ACTIVATION FAILURE PURGATORY AND STILL BEING CHARGED??? SERIOUSLY????

[jwestacott]

Let me start this off by saying that my husband works as a lead in a service desk environment in IT and did all the research on Public Mobile before we decided to port over....

We decided to over his number and mine as well as sign up a new number for our son who has been pleading for a phone. We thought it a little strange that it took Public Mobile 3 business days to even put our 3 sim cards into the mail but none the less chose to proceed. Luckily my husband was able to activate the first SIM card and port over his number from Rogers flawlessly. Within a few hours all his services were moved over and his phone had full service on Public Mobile. Then we got to porting over my number.......

My husband went through all the exact same steps and got to the final page of porting over the number where it authenticates your credit card and activates your SIM. This is where we got the dreaded error that SIM activation failed and moments later I got an email that my credit card had been billed and I could access my account through Self Service. So we go over to Self Service and of course it wont allow us to logon to my account. We tried resetting the password and of course it doesnt recognize my username. So we try to setup the Self Service account manually and it doesnt recognize my number....

Because my husband works as a lead on a service desk in IT and we understand that side of the coina s well, we decided to be patient and follow all the correct channels of creating a thread and tagging MODs, PMing the MODs and emailing PM through the HELP page providing all the information requested....... and we wait...... Because I can still just use my Rogers SIM and have service right??? We will just switch over to the PM SIM when we get this sorted out.

This was on Tuesday.... yesterday we discovered that I can no longer recieve text messages. Sending works, both making and recieveing calls works, data works. Just cant recieve text messages. So we pop in the PM SIM card and I immediately get a text that says "someone is trying to text you but you dont have a text message plan. Go to Self Service to add one". I had signed up for the 90 day promo for talk, text and data. UGGGGH.....

Again we private message all the MODS and make a thread asking for help as well as email PM. 24 hours later still no response to any of the PMs, emails or threads for the original issue or the update....

So essentially I am now stuck with my number apparently half ported to PM and half of the services still on Rogers and no way to access the Self Service portal and no way to address any of this other than to wait for what people are claiming might be up to a week for a response. On top of this because my husbands number was the primary line on the Rogers plan and has now been moved over to Public Mobile I have lost all the discounts and am now paying full price at Rogers for how every many days it takes to eventually get this addressed.

I am normally a very patient person but this is the height of frustration and we are seriously debating if we have just made a huge mistake by buying out our devices from Rogers to port over. My husband has searched through the numerous threads of similar issues and complaints about going a week without service and seriously questions how a group of 4 MODs will ever be able to catchup with what seems to be an ever growing backlog of help requests. He also questions what the SLAs are for addressing account related issues. A week to even get acknowledged just seems way beyond any reasonable time limit to address these kinds of issues.

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE HELP AND ADDRESS THIS BEFORE I NEED TO LOOK TO ANOTHER PROVIDER AND REQUEST A REFUND FOR THREE DIFFERENT PHONE LINES??????

@Shazia_K @Mary_M @Jeremy_M@Saray_O

[Diabogyo]

Sorry. That's @jwestacott

[Diabogyo]

@jwestcott. And no, not blaming 4 people for not being able to handle the work load of 104. Still, as you said, someone up the chain of command should step in and get them the needed help. If any one has info on who that might be and how they can be contacted.... more than happy to fire off a few emails. In the meantime with thinning patience I continue to hang in there waiting for help.... @Mary_M

[Diabogyo]

@jwestacott. Curious how long before you were contacted after message was sent to mods?

[jwestacott]

Just wanted to issue an update that I got a text message late last night stating my port was completed. I have gone through and tested both incoming and outgoing calls as well as text and data. Everything appears to be working as expected. The only outstanding thing is that the Rogers account still appears to be open but I can call them later today or tomorrow after a bit more testing to tie that up.

Thanks to @Mary_M for getting this sorted out for me and staying in contact after the first response. Hopefully PM can get everyone else sorted out soon so we can all start enjoyin the service instead of stressing out.

[jwestacott]

Disagree here... I dont blame the MODs and actually do believe they are doing their very best to get through all of this. I cant even imagine how 4 people could go about trying to work their way through this ever growing backlog of issues with new registrations. I blame the people calling the shots at PM who didn't better prepare the MODs for this kind of influx by bringing in a few extra pairs of hands to help with the workload or iron out the issues with their backend system before issuing a promo like this.

I dont have an issue with giving my money to big brother as long as its at a fair price. If Telus ever did pull the plug here we are also not tied to any kind of contract so would be free to pick the best alternative. I highly doubt PM is going anywhere anyways considering Telus owns them and the wild popularity of this promotion. I am going to hope that at the end of this promo PM comes back with a similar one in the future. Hopefully next time they will be better prepared by iornoing out the kinks on the backend and bringin on a few sets of extra hands to help out the grossly overworked team of MODs.

[Diabogyo]

@jwestacott. Been there for over a week. Everything but incoming calls from Rogers network working Went through all the channels with no response from anyone. Those who have been customers for a bit keep saying what great service mods used to provide. Not the case now. Re thinking porting 2nd number.... at the end of the day Telus owns PM, so big brother still gets our $$$. Maybe it's time they step in to help out little brother to get throug this? Ultimately we might all just become Telus customers when they decide to pull the plug here. Just my 2 no longer in circulation pennies....

[surrey]

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@jwestacott wrote:

As an update to this looks like text message is only working for Public Mobile numbers. So no texting outside of the Public Mobile network and not recieving calls at all. Ticket has been issued to back end teams with a 24-72 business hour resolution window. UGGGG

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At least you have had a little bit of Success. Any how I hope all your issues get Resolved Soon.

[jwestacott]

As an update to this looks like text message is only working for Public Mobile numbers. So no texting outside of the Public Mobile network and not recieving calls at all. Ticket has been issued to back end teams with a 24-72 business hour resolution window. UGGGG

[jwestacott]

I think the reason they are able to offer such good pricing is because they dont have the overhead cost of a call center. That being said it is ridiculous to have only 4 people supporting the hundreds of users experiencing issues. They also need to seriously look at their back end systems and find the root cause of the common issues that a hugh number of users seem be experiencing. Fix those issues and take a tremendous ammount of workload off of the 4 people trying desperately to resolve everyones issue.

[ryankw]

Public Mobile need to hire more CSR reps or open up a call center.

[surrey]

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@jwestacott wrote:

Wow and in 11 days your services are still not working?

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Yep.   But Thank God I hadn't requested to have my Bell Number Ported.    So I have full working cell phone service .   I could just imagine what would have happened had I done that. 

[jwestacott]

Wow and in 11 days your services are still not working?

[surrey]

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@jwestacott wrote:

Let me start this off by saying that my husband works as a lead in a service desk environment in IT and did all the research on Public Mobile before we decided to port over....

We decided to over his number and mine as well as sign up a new number for our son who has been pleading for a phone. We thought it a little strange that it took Public Mobile 3 business days to even put our 3 sim cards into the mail but none the less chose to proceed. Luckily my husband was able to activate the first SIM card and port over his number from Rogers flawlessly. Within a few hours all his services were moved over and his phone had full service on Public Mobile. Then we got to porting over my number.......

My husband went through all the exact same steps and got to the final page of porting over the number where it authenticates your credit card and activates your SIM. This is where we got the dreaded error that SIM activation failed and moments later I got an email that my credit card had been billed and I could access my account through Self Service. So we go over to Self Service and of course it wont allow us to logon to my account. We tried resetting the password and of course it doesnt recognize my username. So we try to setup the Self Service account manually and it doesnt recognize my number....

Because my husband works as a lead on a service desk in IT and we understand that side of the coina s well, we decided to be patient and follow all the correct channels of creating a thread and tagging MODs, PMing the MODs and emailing PM through the HELP page providing all the information requested....... and we wait...... Because I can still just use my Rogers SIM and have service right??? We will just switch over to the PM SIM when we get this sorted out.

This was on Tuesday.... yesterday we discovered that I can no longer recieve text messages. Sending works, both making and recieveing calls works, data works. Just cant recieve text messages. So we pop in the PM SIM card and I immediately get a text that says "someone is trying to text you but you dont have a text message plan. Go to Self Service to add one". I had signed up for the 90 day promo for talk, text and data. UGGGGH.....

Again we private message all the MODS and make a thread asking for help as well as email PM. 24 hours later still no response to any of the PMs, emails or threads for the original issue or the update....

So essentially I am now stuck with my number apparently half ported to PM and half of the services still on Rogers and no way to access the Self Service portal and no way to address any of this other than to wait for what people are claiming might be up to a week for a response. On top of this because my husbands number was the primary line on the Rogers plan and has now been moved over to Public Mobile I have lost all the discounts and am now paying full price at Rogers for how every many days it takes to eventually get this addressed.

I am normally a very patient person but this is the height of frustration and we are seriously debating if we have just made a huge mistake by buying out our devices from Rogers to port over. My husband has searched through the numerous threads of similar issues and complaints about going a week without service and seriously questions how a group of 4 MODs will ever be able to catchup with what seems to be an ever growing backlog of help requests. He also questions what the SLAs are for addressing account related issues. A week to even get acknowledged just seems way beyond any reasonable time limit to address these kinds of issues.

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE HELP AND ADDRESS THIS BEFORE I NEED TO LOOK TO ANOTHER PROVIDER AND REQUEST A REFUND FOR THREE DIFFERENT PHONE LINES??????

@Shazia_K @Mary_M @Jeremy_M@Saray_O

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I feel your Pain.  I have been way more Patient then you.  mine has been on going since Oct 31

[magimug]

This is less like purgatory and more like the 9 levels of he!!...I'm in the same boat here...I can access my account but no incoming calls or texts and my texts go out but no one gets them..my number still seems to be tied to virgin...tried to port number in account settings (even though I did that in the beginning) and keep getting an error/contact admin message

I did pm but no response yet

If it's any consolation...you are not alone in this

Partial yay to the moderatoars for getting me this far

[jwestacott]

So finally got a PM back that my account was fixed and to try it. I was able to manually create a self service account and texting and data works but now unforuntately I cant recieve phone calls. Just goes to my old Rogers VM. Can someone see this all the way through please? I am hoping I dont have to wait another 3-4 days for a response.

[jwestacott]

Appreciate the support and hope that there is something PM can do to help the MODs catchup and get everyone's issues resolved in a timely manner. I would hate to see people being forced to continue to pay exorbinate amounts of money to the big three simply because they cant afford to wait a week to get their accounts sorted out. Especially consider the rave reviews of how good the service is once you get everything working.

[jgorman]

jwestacott
I hope yours gets sorted out quickly.
And will watch your progress.
Thanks

[jwestacott]

That would probably be the best plan and the route that a number of other people have taken. This way you could probably forward your number on the old provider to the temporary one assigned by PM until the porting is successfully completed.

Again in the interest of full transparency I want to make it clear that my husband had no issue with activating his account and porting his number. The whole thing was completed in maybe an hour or two seamlessly. He also had no issue with activating a new number for my son. Its just that scenario when something doesnt go as planned that you need to prepare for. Feel free to reach out if I can be of any help and I will update this thread to let people know once I have had my issues resolved.

[boldventure]

You did everything you could do and all you can do is to wait forever since you have no idea when they read your messages and acknowledge the issue. Same thing will happen if you request for refund, you will still be waiting forever. Issues are piling up hence response time is getting longer and longer since they are not adding hands to help.

[Vickel]

@jgorman
the number porting is where most people are having issues with. Hopefully by the time you finish testing the service with the new number they provide all the issue will be resolved. If not, you still run the risk of having a bad port and waiting days to have your issue looked at.

[jgorman]

I feel your pain. I'm thinking of maybe starting up service with a new number then trying it for a few days and see how it all works for me. Then if all is good only then will I port over my number.

[jwestacott]

My advice would be to ask yourself if you can live without service for up to a week in a wrost case scenario. If you find that the answer is no then I would wait until the kinks are worked out here. I am in a situation where I really have no choice now as I have already been charged and my number is already paritally ported it would seem. In my case demanding a refund would require waiting anyways (if the request is ever addressed) and I would risk my number getting lost. Hence the feeling of being held hostage until PM can clear this up

[jgorman]

I'm wondering if this update that's scheduled for Sunday will improve anything in the system.
I would really like to give them a try. But with all these stories of days without service or no replies to people's call for help has me concerned for sure. And questioning to sign up or not.

[pattyking18]

I would advise you not to join. The technical support team is vastly understaffed. Some customers have been waiting for over 7 days for their issues to be resolved. I personally have already paid for my service, although I do not have access to it. I am seriously contemplating a chargeback per Visa. 

[hummuschips]

I totally get your frustrations.  I think because Public Mobile is designed to be mostly a self service product to keep their costs down and hence the costs to the customer down this is why we are seeing these long reply times.  I'm assuming this promotion has brought over way more customers than they expected and their signup system probably hasn't been stress tested for this many people trying to sign up at the same time.  

Hopefully you can get an answer as soon as possible regarding your porting issue.

[jgorman]

Well said.
I'm just waiting for my SIM to arrive and am only in for the cost of the SIM at this point but am really wondering if I should take the plunge or just stick with my current service.