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

[modi787]

@Dave_M it's been 13 days for me and no service at all. I don't really believe in you stating first in first out as it appears customers who make the most noise get their issues resolved first. Since you have charged me for 90 days and I didn't receive service for 90 days, are you going to reimburse me and others for lost days? Or is it something I have to take up with my credit card company and then CRTC and BBB?

[Rockdaddy22]

@Kraekin The reason I asked, is because I was wondering if you knew how great the customer service was before this stupid promo. It's was amazing around here back then. Most issues were taken care of within minutes to hours, not days to weeks like now. Things will return to normal, hopefully sooner than later.

[Mixam]

One other benefit of switching to VOIP for your main line though, I can switch providers and countries multiple times a day and never have issues with porting. I also have the option of data only plans which is what i was on before this promo came along.

When u signed my parents up they had to wait a few days for the ports to be complete. When i joined i was recurving calls on my number before I even stuck the sim in because i was on wifi. Cellular data was working right of the batt too though so soon as i left the house i was good to go.

[Mixam]

@Kraekin

I'm curious as to why you didn't have service? Did you try switching to another plan and it didn't go well? Have a payment not go through for some reason? Or was it just random. If it was just random, I'd have to say you got totally screwed that it happened to happen right when public mobile had an influx of new customers that overwhelmed their resources.

I've set up three accounts with PM so far, set my parents up last year, joined myself on the last day of the current deal. Aside from the ports taking a few days to go through, and having to message a mod to get the referral to work since the sign up page said the PM number was invalid (which was sorted pretty quickly), we've had no problems.

I think it's sad that you had issues when you did as by your reckoning, you're about to spend an extra $240 per year to switch to someone else for an issue that happened once and due to very bad timing. (no fault of yours) By all accounts you lost $200 before taxes so like $140 or so after taxes. I think public mobile should offer you a free month or something of service to compensate you. But i think jumping ship at this point after having no issues for almost a year till now might be a bit hasty.

Public mobile is growing quite quickly at the moment and is experiencing growing pains specifically because of the recent sale. They know they messed up on this promotion and demand was way higher than anticipated and the company has apologized and said they'd fix many of these issues before ever offering another promotion.

As a suggestion to yourself though going forward, if you want to make sure you always get your calls, you could always set up a free VoIP account like Fongo or VOIP ms. You can set your phone to forward to your VOIP number if it's ever not answered. Then you'd get your calls any time you're on internet regardless of cell reception. I actually completely switched to VOIP over a year ago so when i travel anywhere in the world people still reach me if i have internet. No need to though if you just want to make sure you always gets calls, backup VIP would be sufficient

[Pottertons]

Yep. Despite the fact that I've now dished out 3 months of service charges while, now, still having to pay my other service provider, I'm glad that I opted for the 10-day test trial method and this all happened before I went and ported my number over. 

It's frustrating enough for myself and others that are in the same position, but I can't even BEGIN to imagine what it must be like for those who ported upon activation and have no service. 

I feel that PM ought to open up a cancellation/refund option for those who do not wish to wait and/or need to look elsewhere in order get service. It's great that they're putting in as much effort as they can, but it's not right to just hold customers at ransom until 'things get sorted'. We should have the option to either wait or leave with a full refund. 

[fvoicu]

This service is a joke. I will understand if this was a free service paid through advertising. Not sure how  can you justify your bill if no customer service is provided and we are hanging in limbo with no voice services. Looking forward to see how I can cancel as I was not planning to port in my number till I fully tested the service (that apparently I'm paying for it and I don't have).

[MK78]

Folks, this is a telecommunications service. The people with issues should complain to the CCTS and the CRTC.

Maybe this would light a fire under the parent company Telus' butt.

While I appreciate PM's desire to offer a no-frills, excellent speed & coverage service for a discount brand, there must be adequate support. This is not even remotely close to adequate support.

[ERICJIANG]

"First in first out" is a joke.

[Kraekin]

@Rockdaddy22 Since April 8th of this year. little bit less than a year now. But, its not about the fact of how, ive constantly bought addons and have gotten a few friends and family members to drop their normal carrier and switch to PM after praising the company for no issues with service and much less.

However if I can pay $20 more per month just to ensure I can get support within 24-48 hours I will. Also, the first day I had no service, I didnt even realize until 6 hours later. there was no way to tell because I had Wifi on, and was at home and my phone said I had perfect service and even data. Only realized after work tried to text me for an overtime shift, missing out on $200 and getting in a bit of trouble cause there was no one else. If I

[Rockdaddy22]

@Kraekin how long have you been with PM?

[Kraekin]

Well, its been Mon-Fri with no service now. I will be looking for another provider on payday. sorry PM but 5 days now without service, when all I tried to do was pay my dam bill is very very unacceptable. from the VERY beginning how was there not a ticketing system that sorted by priority? how can you even operate under the philosophy of "First Come First Serve" when it comes down to something like having service?

I am sick of having to come on to this forum daily to see if my message was even answered. quit blaming it on the influx of new customers due to the promotion you had, if you guys couldnt deal with growing why bother trying?

Sorry PM, you've lost a loyal customer.

[amills]

Yes, the user interface when signing up is a bit lacking.  There needed to be quite a lot of qualifiers, validations, notes and "tool tips" on each field in the form.

From what I've read, much of the porting not functioning is because the forms didn't reject invalid field data.  Like it asked for a pin.  It didn't clarify if it was the pin of the end user or the pin of the authorizing user from the source carrier.  etc

[MK78]

I will also echo all the support for a proper support ticketing system, and completely do away with the forum style "PM a moderator" of support.

The forum should be a supplementary tool, where users can exchange ideas & discuss issues as well as talking to the support people that can guide people to try various issues via FAQ's, selfe serve tools, etc, but any actual support should be done via a dedicated trackable ticketing system that has nothing to do with this forum.

This latest promotion has brought the current system to its knees.

I'm was lucky enough to not have any sort of porting issue from Rogers, but I had enough issue signing up where the system would not accept my credit card, but the website gave a very vague "Could not process your credit card", vs actually saying that the primary address did not match. I had to figure that out on my own after numerous tries.

[pancake]

This is false, people who have posted after me got served first. First in first out???? What??

[fiveplustwo77]

Hi @Dave_M

Appreciate the communication and willingness to get help for everyone. However, I am not sure if the support is based on First Come First Serve.

Take a look at this post, within 4 hours this lucky fellow received a Mod's reply.

http://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Self-Serve/Where-the-hell-are-the-moderators/td-p/1155...

Did I misunderstood this?

Thanks again. 

[MarinaChulak]

Dave I appreciate the issues you guys are facing but stranding people without the cell phone service that they have paid for is not acceptable. I can pretty much guarantee that after this fiasco is over the customers that came on board like me will not stick around.

I paid the $120 for the 3 months on nov 20th , I paid $20 for the US roaming, text and talk, I put additional money on my account on NOv 30th to give you guys the benefit of the doubt while you are resolving the issue. The end result is that my account is showing is suspended for non payment and the additional $240 that went onto my account is showing as not there.

From my perspective this is dishonest at the very least and fraud at the other end of the scale.

I would like a resolution to my issues if you guys want to retain me as a customer

[imm1304]

@Reco 

I confirmed from a handful of people I walked through the process of getting help after experiencing the port/activation errors.  Unfortunately, a moderator may not be able to comment right away on this thread but you will also see this when your service is restored.  

I have found PM to be consistent and proactive in such matters in the past as well. 

[BlueTruck]

@Korth, thanks!

Yes I was referring to the graphic you linked to... I understand that the landing page should be inviting, but upon initial load there is just too much wasted space.

As for social media, I agree: it has its place but shouldn't be recognized as a viable means of obtaining support. Their Twitter presence indicates they are responding to issues, but the Visitor Posts section of their Facebook page is a wall of complaints, which is sad and reflects negatively upon PM. 

I can't think of an easy solution to this, other than acknowledging that they've read their post, then re-directing them to the PM Community. If they have already posted to the Community, then a DM approximating when the issue will be addressed is appropriate. 

Posting on social media should NOT be a means of bypassing the in-house support queue.

[Reco]

Thanks @imm1304.

It is great if this is the policy. I haven't read it anywhere else.

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@imm1304 wrote:

@Reco, the PM staff reset your 90-day plan to start on the day your line is active and you are able to use it.  So, you won't have paid for the week or 12 days that you may be left waiting for the new account to have service.  

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[Korth]

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@BlueTruck wrote:

• remove or deprecate the lower graphic from the Community home page (the one with the airplane); even when viewed full-screen on my desktop, meaningful content begins at the very bottom of the page
• in the short term, have dedicated resources scroll through the aggregated support feed (Community posts + PMs + social media msgs) chronologically, and categorize based on issue type and priority, and assign resources based on priority - any issue resulting in lack of service should take precedence over "where are my referral credits"?

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@BlueTruck all your suggestions are good, my Bravos for trying to initiate productive feedback.

But my comments on these two points ...

Do you mean this "airplane" graphic?  I agree that this decoration (and the Welcome to the Community banner) takes up too much front-top-center space better allocated to informative things - far too much screen space on my puny phone display, where scrolling around the browser window can be a real pain - though a non-issue on my portrait-oriented WQHD computer monitor.  So I second your suggestion to remove or reposition the graphics.  I also suggest the "Time for a fresh phone?" Announcement and the "en français, cliquez ici" button get moved down.  In fact, these and the other components ("Top Bravoed Posts", "Top Bravoed Authors", "My Items Awaiting Moderation", "Users Online", etc) should probably all be placed onscreen as user-toggled open/close items.  If anything, the "Knowledge Base", "Featured Topics", and "Latest Solutions" should all be crowded up to the top of the Community page so that they are always the first things visitors see and click on.

I'm not sure it's wise to post support feeds and such stuff on social media.  I think it's always wisest to keep the mess contained in one place, lol, most especially because a business cannot control security or reliability of information posted on third-party sites.  Realize that a surprising number of people are addicted to Facebook - it's where everything happens, and always happens first!  Realize that a surprising number of people deliberately refuse to use Facebook - social media is invasive, pervasive, and less meaningful than direct social contact.  PM needs to be equally accessible to all its customers, whether they be techno savants or google employees or dinosaurs or Luddites, lol, so social media sites are best treated as a redundant communication channel and an advertising medium, I think any company which leans too heavily onto a Facebook site is just asking to be knocked over.

[bluerage]

While I'd be happy having my problems resolved in a timely manner it would be nice if they did offer some sort of goodwill gesture.  I would imagine that canada wide calling add on would be fair as most people would benefit from it and it would cost PM little.

[noid]

It would be a good gesture on their part to offer a one time discount or free US minutes as a good will gesture.

I get it they are behind due to the volume, but as an organization you can't keep saying your too busy and leave your customers stranded.

[crazycolby]

good to know, thanks

[Rockdaddy22]

Maybe it's time to send a new one. What's the issue you're having?@bharat66joshi

[Rockdaddy22]

Maybe it's time to send a new one. What's the issue you're having?@bharat99joshi

[kav2001c]

Thank you for the update

[bharat66joshi]

Because porting is not done since 12 November I have to keep two accounts active and keep paying in old account unnecessarily

[bharat66joshi]

Sent pm to Moderator on 12th November and still waiting

[Rockdaddy22]

I would say it's definitely getting better

[smp99]

I would be part of the camp that says stop new activations. Or stagger the open window, only allow on Mon-Wed for instance. You would still be able to swap sims if you are an existing customer. 

It has been almost 2 weeks since promo ended.

My question is What is the 'slope' of the backlog? Is it getting worse or better.

I am currently a PM customer with working service, but I am nervous. And I am nervously waiting for the 1st renewal period.