Upcoming Changes to our Old Rewards Program

[J_PM]

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

[hoyjoygang]

In case you were looking for the CCTS link:

https://www.ccts-cprst.ca/for-consumers/complaints/complaint-form/

[fixin]

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@Slick66 wrote:

I guess I do get to keep it . . . 

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That will last you over two years ($65 plan)

[sheytoon]

There's a way to contact the general manager who is in charge, but every time I tried to post his name, my message gets deleted 🙄

[Wolfcore]

I'll have to manually go through thousands of screenshots on my phone, but I'll definitely try. It's been a while, but if I remember correctly, they tried to mess with our rewards a few years ago too, and it caused people to react just like this. People were posting screenshots of private messages with agents, posting website advertisements/descriptions about them promising to keep it forever, and how this was now false advertising, etc. This was all over Redflagdeals, and this forum. 

I'm sure others will remember this better than me. Regardless, I'll try searching for the images on my phone, and also search online for those old discussions (assuming they're still around).

Edit: Ahh, I remember now. It wasn't actually to do with the rewards. It was to do with a plan from back in 2016. They told everybody that they'd be able to keep this price forever, and that it would never change. Claimed "no surprises". Even their advertising for the plan didn't imply any fine print, so people really fought back. Lots of reporting to regulatory bodies, lots of screenshots being posted, etc. If you scroll down in this article, you can read about it a bit:

https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/2018/02/15/public-mobile-40-4gb-plan-increase-koodo/

But there was definitely also something that went on with the rewards too. I think it was during the time that they first introduced the new rewards system. My memory is just foggy.

[Possiblysomeone]

Very displeased,

I suspect they will go back slightly, giving legacy users a slightly better "deal" than currently being forced, as is commonly the tactic.

Not thank you for the useless chunk of data I don't use. 

[terrywkw]

At least we know where the extra money they're charging from all of us is going 😉

Gotta appreciate the transparency!

[Brode]

Way to shoot yourselves in the foot. The old program is the only reason I've stayed with PM over the years. Unless you've got some better plans coming I'll be switching. It was good while it lasted.

[HALIMACS]

I'm certain it's "all hands on deck" in the PM world.

That's for certain @terrywkw 

[terrywkw]

They are lucky they only have an upvote button lol 🤣

[terrywkw]

I mean this whole fiasco is a PR nightmare to begin with, so I'm not at all surprised they are in full damage control mode. 

[HALIMACS]

Good point @dabr !!

If prior posts promising legacy reward holders would not be switched are being removed after the fact, that's lower than low.   That's damage control in action, folks.

I do hope Public Mobile is NOT doing that.   

However, this is their forum, their site.   They completely own it's content.

Not much surprises me... and I've only been around here a few years.

[Michael6666]

Pc mobile is offering 29$ for 25gb Canada wide with 10% back in points with their credit card and 20000 points after 2 months.

If these legacy rewards disappear, I'm already set on a cheaper plan with better rewards! 😊

[Zahir_h]

They are likely cleaning out and deleting these posts, as there was no disclaimer.  And they don't want us using as leverage to complain to CCTS.

But I'm sure that if anyone is willing to keep pressing and file a law suit or a class action, a request for discovery for saved backups of the forum can be asked for and reviewed 

[HALIMACS]

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]

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@hTideGnow wrote:

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@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. 😅

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HI @LizfromCanada 

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

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

[dabr]

@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]

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@HALIMACS wrote:

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@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. 

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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.

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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]

Just moved my mom to freedom mobile 

[HALIMACS]

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@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. 

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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]

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]

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

[golffan]

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@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 🤡

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

[Zahir_h]

https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/2024/03/06/public-mobile-end-rewards-program-may/

https://forums.redflagdeals.com/public-mobile-retiring-their-old-rewards-program-may-2024-2679876/

[HALIMACS]

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]

Care to share those screenshots?

[terrywkw]

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 🤡

[ShawnC13]

@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.

[Sandblast81]

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

[jor123]

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

[ShawnC13]

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@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. 

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@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.