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

[jessicapublic]

I've been using public mobile for such a long time, and then this happens. I messaged them about the plan and all they said was they're changing the plan and nothing can be done.  What a let down.

[inah_1305]

I message the chatbot and asked if they could change my plan to the $29 coz i only use around 10-15gb , but ofcourse they were not able to. i have a $24 voucher that was left over from the $50 voucher i loaded coz my credit card was about to expire.So my plan now is to downgrade my $34 plan to the $15, so that i can use all the minutes and data that was gifted on  holidays.Then i will go to Pc mobile or lucky mobile ,atleast i can talk to a real customer service.Will also move my mum .

[KeithBOT]

Extremely disappointed. This is not good for the subscribers no matter how you spin it.

[ily]

Is that even allowed from an accessibility standpoint?

[Canadian_Maples]

There's gotta be a better solution than this. Your loyal customers help build this company. 

[Lonetreejim]

Remember when the PM trade-off was slow, online customer support via an impersonal chatbot offset by auto-pay and loyalty bonuses that reduced our bill every month.

Not anymore.  Now all we have is slow, online customer support via an impersonal chatbot.

PM’s rates are practically the same price as various plans on Lucky, Chatr, PC Mobile, Freedom, Koodo, Fido and Virgin.  I signed up with Lucky yesterday for their $29/25GB plan.

I had a question about how my activation date would be handled.  They have a phone number on their website, I called it, and had an answer in a few minutes.  Talked to a real person!

Oh, and 240GB of data that expires in 6 months for a guy that has not yet used his Christmas gift data from 2 or 3 years ago is no compensation whatsoever.

In any case, unless something changes this week, I’ll be gone next Saturday.

[NotABot]

Why don't you just show how big a loss to low fee monthly plan subscribers??

With the point system,

1. $2 auto-pay saving is gone. It is replaced with 5% point back. Unless it is $20 plan, the points back is less than $1 now!

2. the loyalty reward is gone. How can you explain a multi-year loyalty saving is same as your 10 points for 1 year?? You don't even count the people stay longer than 1 year?! Everyone should leave after 1 year because next year points start to count from 0 to 10 again.

This is a shameless self-glorying action. If you want to steal my money, you just say it loud! You should be saying you are doing me a favor! You are not! I am outrageous. I don't fear your retribution because you don't care a customer stayed with you for years. Yes you saved me money in the past, but now you just want it back! Say it loud! Tell everyone how this point system works, and you don't offer $2 auto-pay rewards, and you don't have loyal rewards any more!

The only way to get points is,

1. Refer more friends - why would we? PM didn't offer attractive low-cost monthly plan any more.

2. Help more in the community - maybe. I will tell anyone who is puzzled by the new point system if they are coming from legacy reward program.

I am heart-broken.

[NotABot]

This is a good way to fight PM's point system! For my lost auto pay saving and loyalty saving!

[TD555]

Downgrade my rewards, increase my bill. I never have a thought to leave but not any more. With all the bundle promotion, sales, rewards... there are better deal out there. Boo!

[Plexiglas4606]

This is a bait and switch. Very typical of Canadian telecom companies to engage in predatory marketing.

[Caniss]

I only received a text message.

[public_999]

Yep, my $10 plan should have been $3 by now.  It will become $13 in May.  

[public_999]

FAQ says starting May 1st, ambiguity at it's finest lol!

[ninjastar]

Why wait? Other companies are offering similar or cheaper. My $50 plan here is $34 with PC Mobile under the Bell infrastructure. I collect PC points anyway and they actually have a customer service phone number. Check out there new plans and perks. 

[Wolfcore]

@hTideGnow 

Whether it succeeds or not doesn't matter. I don't expect them to reverse course. The whole point is just to create consequences for them due to their actions, and to hopefully prevent others from falling for their outright lies in the future. Why you would not want them to be exposed further, baffles me.

That being said, back in 2018 I laughed at plenty of people as well. People who said "why are you bothering, they can do whatever they want!". Some people don't understand the power that even a tiny group of people can have on these companies. Destruction of reputation is a real thing, and companies don't like to deal with that negative attention. Once they start seeing the press talk about it, and customers leaving, and CCTS complaints, they start to think a little different.

[Caniss]

I am still on that  $10/ $13 plan which will cost me $7 more now.  

[PBForMe1]

Because of this I'm starting to port some of my friends and families lines and I just noticed Public Mobile doesn't even let you copy the account number, its hidden behind a tooltip that's impossible to copy so you have to do it manually and its very easy to make a mistake as the number is really long. Brilliant stuff, I'm sure that wasn't done intentionally to make porting out more difficult. 

[Caniss]

Telus is upgrading their 5G network and getting rid of the cheaper Huawei gear, which is going to cost a lot of money $$$.

TELUS to supercharge its 5G network using Samsung’s vRAN 3.0 and Open RAN solutions – improving performance, energy efficiency and flexibility for future enhancements.

TELUS’ bold approach to embrace a multi-vendor Open RAN brownfield deployment leverages other ecosystem collaborations as well. Cloud infrastructure will be provided by Wind River, tapping the company’s experience in real-time operating systems and cloud-native, distributed edge platforms. Additionally, Hewlett Packard Enterprise will deliver HPE ProLiant DL110 Gen11 servers featuring 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor with Intel vRAN Boost, that are workload optimized for Open RAN while being open and flexible, providing the foundation for a Distributed Unit (DU).

https://www.telus.com/en/about/news-and-events/media-releases/telus-partners-with-samsung-to-build-c...

[Wolfcore]

Again, you're not saying anything special. We all know the same things that you know with your "years of experience and knowledge". This is very common stuff. 

Whether a winnable lawsuit is possible or not, doesn't even matter. It doesn't even have to get to that point. It didn't get to that point in 2018, yet PM still reversed course. Back then you would have been one of those people telling others to just shut up and accept it (as you are now), and by doing that, you'd just be giving PM more power (as you are now). PM wants people to think that they have no power, because if they think that, they win. You come off as a shill trying to protect them, and whether this is true or not, I have no idea, but your actions across every post appear this way.

If people just give up (like you're encouraging them to do), then PM auto-wins, with no consequences. They'll continue to lie to their customers in the future, and this is not something that I support. So I will continue to encourage people to voice their frustration, and call PM out for what they have done with their misleading and outright deception, in the form of advertising.

[hTideGnow]

hi @mikasik2 whenever you have 15 points, cash out for $15 bill credit 

[mikasik2]

So what's the first thing you will all buy with your points?

[Caniss]

Your also losing $2 per month for Autopay.

Loss ot Loyalty is a big loss ($5) for many who joined PM when it first started   Loyalty means nothing. So people will start looking for cheaper alternatives.

[softech]

hi @Douglar unfortunately that is true and that is what this oat from PM about 

[Douglar]

Ridiculous that you are changing a reward program for existing customers that have been with you long term...

[hTideGnow]

hi @Patrick_PM yes, the main loss is loyalty

but.. add back 10 points in anniversary date, so, that helps around $0.8 per month 

[Patrick_PM]

I figure this was coming when Public Mobile launched the points reward system over 2 years ago. It didn’t make much sense for them to continue running 2 reward system concurrently. I’m somewhat surprised it took them this long.

I’m currently on their $40 plan and under their old reward system, I’m getting the following discounts each month:

$5 - Loyalty (over 5 years)

$2 - Autopay / Subscriber

$2 - Referral

So under the points system, I think I will be getting the following

2 points - 5% on $40 plan

2 points - 2 referrals

0.83 points - 10 points for anniversary

If my understanding of the point system is correct, my discount drops from $9 per month to $4.83 per month?

The largest hit under the “new” point system is Public Mobile lessened the recognition of customers who have been with them for years. You will get 10 points whether you reached your 1st year anniversary or 10th year anniversary.

Under the old system, the rewards were far more generous for “loyalty” with $12 credit after first year then $24 credit after 2 years and so on until your 5th anniversary where it is capped at $60 credit

[EdN]

Loyalty to Public Mobile means nothing.

If you don't have a lot of referral points look elsewhere YMMV

[LTD2023]

Sorry..no one is exempt. They are changing everyone over to points.

[dabr]

@Sue-s1   Sorry, starting sometime in May/2024, no-one will be exempt from being (mandatorily) converted to the new points system.

[hTideGnow]

hi @Wolfcore call it years of experience and have knowledge in business and a bit on the legal side. 

Consumers always think they have all the right in the world.  They do, they have the right to complain, make noise.  And businesses always have their legal right to make change to the business as well.  

 Also remember, rewards system is not within   CRTC mobile guidelines. The only guidelines from CRTC related with affordable plans is thay Postpaid providers have to offer the  $15 plan.  Remember, postpad.  Prepaid providers dont even have this obligation

It is a harsh fact to swallow.  I want you all to win too as I suffer as much as everyone here. But I don't put my hope high on something we have no legal ground on