Account suspended

[Gal222]

My husband has been on auto pay for over a year and suddenly his phone is suspended. They have not tried to take the funds from his account. The funds were there though. ? 

[darlicious]

@wkowalski 

The vast majority of public mobile customers never have a problem with autopay but with every automatic systemn failures happen. They seem more prevelant here because unless you know how to fix it customers have to come to the community for help first for the most part then contact the moderators depending on the circumstances. Accessing those stats from other providers would probably show similar failures they just dont have the same affect on a postpaid account and we cant eavesdrop on the call centre.

[computergeek541]

@wkowalski 

That's the case with any automatic payment system at any conpany that it could fail. If making a manual payment, you would still remain eligible for the autopay discount (if autopay is enabled).

[wkowalski]

If you have to manually make a payment then what is the point of the autopay feature? The entire purpose of it is to remove the need to have to remember to make manual payments. 

[darlicious]

@mahesh_m_smile 

Was your renewal last night? When you got upbtoday dud you recieve any text messages from pm? Rewards successfully applied? Or is your renewal tonight and your account online says suspended? Can you still text? Recieve calls? Are you on the $15 plan? Are you out of outgoing calling minutes?

[Jarqui]

Above is good advice about contacting the moderator.

In my case, like you - with a good credit card, etc, they said my service was suspended but it turned out, it wasn't.

[Triguy]

You could purchase a voucher or use recharge.com or ding.com (service charge) to make a payment.

[JK8]

---

@mahesh_m_smile wrote:

My account is suspended now. Credit card payment is due today and credit card has sufficient credit on it. Not able to do any calls and stuck. I think i need to look out for different service provider. This is ridiculous. All my Work is stuck :(.

---

Contact a moderator:

• Get help with your account the easy way by starting a conversation with our virtual assistant, SIMon. It’ll take you to relevant help articles, or if it’s something more urgent, it can help you submit a ticket to the Moderator Team. Click here to get started.
• Alternatively, you can send a private message to the Moderators by clicking here. You’ll need to be logged in to your Community account for the link to work.

[mahesh_m_smile]

My account is suspended now. Credit card payment is due today and credit card has sufficient credit on it. Not able to do any calls and stuck. I think i need to look out for different service provider. This is ridiculous. All my Work is stuck :(.

[darlicious]

@Jarqui 

The wording of some messages are not exactly straightforward and sometimes they get updated but its about prioritizing and that one is not high on the list. That suspension message serves several purposes over the period of time its displayed in your account during renewal. I haven't timed it but it can sit there for up to 8 hours and longer if you get truly suspended. 

I think it actually does a pretty good job of its purpose of labelling your account from your 30 day plan expiring, then bridging the gap of still having service but not having yet paid for your plan as the system ticks thru its tasks for renewal. Applying rewards, your base plan, your plan data portion,  resetting the plan data counter and/or minute counter, debiting your balance of any available funds and finally engaging autopay (if needed) and once payment is satisified it switches back to an active status and that message disappears....unless of course a full payment isn't recieved or it hiccups and doesn't take the payment and apply it. Then the message remains til the customer forces the system to take the payment and you click reactivate  and it disappears.......for another 30 days.

[Jarqui]

This is the text:

"Please disregard this message if you have enough funds in your balance or are on AutoPay. Your account has been suspended. Make a payment to reactive your current plan. Suspended accounts are deactivated after 90 days of non-payment and you will lose your phone number and service."

I had enough funds.

I'm on Autopay.

So not to worry, right?

But my credit card had given Public Mobile the money already via Autopay.

So you cannot help but have some concern when Public Mobile got paid and is still showing such a message on your account. Because " enough funds in your balance" was not the issue. Public Mobile already had been paid the money.

Surely, they can communicate better with their customers than that.

[treefrog]

@computergeek541 

Ok thanks but i wasn't really thinking about that I just figured if he didn't find his phone until morning that it might be good to reboot it after renewal occurs?

[Jarqui]

Found the phone.,.

Thanks.

I've had the account for quite some time. A year or more?

Never had a payment declined.

Never had a credit card renewal.

Since my phone was misplaced and I called it and did not hear it, I thought I may have left it somewhere else. So I wanted to see if there had been any calls placed since I used it last at 3pm.

That's when I saw  the status and wondered if the supposed suspension was the reason I could not hear my phone.

Turned out my hone was a floor up and at the other end of the house whcih was why I couldn't hear it.

Appears everything is fine.

Thanks again.

[treefrog]

@fabronaut 

Reading this thread what i found to be absurd was the deer in the headlights reaction to the first autopay failure. After that it sort of mesmerized you into watching them all fail. I always pay a couple of days ahead of time....except my last renewal when i got waylaid and managed to pay at just past midnite.

[computergeek541]

@treefrog 

There's no need to reboot a phone during the renewal process or after a renewal has completed. That step won't make any suspensions notices in the account go away.

[treefrog]

@Jarqui 

That got me too almost. I guess its a rite of passage at public mobile the first time you see your account go through renewal and panic. When you do find your phone reboot it. Good luck!

[mm80]

They should but don't. They have a message that says to ignore warning messages if there's enough funds in account. That ignore message is there when it says plan expired.

[Jarqui]

They should fix that. It's very misleading.

[mm80]

@Jarqui it says suspended to everyone when it's about to remew. If your service is.workimg, ignore the message.

[Jarqui]

There was no renewal. It charged my card successfully and suspended my account.

I've misplaced my phone. I was trying to call it but I do not know if it will ring with my account suspended.

[mm80]

@Jarqui Is your plan working? It says you're suspended to all customers when renewal is going on.

[Jarqui]

My account is suspended effective October 27, 2020

My credit card shows Public Mobile took the money off my credit card via auto pay.

Money was there to be taken.

There's nothing wrong with the credit card. It doesn't expire until some time next year.  It's not a recent renewal. I just paid another phone bill on it after the Public Mobile charge went through.

Why should I pay twice?  I don't get it. How am I supposed to resolve this?

[ccdevmike]

I just manually pay when I get a text. Takes less than 2 min and your done. But yes sure sounds like auto-pay needs to be improved! 

[Ada_Strange]

I am having the same problem. I'm using AutoPay and my account has been suspended because it failed to transmit the funds. There is nothing wrong with my credit card

[BEST]

@CS_Agent I am having the same issue, my plan got suspended and the payment wont process when trying a manual payment. Nothing with my card changed and it works fine. 

[Anonymous]

---

@fabronaut wrote:

Except that hasn't happened any of the three times this has happened.

It didn't happen yesterday with my dad's, and it didn't happen today with mine. And now I have to spend an hour figuring this out and messing around with the extremely slow website.

This is absurd. Going to start looking at other providers, as I value my time and cannot have my service being arbitrarily interrupted for no reason whatsoever.

---

It is absurd. A company needs to collect money from its customers to exist. If they can't do that 100% of the time (barring customer fault like change of address or card or expiry) then they have a fundamental business problem.

However, if you like paying less and getting the rewards to pay even less then instead of relying on autopay (keeping it set up for the $2) upon receiving the heads up text you could look at that as your payment reminder like a bill and do a manual payment. That way you would now have sufficient funds to cover the plan and your plan will renew. Unless of course you're the type to automate all bill expenditures. I'm not.

[JoyLuck]

---

@fabronaut wrote:

Except that hasn't happened any of the three times this has happened.

It didn't happen yesterday with my dad's, and it didn't happen today with mine. And now I have to spend an hour figuring this out and messing around with the extremely slow website.

This is absurd. Going to start looking at other providers, as I value my time and cannot have my service being arbitrarily interrupted for no reason whatsoever.

---

If you need assistance contact a moderator.

Here’s how to contact the Moderator Team (Public Mobile representative) for assistance:

• Get help with your account the easy way by starting a conversation with our virtual assistant, SIMon. It’ll take you to relevant help articles, or if it’s something more urgent, it can help you submit a ticket to the Moderator Team. Choose the quote bubble in the lower right hand corner and follow the prompts.

• Alternatively, you can send a private message to the Moderators by clicking here. You’ll need to be logged in to your Community account for the link to work.

FYI,

Autopay sometimes fail. To prevent you from losing service, the recommendation from the PM forum is to make a payment a few days before your renewal date to cover the cost of the plan. The renewal will take the money out of your Available Funds and you can leave your cc on file for the autopay reward.

[fabronaut]

Except that hasn't happened any of the three times this has happened.

It didn't happen yesterday with my dad's, and it didn't happen today with mine. And now I have to spend an hour figuring this out and messing around with the extremely slow website.

This is absurd. Going to start looking at other providers, as I value my time and cannot have my service being arbitrarily interrupted for no reason whatsoever.

[computergeek541]

---

@fabronaut wrote:

Apparently AutoPay just completely messes up sometimes. There are no alerts via the SMS automated service to your phone if it fails. It'll just tell you two days in advance that it's coming up, but not if it fails to process, which is frankly EXACTLY when the notification should come through that service is (or is about to) be cut off.

Public Mobile sends a text message to the customer if the plan renewal fails. This started not long ago.

[fabronaut]

I had this fail on my account when nothing on the card had changed. No new number, no change in card expiry, nothing.

Apparently AutoPay just completely messes up sometimes. There are no alerts via the SMS automated service to your phone if it fails. It'll just tell you two days in advance that it's coming up, but not if it fails to process, which is frankly EXACTLY when the notification should come through that service is (or is about to) be cut off.

The only way I fixed this in the past was to add another credit card that I had lying around that I never use. If I didn't have that card, I would've had to pay a service fee to some third party company to add minutes or a plan (?!?!) since there's no way to remove the existing (failed) card and re-add it?

My dad's plan just failed on AutoPay while using my card information. I'm waiting to see if mine will follow suit tomorrow morning. (My account says "Plan Expired" in red letters, and AutoPay is supposed to clear tonight.)

If this happens for the third time, I'm going to look around for better service. Not much point paying for a service if I'm going to have a massive headache when it randomly fails, without warning, with no notifications, every few months.

[Gunner123]

@Wendy2 @After you make your manual payment and press the reactivate button (only once) then reboot your phone