Update on support

[Dave_M]

Hello Community,

I want to give you an update on where we are at right now, since the last time I did so was last week. 

First, I want to start off by thanking you all for the continued patience and support you have demonstrated over the last two weeks. We realize many of you have had no service or incomplete service for days now and I apologize for this. I can assure you that our entire team is working tirelessly to get through the backlog as fast as possible and as effectively as possible.

To manage your expectations, you should know that our current average time to first response is 12 days. That means that as I write this, we are answering customer messages that were submitted on Friday, Nov 19^th, 2016.

Our system pools all Community posts, private messages to the MODS, and social media messages into one feed, and we are working through each of these in chronological order – first in, first out. This way we address the issues that have been going on the longest. Again, we appreciate your patience.

The high level of interest in our promotional plan also brought to light some fractures in our systems and opportunities to improve our support. We will be doing an in-depth review of lessons learned once we’re done going through customer support requests, but in the meantime, I wanted to share some of the most obvious opportunities we have identified:

• A ticketing system for customer support inquiries that acknowledges receipt of your issue, provides a ticket number upon receipt, lets you know where you are in queue and when you can expect to hear back from a moderator
• A cleaner way to organize tickets by type of issue so we can better prioritize
• Activating and porting simultaneously failed for a greater percentage of customers than we had seen before so a group of colleagues from our technology team are investigating quick fixes for these

Unfortunately, these lessons learned won’t be fixed overnight and won’t be implemented quick enough to improve support for those in the queue right now. But, you do have our commitment that we will focus on improving this process.

Finally, to help us manage our volume of requests, we have a couple of asks for our customers who were with us before the Fall promotion:

• If you future dated your plan to change to the Fall promotion and you see in Self Serve that the plan change failed, please give us 72 hours from your plan renewal date before you contact us. We’ve identified an issue that is delaying this change, but the change will happen.
• If there is an inaccuracy in your rewards, we would ask you to please message us after December 5^th to get those fixed. We will make sure you get all the rewards you are entitled to, but we want to make sure we are prioritizing customers with no service in the short term.

Once again, I want to thank you for your patience and for sticking with us through what has been a busy and challenging time. We are grateful to have you all in our Community and look forward to building a bright future together.

Sincerely,

Dave

[Pottertons]

As with others, I was debited the full amount for the promo, but my 10-plan was renewed instead. 

If I stop my Auto-Pay option, will the unwanted 10-day plan continue to renew with the funds that are now in my PM account?

[Rockdaddy22]

I'm more worried about service issues, I'll message them after the new year. I have a plan change on the 14th and the girlfriends on the 3rd

[KK]

@swong, "expired" just means you have a grandfathered plan. 🙂

[KK]

Appreciate the update and glad to hear that positive steps are being taken to address present issues. Thank you.

[Rockdaddy22]

@swong is your 6GB almost up? Even not what's the rush? Let them fix service issues first, don't you think. You'll get the promo don't worry.

[swong]

72 hours came and went...no change to the data cap.  

[PBForMe]

Keep in mind in PM vernacular expired actually means last day, your service still works on the last day. Your service stops working when it says suspended. 

What would have likely happened is that autopay would renew your old plan the next day, and it would possibly switch over to the new plan in 72 hours according to Dave. 

Just a note, it will always say expired on the last day, but that doesn't mean autopay won't renew it automatically the next day.. just the way it works from what I've seen, autopay kicks in a day after your plan expires.

Like, if I take a look at my portal it says my plan expires Dec 4th and autopay is set for Dec 5th. 

[swong]

@Dave_M It's been more than a week since the plan renewal date.  I'm stuck with a 6 GB data limit (as it was before the "future renewal" with the promotion).  But interestingly, under "Plan Details"...this shows up:

Pick & Pay

• This plan includes: - 
• - 12GB Data
• - Expired
• - Unlimited International Text
• - Unlimited Provincial Talk

Now how can the plan have expired?!?  And by the way...Autopay is seriously broken.  That night the plan was supposed to "autopay"...nothing happened.  In fact, I watched the account status turn to "expired" while waiting for autopay to kick in.  When I was reasonably certain it wouldn't...I manually made a payment to make sure the plan would renew.  Sure enough the next day...it renewed...but only not at the promotional plan data limit of 12 GB...only 6 GB as it previously was.  What would have happened if I did not make that payment manually??

[Kraekin]

I am honestly giving them until tomorrow to fix my service, being without service since Monday is unacceptable, ive been with them for over 6 months now, but honestly if I go on a Telus Prepaid plan for $60/month I will get more than what I need and will be guaranteed that if I lose service I wont be without it for longer than 24 hours.

Come on PM I already gave you more of a chance than I would most companies.

[nishufan]

My friend still get double services, and pay two fee. One for fido, one for PM.

[Lynne1]

I'm waiting over one month to fix the problem, but no response. Decide to leave.

[Morgan]

Frustrating, but at least now we know where we stand. Thank you for that.

[oilblue99]

But what if existing customers need a replacement SIM... That said, I recognize PM shut down SIM orders the last few days of the promo (as orders wouldn't arrive in time), so it's been done before. Agreed that 12 days is long past acceptable. Can't wait until things return to normal!

[fktw]

@Dave_M, gotta love a company that is open, honest, transparent, and able to acknowledge faults.  I guess I'm fortunate that the porting of my 3 lines over to PM went smoothly and am now enjoying your great service. Coming over from Wind was definitely not a mistake!  Thanks!

[Rockdaddy22]

I think a halt in sim sales would be prudent. To be honest ,12 days is still unacceptable. I

[oilblue99]

---

@JMCD wrote:

But a disclaimer does nothing to help shorten the backlog queue and would only add to it. What I meant was that not allowing new activations would give the mods a chance to catch up to get wait times down to a reasonable number. IMO the main objective should be to have everyone having functional service and low wait times. Ultimately, more staff and a more reliable system is needed, but a short-term solution ought to be implemented.

---

@JMCD

To me, shutting down all sign-ups would be overkill. The promo that generated all this interest and the onslaught of sign-ups ended Nov. 20. Consequently, the backlog should be getting smaller without closing the door on new people. Many sign-ups work without issue...

In other words, I'd be shocked if the backlog is still growing.

Meanwhile a disclaimer would give people a heads up that in the event the activation (and/or port) is unsuccessful, a longer wait than normal is expected. Could also serve as a reminder to be careful with data entry. Maybe even link to a post with tips/do's and don'ts...

I appreciate the heads up on current status / date in queue that they're working on. I hope that can continue until the backlog is cleared.

[alkatize]

I have no idea why the Help E-mail is not included in the ticketing pool. It's literally the official way on the site to contact support.

I have messaged since Nov 19 and have yet to receive an answer. Switching to PM just cost my another $40.

[yuanqi118]

Thank you Dave! Your team have been put a lot effort on it! Thank you again!

[dhutt]

people without service should be top priority

[Rockdaddy22]

@Canis of course it all depends on location 🙂

[Rockdaddy22]

I think that date Dave is giving is for email requests. I've noticed mods going through old threads at the moment. You should assume PMs sent a couple weeks ago have been lost in the chaos. 😞

[Canis]

Coverage maybe better depending on your location. But so far signal strength has been lower than Rogers around the YVR and south Vancouver. Where Rogers usually was 1-4 bars LTE . PM usually 1 to 2 bars LTE or 4G. Speed test Rogers is Far faster PM is -10 mbps but it is ok for me my home internet is 6 mbps.

[madhatter]

Thank you very much, the update is appreciated. Good to see that issues are acknowledged and there is some sense of response time frames to expect.

[bluerage]

Good to know that the mods are listening.  Dave posted an update on the announcements.

[bob_sacamano]

Thanks for the update I'm glad to see that support is a priority.

You say though that the issue with future dating a plan change causes it to be delayed; however, it has been almost 2 weeks (i.e. a lot longer than 72 hours) since my plan was scheduled to change and it still has not switched over. So I'm not optimistic that the change will come. I have messaged a MOD and I hope they don't dismiss my message thinking that the change will happen on its own. 

[Mixam]

@Vickel The network is not on par with Rogers, it's better because it is the Telus network. Iirc Telus and Bell also share their networks so you get Bell network coverage if Telus is ever lacking. There is substantially better coverage on the Telus and Bell network than on Rogers. Compare coverage maps online

[primmerk]

I agree with many of the comments here - transparancy is good and I appreciate the update but it's a bit frustrating when you see what appears to be forum folks 'hop' the line and get their porting issues solved and when you DM a mod it enters a black hole. I have two friends that I am supporting (not tech savvy) that have had port issues since the 20th and only realized it on the 27th. I sent support requests and nothing. I then tried to DM a mod - nothing. But when I look through the forum there are posters who seem to get theirs looked at in short order - under the 12 day lead. So they have to wait at least another week before they are even looked at because they used the contact feature? That is the rough thing to deal with.

It's not great optics to be honest. My porting experience was flawless and I highly reccommended this company to others...I can't say that they will do the same if it takes close to two weeks or more to get some resolution to their issues...

[liztaylor]

Thanks for the update. Knowing helps a lot.

[Vickel]

what concerns me is that there are replies from Mods that indicate cannot find a PM that was sent to the Mods earlier. That is unacceptable.
I was fortunate enough to have no issues porting 3 lines but having people wait 12 days for support is ridiculous.

However once you get setup, the network is on par with rogers

[hda413]

@imm1304

I sent my port issue when I signed up.  I couldn't get to the port request page, just hit with an error when I entered my number to port.

1 week later a mod replied to ask for my port info.  I sent it in.

2 weeks went without a reply.  I got a message from a different mod asking if my service was now working. I told him no, my port isn't done.

A few days after I got a reply from a mod my port request was escalated to another department. So yes, unfortunately it sounds like there was a tech support ticket needed.  A couple days after my port started but now I'm in a partial port, unable to get incoming calls and out of network texts.  It was probably better before the partial port because at least people could contact me.

Been over a week since the partial port with no responses.