self-serve types of customers that their other brands (Telus, Koodoo) cannot offer due to their strategies. For the reasons everyone here has explained in their replies, PM customers are very price sensitive. Personally, I moved to PM as I was tired of Telus/Koodo doing their price squeezes and having to deal with their loyalty teams. I do the “bring my own device” plans to maximize my flexibility.

What the previous direct discount model brought Public Mobile, frankly, is “indifference” to other options, which was a brilliant tactic. In other words, the yearly loyalty discount created a price disparity favouring PM and thus customer indifference to other competitor offerings. In many cases, when an appealing offer came up from a competitor, the yearly tabulated loyalty savings created this indifference and thus maintained the revenue streams. I felt I did not want to lose "tenure" to capture a few dollars, knowing full well I'd make it up in the long run with loyalty. This is a user base PM can count on. You may not make everyone happy, but it was an easy and working system. Plus with PM, this was an equitable mechanism for loyalty (short of having incredible negotiating skills with Telus loyalty teams).

Removing these direct discounts now exposes the existing customer (remember, these are price sensitive and generally savvy customers in BYOD situations) in a position to be more elastic and sensitive towards competitor offerings. I wonder how many new customers are required to replace the lifetime revenues of a long term churned customer lost to this change, i.e., those who would have stuck it out four or five years to maximize their discounts. These new customers will only stay as long as they can until something better comes along, and average customer tenure will plummet. Above all else, these customers are not on contracts and can navigate between providers at will.

I realize the PM/Telus folks likely have modelled or analyzed the potential impact of this change. I’m really hoping they did the full math to consider the consequential secondary fallout. I am in a unique position as an investor - I am all for more profits as my yearly Telus dividends exceed what I pay for my family’s phone plans. However, I am gravely concerned and I fear the domino effect of this change, particularly when you consider referrals and loyalty frameworks can begin to collapse and implode, and the new customer base coming in will not have incentive to put in the tenure due to the offerings. This is a fundamental mission misalignment with PM. The margin squeezing strategy can and does work for Telus and maybe Koodo to an extent but will cause some significant uproar with PM and significant, possibly irreparable, collateral damage down the line.

traycer2
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

Well, so much for rewarding customer loyalty, I guess! And on top of that, a "thank you" gift that expires before I'll even need it? Time to consider the competition now.

@Chalupa_Batman I had my phone bill down to $0 before I became an Oracle.  Referrals have moved on but htis affects my family lines as well and that is what I was referring to as why pay more for plans somewhere else just to "prove a point" to Telus.  

I have been fielding calls and text messages all day from referrals and my referrals-referrals so it has been a busy day trying to explain the changes and let them decide if PM is still the place for them.  Not happy with the forced migration but we all knew the day would come when PM would do this.

 


I am happy to help, but I am not a Customer Support Agent please do not include any personal info in a message to me. Click HERE to create a trouble ticket through SIMon the Chatbot *

Burdwood
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

@GKPublic wrote:



So that’s why we were holding out on converting to the new points system, and a bucket of data I don’t need for 150 days isn’t worth anything to me, sadly… unless perhaps I downgrade for a few months?  Anyone considering this?

 


If you read the Points FAQs linked in the OP, they say that you lose your bonus data if you switch plans.

We have one account, in which we have to use up available funds and non-expiring data before porting out, that we'll change plans on. But we won't have that first hand experience until sometime in MAy or June. Sorry.

Zahir_h
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

They are shills.  They know full well this is not going to be a significant impact to them because of the amount of points they are getting from PM. 

Chalupa_Batman
Mayor / Maire

 


@ShawnC13 wrote:

@Korth_ wrote:

@ShawnC13 wrote:
T

@Korth_ yes understandable but until it financially doesn't make sense for me to be with PM I can't justify spending more of my money to prove a point to Telus.  I should have started with great to see you around still!


Not to step on toes @ShawnC13 but your an Oracle. You get a guaranteed 20 points per 30 days for the position which is $20 credit to your account once converted. Plus if you happen to have any referrals which I'm sure you do...   not sure how much of a phone bill you actually have. People who have been here for 5 years or more and have auto pay are losing $7 a month plus any of their referrals that leave due to this. That's a huge financial hit for a lot of people here. 

TheRockGamers1
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

Thanks for the post.  I've added my displeasure. 

ninjastar
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

Or hit them in the pocket and port out...

ninjastar
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

I see some replies are being removed. Wouldn't want to express opinions and show opposition to a sideswipe job. 

GKPublic
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

I’m gutted by this change like most of us are, but I’m going to break down the difference here.  I’m due to earn one more month of the old rewards: $2 autopay, $2 refer a friend, $5 loyalty (just rolled over to $5 from $4 ☹️)  = $9.

 New Public Points: 2 points refer a friend, 1.7 points (5% of $34) , about 0.83 points per month paid out on the anniversary date = 4.53 points per month, roughly $4.50 in value.  

So for me, the new Public Points are half as good, which isn’t that bad, but my referred family members fare worse with the dropping of the autopay bonus.  

My bill is rising from $25 to about $29.50, but in another important way, Public Points are worse: it’s not immediately discounted, so I have to pay $34 plus tax instead of $25 plus tax, then remember to use the points periodically.  A good proportion of people will forget about them or not know how to redeem them.  Use them or not, we’re paying sales taxes on a higher base.  

So that’s why we were holding out on converting to the new points system, and a bucket of data I don’t need for 150 days isn’t worth anything to me, sadly… unless perhaps I downgrade for a few months?  Anyone considering this?

 

Zahir_h
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

The tags on the OP are great which are being added by users, and PM mods keep having to delete / remove them 🤣

fixin
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire

@teatime_54321 wrote:

I’ll add that it’s ironic that just 1 week ago the federal government tried to summon the CEOs of Bell, Rogers, and Telus (Public Mobile and sister Koodo’s parent company)  about Canadians paying too much for internet prices.

Telus was hush hush at the time with executive quotes about “not banking on” immediate price increases. 1 week later Public Mobile is ditching their legacy rewards increasing the bills the most for people on their most affordable plans, and Koodo is increasing the price of their $29 Black Friday from just a few months ago. Bell and Rogers got grilled about their price increases but looks like Telus gets a free pass unless people go to the press and MPs about this. 


Yes, they do get a free pass, but they can be summoned forcefully for a meeting. Also, Telus's loyalty discounts make us stay for PureFibre Internet + Optik TV.

teatime_54321
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

I’ll add that it’s ironic that just 1 week ago the federal government tried to summon the CEOs of Bell, Rogers, and Telus (Public Mobile and sister Koodo’s parent company)  about Canadians paying too much for internet prices.

Telus was hush hush at the time with executive quotes about “not banking on” immediate price increases. 1 week later Public Mobile is ditching their legacy rewards increasing the bills the most for people on their most affordable plans, and Koodo is increasing the price of their $29 Black Friday from just a few months ago. Bell and Rogers got grilled about their price increases but looks like Telus gets a free pass unless people go to the press and MPs about this. 

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