Account suspended; no notice of autopay failure?

[ebishi]

My account has just been suspended, "due to insufficient funds". I have auto-pay enabled, and the credit card on file is fine. Viewing my payment history, I see no evidence of a payment failure. If I manually trigger a payment using the card on file, it is successful. Having to do this defeats the purpose of autopay, however, and my only prompt to do this was having other people tell me that my number wasn't working. 

This lack of visiblity & notice is fairly concerning. Is it normal to receive no email notice that my autopay had not gone through, or that my account was being suspended?

[joannedixon]

Thank you for taking the time to answer.

I have two credit cards. One was compromised. I didn't take my last credit card bill with me on my vacation. I needed that to tell me which accounts were on the compromised card. I was going from memory. I believe, and continue to believe, that it would be very easy for Public to immediately send a notice to their customers if the payment method failed.

BTW, were you this preachy and condescending before you achieved the rank of "Mayor"?

[darlicious]

@joannedixon 

I'm sorry that your card was compromised but as you you were going thru the hassle of updating and notifying vendors/ businesses of this problem you should have put  your mobile provider at the top of your list. Public mobile is a prepaid provider which means you have to prepay for your service. There is no other option to continue your service if you don't pay for it. You could have driven to most gas stations or a 7/11 and purchased a voucher and added it thru 611 to reactivate your service. Finding free wifi would have allowed you to access your pm account to add a valid card for payment. Even the provincial park you were camping in would not allow you to camp for the night without prepaying for the site.

[joannedixon]

This happened to my husband and I today. Public sent a notice via SMA at 10:16 this morning that our autopay did not go through and that we should connect via the hyperlink in the SMS to straighten it out. We were in a provincial park when I read the notice 2 hours later (12:19 pm) and the link wouldn't work because Public had already suspended both our phones. So, we had to drive back to Calgary to get on a computer so we could get our phones working again.

This approach doesn't seem reasonable to us. Our credit card number had been compromised so we were going through all the hassles and emotional upset of cancelling that card and contacting vendors with a different payment card when Public cut us off.

We are going to notch this up as strike one against Public.

[SLOPES]

Contact the moderator team, they will likely help you with a credit. 

[NotAnAmbiTurner]

I had the same issue today - it's absurd that:

1. you don't get a notification that your account has been suspended,
2. there's no grace period, and
3. that apparently any communication you receive during the down period is lost forever and not just held (even for a very limited time) and re-piped to your device.

As for the idea that "auto-pay is just a fallback / nice-to-have": no it isn't. Auto-pay literally means "automatically pay." This is something that relies on Public Mobile's technology and Public Mobile actively encourages the use of. The fact a company would provide something, on their platform, named for its ability to "automatically pay [your bill]" but then say "just kidding, we meant something more like 'attempt to pay but only if we feel like it and you won't know until you miss calls'" and then immediately, without notification or grace period, penalize its customers, with very real consequences, when its own technology fails, is ridiculous. And when I say ridiculous, I mean it in the literal sense: worthy of ridicule.

Also: lest we forget, Public Mobile actually sends you a text about 3 days before your plan renews telling you that you should pay your bill but "If you're on AutoPay... please ignore this."

Software companies shouldn't have glitches like this, at least not on products that are in production and dealing with payment.

[pubmobuser]

The impact of this type of glitch in a primary communications device is huge:

I still haven't gotten a text message one business associate mentioned in a personal meeting later in the evening.

I also missed a call but thankfully got the voice message, so hopefully I won't missed that sales opportunity when I follow up tomorrow.

Not sure what other impacts this had on today's business communications.

But that's not the worst of it. What if I had missed an important text from my wife!!!

-Ryan

[will13am]

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@RobertQc wrote:

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@will13am wrote:

@ebishi , I use auto pay myself.  I have zero experiences with failure. 

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@will13am  I thought you had enough balance that autopay is enabled but your autopay method never ends up getting charged? So doesn't that mean you don't really use autopay?

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Auto pay and account balance are two different things.  You can use auto pay regardless of account fund condition.  The point of having auto pay is so that there is this fall back that will pay the bill in full regardless of anything else.  

[RobertQc]

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@LoreckAvery wrote:

I hear what you’re saying, but that is NOT how autopay was marketed to me when I switched to PM. and yes I went to a retailer. It’s also super frustrating considering it has worked for months with zero issue!

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@LoreckAvery  TELL ME ABOUT IT! Its ridiculous. When I post that message some people on this forum tell me not to post it because its "usually fine"- but to the people like you, its not fine, not even 1 bit. Everyone should get this warning that signs up to autopay at public mobile.

[LoreckAvery]

I hear what you’re saying, but that is NOT how autopay was marketed to me when I switched to PM. and yes I went to a retailer. It’s also super frustrating considering it has worked for months with zero issue!

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@RobertQc wrote:

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@LoreckAvery wrote:

Same happened to me, ridiculous!

Moving forward a simple sms message or email that the autopay didn’t work would help. I too only found out from others. 

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@ebishi wrote:

My account has just been suspended, "due to insufficient funds". I have auto-pay enabled, and the credit card on file is fine. Viewing my payment history, I see no evidence of a payment failure. If I manually trigger a payment using the card on file, it is successful. Having to do this defeats the purpose of autopay, however, and my only prompt to do this was having other people tell me that my number wasn't working. 

This lack of visiblity & notice is fairly concerning. Is it normal to receive no email notice that my autopay had not gone through, or that my account was being suspended?

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@selenakristina wrote:

THIS JUST HAPPENED TO ME TOO.. What is going on?!

I have auto-pay set up and it has worked every other month except some reason for this month my "auto" pay must have not gone through (same situation as you) because now my account is temporarily suspended until payment is made. But if I have auto pay, and I have plenty of room on my credit card, then why the heck is this happening? I am confused and I don't know who to contact about this. Help.

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@selenakristina 

@ebishi 

@LoreckAvery 

Unfortunately, sometimes auto pay fails. Think of auto pay as a method for public mobile to charge you IF your account does not have sufficient balance. If you have sufficient balance it does not need to autopay, but auto pay is still configured so you get the reward. I highly recommend everyone to top off (by manually adding funds) in advance as this process will prevent the most common and preventable reason that your account goes into suspension with a complete loss of service.

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[RobertQc]

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@LoreckAvery wrote:

Same happened to me, ridiculous!

Moving forward a simple sms message or email that the autopay didn’t work would help. I too only found out from others. 

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@ebishi wrote:

My account has just been suspended, "due to insufficient funds". I have auto-pay enabled, and the credit card on file is fine. Viewing my payment history, I see no evidence of a payment failure. If I manually trigger a payment using the card on file, it is successful. Having to do this defeats the purpose of autopay, however, and my only prompt to do this was having other people tell me that my number wasn't working. 

This lack of visiblity & notice is fairly concerning. Is it normal to receive no email notice that my autopay had not gone through, or that my account was being suspended?

---

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@selenakristina wrote:

THIS JUST HAPPENED TO ME TOO.. What is going on?!

I have auto-pay set up and it has worked every other month except some reason for this month my "auto" pay must have not gone through (same situation as you) because now my account is temporarily suspended until payment is made. But if I have auto pay, and I have plenty of room on my credit card, then why the heck is this happening? I am confused and I don't know who to contact about this. Help.

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@selenakristina 

@ebishi 

@LoreckAvery 

Unfortunately, sometimes auto pay fails. Think of auto pay as a method for public mobile to charge you IF your account does not have sufficient balance. If you have sufficient balance it does not need to autopay, but auto pay is still configured so you get the reward. I highly recommend everyone to top off (by manually adding funds) in advance as this process will prevent the most common and preventable reason that your account goes into suspension with a complete loss of service.

[RobertQc]

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@will13am wrote:

@ebishi , I use auto pay myself.  I have zero experiences with failure. 

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@will13am  I thought you had enough balance that autopay is enabled but your autopay method never ends up getting charged? So doesn't that mean you don't really use autopay?

[LoreckAvery]

Same happened to me, ridiculous!

Moving forward a simple sms message or email that the autopay didn’t work would help. I too only found out from others. 

[pubmobuser]

My phone was out all afternoon too;  Just found this thread and made the manual payment.

COMPENSATION: Affected users should get a credit for this service interruption.

[ebishi]

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@selenakristina wrote:

THIS JUST HAPPENED TO ME TOO.. What is going on?!

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I found this forum message, talking about an issue with accidental account suspensions: https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Announcements/RESOLVED-System-issue-expired-select-cu...

It seems like "the fix" has not gone as smoothly as they expected (there's reference to an SMS alert we should have received, which I did not receive). I manually paid my account, and am back online. My account is still set to auto-pay, so I've set a calendar reminder to myself to make sure next month's autopay goes through as expected. 😕 

I recommend making the manual payment, and then keeping a close eye on what happens next month, when your account renews again. 

[ebishi]

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@will13am wrote:

The text message indicating successful renewal is in renewal day.  

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Ehn. I don't think putting the onus on us to proactively monitor for that message (and follow up if we haven't received it) is reasonable. If they can send us a notice of success, they should be able to send a notice of failure as well. 

[will13am]

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@selenakristina wrote:

THIS JUST HAPPENED TO ME TO.. What is going on?!

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There was a bug introduced during the weekend maintenance outage that seemed to affect a number of accounts.  It could be that your account was affected.  If you are unable to manually restore the account to active status, the please contact the moderator team for support.  The moderator team can be reached via private message using this link.  Please include a detailed description of the issue and the required resolution. This will speed up problem resolution significantly. Refer to the following knowledge base link for additional information on contacting the moderator team.

[will13am]

@ebishi , I use auto pay myself.  I have zero experiences with failure.  For success, I do get a text message indicating so.  I would imagine lack of a text indicating successful renewal = failure to renew?  In any event the method of communication is text message.  The text message comes via 611 with message that renewal is coming due soon 3 days in advance.  The text message indicating successful renewal is in renewal day.  

[selenakristina]

THIS JUST HAPPENED TO ME TOO.. What is going on?!

I have auto-pay set up and it has worked every other month except some reason for this month my "auto" pay must have not gone through (same situation as you) because now my account is temporarily suspended until payment is made. But if I have auto pay, and I have plenty of room on my credit card, then why the heck is this happening? I am confused and I don't know who to contact about this. Help.