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

[maurelle]

@eyes wrote:

Let’s not be hasty…… don’t forget that the reward dollars will be converted to points that may be used towards paying your plan. In your case plans. 

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You are kidding, right? On the low cost low usage plans you have to pay full price for a full year before you get even close to the 15point threshold for redeeming points to available funds.

There is absolutely nothing hasty in our decisions - the port-out(s) would have happened eventually anyway. Public Mobile, in their infinite wisdom, just gave us a clear date.

Because of considerably diminishing call quality and reliability on my former Public Mobile referral's lines, we've been testing networks for several months last year. Where those phones are used most, Freedom is equal and in some spots even outperforming Telus/Public Mobile (same phones, same places, same times - to make it as fair of a comparison as possible we even used phones for the tests that are whitelisted by Public Mobile... {Freedom doesn't block any phone from using features like VoLTE, as long as the phone supports them. PM does.}).

As of early this year the only thing that kept these accounts at Public Mobile was the price after $ rewards. These accounts didn't have referrals, just auto pay and loyalty rewards.

Public Mobile with legacy rewards: (12 x $13 plan cost) - (12 x $2 auto pay) - (12 x $5 loyalty) = $72/360days actual payments

Public Mobile on Points: 12 x $13 plan cost = $156/360days actual payments... Only after 365 days, after application of the $10 extra points will there be >15 points to redeem to available funds.

Public Mobile's $10$13 plan, that these people were on before porting, includes 50 minutes CW in and out, 50 texts out, unlimited incoming texts, no data. *

Freedom's lower yearly plan has unlimited calls (in and out), unlimited text (in and out) plus 15GB/year for $119/year. $9.92/1.25GB/month. More than the current $6 at PM, but $3 less for considerably more features (and, for these particular customers, better service overall) come May.

I've said it time and again: Freedom is not for everyone. But in the case of the accounts I help(ed) manage it was/is a no-brainer for both cost and reliability/quality.

* The math is not significantly better on the still available $15 plan (100 minutes out, unlimited in, unlimited text in and out, 0.25GB). As of May (12 x $15) = $180/360days actual cost. A whooping 9 points accumulated - again, the earliest you can redeem $15 to available funds is after day 365 when you get the 10 loyalty points... That is, as long as they stick with the current conversion of 1 point = $1...

If you compare similar features: It's Public Mobile's $25/30 days for unlimited talk & text and 1GB vs Freedom's $119/year = $9.92/month for unlimited talk & text and 1.25GB... Even with 15points = $15 converted at the end of the year, PM is more than double the price. For, in our cases, comparable network quality.

[RetiredGuy1]

Looks like Fizz has become an early mover among the competition to take advantage of PMs self-implosion. They’ve launched new intro prices that stay as long as you keep the plan without any price increase in the future. 

$19 2GB

$21 3GB

$22 6GB

$23 10GB

$25 20GB

$27 30GB

$29 40GB

Fizz uses Freedom’s network so you get out from the clutches of the Big 3. Data rollover (up to 2 months) is a client-focused feature that PM could learn from. They also have data sharing and a rewards program (which is a bit too complex for me to articulate but it exists nonetheless). It should be noted Fizz coverage is currently limited primarily to urban areas in ON and QC and Edm and Cgy (per their coverage map).

[ShawnC13]

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@NoseyNick1 wrote:

I believe you're reading someone's post correctly, except they misunderstood the easily-misunderstood PM website. Mine says "you could earn 1pt/mo" for referrals NOT because it's a cap, but because I have 1 referral reward right now.

I don't work for PM, don't take my word for it, this post is not gospel, but I THINK the cap is still 5 referrals. The confusingly-worded PM points site seems to tell us how many we HAVE NOW (presumably max 5)

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@NoseyNick1 referrals have never been capped at a MAX of 5  I am down to 10 currently on my account but I know of others with way more.

[RetiredGuy1]

Fair enough. But I think unless you know this individual personally, neither one of us can really be sure

[colleeno]

I am sure the majority of the 136 are not friends or even acquaintances. When I became a PM customer in 2019, I used a referral code that was advertised on Kijiji just so I could get the $10 credit. At that time, I think the referrer also received $10 as well as the $1 per month so it was quite lucrative to advertise codes wherever you could. There are Reddit groups for posting codes.

[RetiredGuy1]

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@colleeno wrote:

The maximum number of referrals is 110 according to the attached comment. I have seen a comment in this thread that showed a screenshot of a subscriber’s account, and they had over $2000 in unused credits. 

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Wow, and I mean this sincerely - 136 referrals is quite impressive! Just imagine if this one subscriber decided to leave and the other 136 decided to follow in solidarity. 

[colleeno]

The maximum number of referrals is 110 according to the attached comment. I have seen a comment in this thread that showed a screenshot of a subscriber’s account, and they had over $2000 in unused credits. 

[Yatti4201]

No they will not. This is a Telus decision for sure. Everyone should move to Freedom and get away from the big 3 until they commit to truly lower our prices below every other major nation. Canada should have some of the cheapest telco costs in the world - not the higest. Trudeau loves this move! Its a DEI decision. After the switch we will all be the same. Equality at its finest lol

[NoseyNick1]

I believe you're reading someone's post correctly, except they misunderstood the easily-misunderstood PM website. Mine says "you could earn 1pt/mo" for referrals NOT because it's a cap, but because I have 1 referral reward right now.

I don't work for PM, don't take my word for it, this post is not gospel, but I THINK the cap is still 5 referrals [EDIT: MAYBE NOT - SEE LATER POST!]. The confusingly-worded PM points site seems to tell us how many we HAVE NOW

[Tiffiny124]

My referrals are my kids whose bill I pay and my mom, brother. Should be 6 but when I read recently with the changes it’s going to cap at 4. Maybe I read it wrong. 

[wruoca]

Certainly not happy with the coming change as a long time customer. With so many complaints, will PM consider cancel the change?

[RetiredGuy1]

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@softech wrote:

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@RetiredGuy1 wrote:

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Conclusion

In light of our assessment of the complaint and Public Mobile’s objection, we have concluded that the complaint does not meet the requirements of the Procedural Code; falls outside of the scope of our mandate.

Therefore, we have proceeded to close the complaint further to section 4.3 of our Procedural Code.

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I don't like losing the legacy rewards like everyone here.  But putting aside my personal interest, I have to say they made the right call 

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Yes, they made the “right” call when taking into consideration the parameters of their mandate. However, as the telecoms fund the CCTS to begin with, their impartiality can reasonably be drawn into question. Lets face it, PM would not have changed the rewards program without knowing they had a rock-solid legal basis to do so. Not to beat a dead horse, but it shouldn’t take away from the fact they went ahead and willingly made a decision they knew would upset their customers and cause an as-yet unknown number to leave. Of course, it also signifies that they just don’t care which, frankly, is a bizarre way to conduct business.

[Gruumine]

I have already moved myself and my family ( 4 lines total ) to another provider whos rate are same as PM + old reward system rate.

I could have complained to PM and all that but I know in life your wallet speaks louder than your words…

I suggest to everyone out there, find a new provider and move on. This is the only way.

[Matty1234]

So finally setup my transfer:

Public Mobile message: We've received a request to transfer this phone number to another service provider. To approve this request, please reply "Yes". By replying Yes, you agree to transfer your number to the new provider and your Public Mobile service will be disconnected. If you did not request this transfer, please reply "No". Please note that you must respond within 90 minutes. If we don't receive a response within this time, the request will be automatically cancelled. Thank you. 

Been a Public Mobile customer since Sept 2018:

 

Not a great move to treat your customers like this. 

[NoseyNick1]

> Who wants to bet the average electricity and bandwidth required to provide traffic to a cell user on the $15 plan amounts to less than $8/m.

Oh you kidding? It will be pennies. In UK I can get a pay-as-you-go SIM with 10GB from any number of the smaller carriers, for just over $8 (5GBP) one-off payment (NOT monthly), and the 10GB will last for a year. If i pretend it was an annual plan, that's, what, 3x the data for 1/10th of the price, NOT counting the SIM being essentially free instead of $10.

I could LOSE a SIM every month, (clumsy?) with 95% data still left on it, and still be cheaper than PM, never mind Bell/Rogers/Telus.

We get completely shafted by Canadian cell companies.   😞

[Wolfcore]

Maybe, but I don't think it really matters regardless. It'll still take you 4 years of being with PM, to save the same amount of money that you'd save in 10 months with Lucky. 

Gotta remember too, that in order for somebody to abuse that system, their referral would have to port out first, in order to be referred and ported back in. Lucky knows many people won't want to do this. Even still, Lucky knows what they're doing, and they've clearly done the math, and to them, it's worth $100, to have 2 people paying phone plans for 10 months. So even if you referred the same person, they may not care.

But yeah, don't think it really matters. Maybe they have a guard in place, maybe they don't. The guard could be as simple as blocking a phone number from being re-referred for a year, who knows. Don't think it really changes much. It's still objectively better than PM in nearly every metric.

[fixin1]

We have attention that some wikipedia users noted this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Mobile

[JohnDoe3]

I believe this amounts to "citation needed". Please when making claims about what service is or is not provided, cite the source so that people can readily verify the claim.

[JohnDoe3]

They must have some guards against re-use. I could totally see people dumping the referrals after 10 months have scored in, only to turn around and get re-referred again.

[softech]

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@RetiredGuy1 wrote:

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Conclusion

In light of our assessment of the complaint and Public Mobile’s objection, we have concluded that the complaint does not meet the requirements of the Procedural Code; falls outside of the scope of our mandate.

Therefore, we have proceeded to close the complaint further to section 4.3 of our Procedural Code.

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I don't like losing the legacy rewards like everyone here.  But putting aside my personal interest, I have to say they made the right call 

[JohnDoe3]

Record number could be a consequence of immigration distributing over 1M new residents in under a year. Odds are a sizable share of those will land on PM without having to do anything special to win them over.

Put another way. New subscribers is not as good a metric of competitive quality as number of phone numbers ported in vs ported out.

[softech]

@JohnDoe3 

but at the same time, Telus has record number of mobile subscribers in the last quarter.  Over 10 millions have their confidence with Telus mobile family:)

[B-red_]

I am going to have to look elsewere.

First you take away my abillity to send a picture by text and now you screw with your rewards system.

Time to look elsewhere.

[JohnDoe3]

Fundamental problem with depending on referrals is those referrals also have to see the value in what you're selling them on. Kneecapping the incentive outside referrals just enables customers to drift elsewhere, and once it makes a marginal difference, then you know it's time to switch things up. Case in point... the FM annual is a great value at $119/y unlimited t&t 15gb. Average $9.92/m. As long as my referrals keep me under that, I'm better off here, but my referrals will be going up to nearly full cost. If enough referrals move on and my cost climbs over $9.92/m, then regardless of how many referrals I have left, I'm better off switching as well.

[JohnDoe3]

Only the maximum price for the set service level. The telcos were required to offer a plan with at least the specified service level for at most the specified price. Meeting that is the bare minimum they could get away with. They could optionally reduce the cost or raise the service to try to compete with the others. PM opted to reduce the cost. The others opted to raise the service.

[JohnDoe3]

Who wants to bet the average electricity and bandwidth required to provide traffic to a cell user on the $15 plan amounts to less than $8/m.

[JohnDoe3]

I wonder what happened in early 2022 to cause such a decline in shareholder confidence... 🤣

[JohnDoe3]

The fun part is for whatever they sold it for... They're fully equipped to just spin up another competitor. They already have the resources and the experience. Where are the original creators of public mobile, and what would it take to recruit them into mentoring some tech geeks.

[ily]

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@ily wrote:

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@ily wrote:

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@ily wrote:

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@ily wrote:

Here are the steps I'm taking in response to this horrific announcement:

1. Contact customer service expressing my deep dissatisfaction and asking to opt out of this forced migration. This is basically my attempt to resolve the issue with the provider, as per CCTS guidelines.
2. Mark March 18th on my calendar: if the issue isn't resolved by then, I will file a CCTS complaint.
3. Mark May 1st on my calendar: if I'm forced to the new points system, I will immediately port out!

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Update: CS Agent got back to me saying that there's no way to stay on the legacy rewards program; no surprises there. In other words, the provider wasn't able to resolve the issue. Moving on to step 2. I'll keep y'all posted.

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Update: I submitted a CCTS complaint. Now I'm just gonna sit back and watch closely until end of April. I'll also be doing some research to find my next provider, although I already have a good idea with who I'll likely end up.

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Update: CCTS got back to me 2 weeks ago saying that they accepted my complaint and that they notified PM and asked them to contact me in order to resolve the issue. If the issue isn't resolved after 20 days, they will take further action.

The ball's in your court now PM, and has been for 2 weeks now. Whenever you're ready.

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Update: As was the case for many of your CCTS complaints, PM objected to mine. I got a response from the CCTS saying that they reject PM's objection and that my complaint remains open.

Way to go CCTS!

[HALIMACS]

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@hTideGnow wrote:

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@HALIMACS wrote:

Many users on this thread seem to have expressed that they declined public mobiles objection.

I wonder if Public Mobile stepped it up a notch and provided the CCTS with additional relevant information upon which to make a differing determination.

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HI @HALIMACS this is normal how these complaints work.  Those agencies usually won't not reject the complaints  right away. 

Totally get that @hTideGnow .  They actually can outright dismiss it if it's conclusively determined to be outside the scope of the acts or legislation or reach of their powers.  But yes, they always find a soft way to say 'no' or a fancy way to refer a complainant to other avenues.

They will accept it and let both sides has another chance to work out something or reconfirm their position.  If you are lucky, they will let it drag on couple rounds before they reject it

here, the idea is clear, the lost of rewards saving is not a price hike , so PM has the legal reason to make rewards change

And even if it WAS a plan price hike, they can still do that as well - risking losing customers, however.  

tha's also how many businesses get around.  They will offer you some plan and throw in free staff.  One day, they will say the free staff (features) no longer free and they need to charge you for that.  Again, this is not a change to the plan they originally offer , so, they can do it with legal ground

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