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

[Gimli007]

excellent!  Thanks for your continued support of the community.  Too bad PM doesn't recognize that.

[hTideGnow]

hi @Psygineer I guess it would help if PM life the restrictions and let people have access to those new activation only plans, and give people some bargain plana between $15 and $25.  People are mad at losing the legacy rewards, but they will be easier if they have better plans or have a plan that is only $2 or. 3bmore instead of stuck on the same plan with $7 increase 

[TGK]

You are increasing the cost of service to many of your loyal customers and not really giving anything of value in return.  Why don't you at least do the decent thing and give your customers a decent block of data that doesn't expire.

[dariovitale]

@J_PM why are you and your management not responding to all your important legendary customers concerns about the cancellation of the legacy rewards plan out in the open on the community page?? As well why are your agents not responding to private messages? Don't look good in our eyes right now. 

[Gimli007]

huh?  you think Im going to collect all the phones once a month to use the app..  come now.

[ShawnC13]

@Gimli007 oh beleive me we are speaking up against this.  We have an Oracle area with an active thread on this topic as well.  Not only are the Oracles adding theing concerns and issues with how this is being handled we are highlighting important issues that are being brought up in this thread by providing direct links to specific posts as I am not sure PM is even actually reading every post in this thread.

[hTideGnow]

hi @Gimli007 use the app. The new app is quite powerful 

[Hollister]

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@RetiredGuy1 wrote:

If “greater flexibility” is a value that PM wants to use to promote the new points program, why will they not apply that same guiding value to the availability of plans? At the moment, existing customers cannot get the $24/$29 4G plans but new customers (who never contributed to PMs growth to date) can.

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There is no loyalty when it comes to plans anymore. Have a look at all the other telecom companies. The best deals are for new activations. 

[Psygineer]

I wasn't saying the points system wasn't equitable, I am saying the plans being locked to new vs existing isn't equitable (and the humour caught me that saying that on a thread about complaining about eliminating the inequity between the rewards system was ironic). How much would it really hurt to have offered the $24 4G 4GB deal to existing for example? Those still on provincial may be tempted to move up for the sake of data (none on plan), texting (non on plan), Canada-wide (only provincial on plan) and 4G. So that would gain $4 per user who does that. It may even draw up those on limited plans below that. The risk though is the $25 3G 1GB users might switch and cost PM $1 per 30 days, and need to provide them with the better package. Every 1 on the the $20 plan that went up, would offset 4 who went down, so I think it would somewhat balance out and even if it didn't it would still have made the existing members happier and more likely to refer.

Edit: Anyway, I will stop replying now, don't want to derail this!

[Gimli007]

wouldnt it be nice to be on a provider that you can manage the services from 1 interface instead of friggin logging through Ever-maybe-safe 5 6 10 times over.

especially now that you will need to do that on a monthly to "claim" the pittance rewards

[ShawnC13]

@edeepm , the only true way for this to change is to introduce REAL Competition in the Canadian markets.  Allow the Big US providers to come in here and see what they can offer, give the small guys a fair chance to compete that is what will get us change.

[Gimli007]

Well... i dont much care for the crazy quebeccurs.... but i ordered a sim from them anyway.

going to try them out for 6 months on a 50Gb data only plan to replace terrestrial internet (DSL)

post "beta" plan cost = $21 vs $71 for 50meg unlimited DSL.   speed should be faster too....

this will be static in sauga in a well served Freedom / Rogers area.

[Raj1_Luna]

I will be moving to freedom mobile with 24 dollar 4GB.unless public mobile switch my current plan

[ShawnC13]

@Public_Cust_17 my line was free before I became and Oracle with my referrals I got so yes it will impact my line less but that could change if many leave, but it does impact my other lines with PM that I manage and pay for

[hTideGnow]

hi @LTD2023 those plans for new or not keep changing.  And in fact, almost no more 4G speed plans now, just 5G

[RetiredGuy1]

If “greater flexibility” is a value that PM wants to use to promote the new points program, why will they not apply that same guiding value to the availability of plans? At the moment, existing customers cannot get the $24/$29 4G plans but new customers (who never contributed to PMs growth to date) can.

[Shelly1919]

I fully agree with your comment.  Time to shop around again.

[LTD2023]

Isn't the 4g plans only for 'new activations'?

[ShawnC13]

@Psygineer, segregation isn't a good thing when it comes to this, but this current system isn't equity for all members either.  $2 off a $15 plan is 13% discount yet $2 off of $40 is only 5% that is not equitable.  Saying someone on the $40 plan can afford it and doesn't need as big of a discount doesn't work as well because they may require the services that you can only get at that price point.

[Psygineer]

Eh? Lucky's portal is badly coded (or was). Just be careful with their auto-pay and using payment cards. It will ignore your balance and bill your credit card anyway. I did a trial run on their for my mother as her PM account had terrible reception (3G) and they had a Dollarama gift card offer that more or less refunded most of the cost of giving them a try. However, after making the initial payment on the credit card, I loaded the voucher I bought at the same time from Dollarama and let it go, assuming it would pull from existing first. and that it would be good for 3 months. It didn't and billed the second month at the full rate before discounts and ignored the balance on account. How their system seems to work, is it takes the payment before any discounts, then drops the difference into your balance for next time. However, it never draws from the balance automatically, you have to manually tell it to use it every time. So ultimately what happened was the $60 plan that was on sale for $15 for new members for 3 months. Billed the full $60 for the second month... so basically forced me to stay with their service for 6 months despite not using it.
Also the plan advertised unlimited over limit data at a slower rate, however, it never worked. It just shut off and would text you to buy more data. Calling support, they said despite it being advertised on all plans, it is only on select plans. That might be different now, this was a year ago. Also support would not refund the payment as it said it was authorized since the account had auto-pay on. 

[Shelly1919]

I stayed with Public Mobile, because of the amazing rewards program.  After the change to the rewards program I will be looking at other carriers.  I don’t use my phone much and paying full price for what I have doesn’t look appealing anymore.  I am not a big data user, so the additional data isn’t as special to me for being a loyal customer.  It’s seems like I will be losing more on the new rewards program than what I already have.  My loyalty is definitely wavering.

[dariovitale]

Fizz is owned by Quebecor (decades old Videotron in Quebec, recently purchased Vmedia and Freedom Mobile) and Quebecor is owned by Quebec separatist Pierre Karl Peladeau and his dad since decades. They fund the PQ which means money from customers. Plus Fizz seems to have their issues as well in terms of coverage and signal strength limited on Rogers and Co networks. THEREFORE if you are a Anglophone, especially us here in Quebec who knows Anglo rights have always been **bleep** on by the past PQ and current PQ disguised CAQ goverments, some of us never have or will sign up for any Quebecor service. 

[Robbwell]

You are missing the second and third words of my short comment .... "annual cost" --- not $161 per month.

[Public_Cust_17]

@ShawnC13as an Oracle here I would suggest that this impacts you to a much lesser degree than that of a senior or financially burdened customer that's about to lose up to $7/month in exchange for a 5% rebate on their bill which for anyone interested would be equivalent to a whole $.75/mth for anyone on the $15 plan. 

[ShawnC13]

@Wolfcore, I am not saying to feel bad for Telus at all and again know this is worse for the customer and financially affects every Legacy Reward Customer.  Companies aren't around to take care of Customers, the provide a product or service and their goal is to maximize profit.    If we want change a petitiont stop this switch isn't enough, we need real competition in the Canadian Market.  That is the only thing that will change things around here.

[Marchibald56]

I just came to sat lucky mobile/chatr are other viable options to consider as public mobile cuts of their nose in spite of their face....

[public_999]

FM also allows you to change to their new offerings as well.  You sort of always could but you had to ask. I think it was Nov or Dec that I noticed the special offer "just for you" when logging into my account.  Changed 2 of my accounts to one of their new accounts and even got the 24 month bring your own device promo offered to new customers. (showed on invoice 2 mths later). Same owner as Fizz.  That was how FM got their customers to give up lucrative permanent discounts.  Win Win

[Gimli007]

My god - the dropped calls are getting worse and worse.

10 mins into a call - and gone.

i saw really quickly a flash on the screen " cannot connect to server "  PM guinea piggin us with VoLTE?

[Marchibald56]

I'm considering lucky mobile 

[Gimli007]

so... as a customer - you should be speaking out against it.  You are first and foremost a customer and community member.  Love that you and your counterparts are part of the knowledge base here - but that is all coming to an end - believe me.  PM will be assimilated if this legacy program gets dropped as planned.