Auto Payment Renewal Failed - Account was immediately suspended??

[Saratoga]

I’ve been a long time Public Mobile customer with auto payments setup from the start. This morning I received a text message from public mobile indicating the renewal payment had failed & my account had been suspended. No warning or anything … I can’t make calls or receive texts. 

I logged into my account and verified the CC details are correct. I tried a different credit card & it also failed to be processed through public mobile’s site. I then called the CC company and they confirmed the cards are fine and there is no block on the cards. I’ve submitted a ticket to support and am waiting to hear back but the initial notice is they respond within a day. In the meantime, all my services have been immediately cutoff. Is anyone else experiencing this issue? I find it amazing that they would be so black & white as to immediately suspend a long time customer account that has never missed a payment over a $30 renewal payment that appears to be a technical glitch on Public Mobile’s auto renewal process. 

[dust2dust]

911 should work even without a sim inserted let alone service on a sim not working. As long as the phone is getting some form of reception.

[Saratoga]

I wonder if the 911 service would still have worked or if it would have been prevented from going through. If that was somehow also disabled as part of the suspension, it would sure change the conversation in a hurry.

[dust2dust]

Couldn't agree more. It's a complete and utter mystery to me how a company has so much difficulty and also makes it hard to take their customers money. That should be the smoothest and easiest thing any company should do.

This should be absolutely bullet proof. And easy.

They did improve things with the system update last year where it only needed a matching correct billing address postal code and yet STILL it has trouble.

I still say that they're intentionally driving this place into the ground by pushing customers away with the difficulties they have.

[DennyCrane]

While advance billing may please a few people, I am confident it would upset many times more people who wouldn't want to be billed in advance. They need to solve the root of the problem, which is why the payment is failing to begin with. 

[Saratoga]

Thank you again for everyone’s quick replies with suggestions yesterday. I will take the recommendations to keep my account topped up manually while still having auto payments enabled to qualify for the discount … a counter intuitive workaround for auto payment logic that should be rock solid this day and age. I worked at a payment processing company for many years. I know it would not take a ton of effort and would also not be a high risk code change to process the payments a defined number of days in advance of the service period expiration. This would at least allow customers an opportunity to work with support agents prior to being disconnected. They could still retain the suspension logic to kick in on the period expiration date. Especially when it’s clear the support agents have a 24hr turnaround time for correcting issues. If they have no concern for the customer impact this causes, they could at least look at the agent time involved corresponding with & fixing this issue each month. I suspect there would be a decent ROI to fix the code. This would not change the nature of the offering as a prepaid service. It would just be a defined buffer to the payment authorization & settlement process.

It also would not be a stretch to allow for some kind of escalation opportunity internally when it’s clear a customer has been kicked off the system due to a known internal payment processing issue at Public Mobile. I get the impression from yesterday that the actual back end fix doesn’t take that long to implement … once someone gets around to it! And adding this kind of support ticket to the bottom of the support queue seems to be ridiculously poor prioritization. 

I recognize it’s a prepaid service and the associated benefits - that’s why I’m here. But that should not be an excuse to turn a blind eye to relatively straight forward changes to a known internal issue that causes an immediate punitive suspension of all services to good customers. I’ve tried to communicate this to the support agents multiple times between yesterday & today. All I’ve been getting are responses saying it’s just the way the system works … indicative of the larger issue of no effective competition to incentivize basic & obvious improvements for customers even when those improvements would also benefit the company through reduced support overhead.

Thanks again for the help yesterday.

[gpixel]

d

[Saratoga]

Thanks for the background on the logic. Ya that timing doesn’t help much on the west coast. There’s no excuse in my opinion for immediately suspending an account the way they did. It was entirely a PM issue. Not only did their payment processing engine fail to execute the renewal of the accurately stored & valid CC information that was in their system, it prevented me from using any other credit card to pay the balance & correct the issue. My card info was accurate, had been used for many, many previous auto renewals by PM, and had not been edited. I also confirmed that the bank received no authorization attempts to my CC… it was all internal at PM and never left their network. They failed my renewal & suspended my account all on their own. And the agent provided no suggestions for alternate payment methods. No option to expedite the situation given the circumstances. Just suck it up and wait out the 24 hour period & hope for the best. It was a complete fluke that I tried a Visa Debit card & it happened to work. 

Obviously, going forward, I will have to do as others have done and prepay the account manually. Seems PM is at peace with suspending customers over their own internal systems issues. Didn’t seem to bother the support agent in the least. Oh well.

[Saratoga]

It is not easy to activate it again. The system would accept no credit card payment of any kind and the support agent provided no options other than waiting it out for 24 hours. My account was current and my entered CC details were absolutely correct. It was a payment processing error within Public Mobile and I paid the price for it.

[Saratoga]

Thanks gpixel. That will obviously work. Of course, it completely defeats the purpose of auto payments which Public Mobile encourages you to setup. I’ve been a customer going on 6 years and have been using auto payments since day 1 without issue. I had no idea I was playing with fire the entire time. It would not be difficult to initiate auto payments a week prior to service suspension. That would give customers a chance to sort it out & correspond with support agents to avoid suspension. To simply suspend an account & put all the overhead onto the customer instantaneously for what is clearly a payment processing issue at public mobile is quite appalling. And then for the support agent to apply a “laissez-faire” attitude to correcting what was clearly a public mobile issue was really frustrating. Now I know I guess.

[Saratoga]

Thanks dust2dust … I’ll give that a try. I understand its prepay. But you would think the logic would be simple to take the auto payment at a defined number of days prior to the service expiration. At least give customers a fighting chance to find out what’s going on to avoid suspension of services. This caused me so much grief today. To add context, I’ve been a public mobile customer for about 6 years now & have been using auto payment with this credit card that entire time without issue. They encourage us to set it up by providing the discount if you use auto renewal. There’s no way an account should be immediately suspended. If the best they can accommodate is a 24hr turnaround, payments should be attempted 48-72hrs prior to service suspension at minimum. I’ve had great service from support agents on other issues but experienced a “could care less” attitude with this one. 

[maximum_gato]

@Saratoga 

I'm sorry to hear of the troubles this has caused you and the inability of the CSA to offer other payment options to reactivate your service. Here are the options for alternative methods of payment....

https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Get-Support/Can-t-Make-a-Payment-or-Update-Your-Card-...

https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Get-Support/Online-Top-Up-Payments-Muskbird-com/m-p/9...

Unfortunately since pm is prepaid service an autopay failure causes an almost immediate suspension of service. They do offer a four hour window to pay after renewal payments are taken at 2am eastern before suspension ovpccurs at 6am eastern but that is not much help if the first indication if an autopay failure is the text message or email you recieve at 9am eastern. As suggested by other members topping up manually ahead of renewal is the guaranteed way of avoiding this issue.

Keep in mind that you are only allowed 2 attempts at payment by any method (voucher or card or via 611 or self serve before having to wait one full hour before trying again or you will continue to recieve error messages. More than 5 attempts at payment using the same card will cause a 24 hour fraud lock on your account that requires contacting customer support to be removed. Too many attempts at voucher payments can also cause a similar fraud lock to occur.

If you suffer an autopay failure and your first attempt at manually paying with the card on file occurs try selecting "pay with a different method" and use a different card to pay as this prevents you having to verify changing your payment card and wait out the hour by trying again with the same card only to inevitably fail.

Since it seems you suffered from a true autopay glitch rather than one of a myriad of reasons autopay can fail legitimately (expired card, more than two accounts renewing, or other automatic payments occurring at the same time etc....) I suggest you ask the CSA to open a tech team ticket to investigate why your autopay in your account failed. Be sure to get the ticket reference # so you can easily inquire on it but these type of investigation can take up to a month or more to resolve.

I hope this helps clarify a few things.....?

[hairbag1]

@Saratoga 

glad you got it going again. You'd think PM would have plan payment bullit-proofed...but it's been an occasional glitch for several years now.

I have a credit card set to Autopay...but I'll make sure there's enuff $$ in Available Funds by manually adding $$ to my account, a few days before renewal day. I haven't had Autopay problems since adopting that payment strategy.

I know it defeats the purpose of Autopay...but a small price to pay to eliminate the dreaded.... Autopay Glitch.  👹

[DennyCrane]

Public Mobile is PREPAID and as such there is no grace period. Period. It doesn't matter how loyal of a customer any of us are. If payment fails your account becomes suspended, but it's very easy to reactive it again. 

[gpixel]

@Saratoga 

the best way to manage a PM account is to manually pay and have the funds in your account for the system to withdraw from. this avoids the system from trying to withdraw anything from your card on renewal day. it will instead, only withdraw from the 'available funds'.

what i would suggest is to manually add more money for the next renewal, today. then when your account renews and you receive the text your account has successfully renewed, that becomes your cue to manually add more money into your account. 3 years and no issues with renewals

this method avoids the following issues

• auto deletion of password after 90 days of not logging into ones account
• autopay failures
• service issues ie. texts/calls/data not working
• dealing or speaking with customer support

[dust2dust]

This company has struggled to take money from random customers for quite a number of years. And yet many others go year in year out without a hitch. Until it doesn't.

There's no past performance loyalty here. It's simply pre-pay. If it doesn't get a payment then it stops.

See if you can re-register your preferred credit card and then in a few weeks do a manual payment of your plan cost and see if it will go in. Then a month after that see if the autopay will work.

[Saratoga]

I was able to get the payment processed using a Visa Debit card. No “regular” credit card would be accepted. At least my connectivity is back up. Now I’m totally paranoid this is going to happen on my next auto renewal. Really annoyed that the support agent couldn’t provide any path to resolving this promptly given I’ve never missed a payment & this is clearly a back end issue at Public Mobile. Plus, I’ve been given no explanation as to the root cause or how this is going to be mitigated a month from now when my renewal comes up. So annoying. Thanks for the suggestions as always from the community.

[softech]

@Saratoga you can buy vouchers and load it by calling *611.  Best to buy from SDM/711/shell/London Drug as those can be used immediately without any wait time 

for real time payment/instant top up, there is a small fees.:

Instant top-ups are currently available at most Canadian Tire Gas, Esso, Gateway Newstands, and MacEwen locations. Contact your local store for details.

[Saratoga]

What stores are you referring to? I’ve never bought a voucher to make a payment to public mobile before. What is the “real time payment method”? The support agent hasn’t given me any alternatives so far other than to suck it up without connectivity for 24 hours despite having done nothing at all to justify any kind of suspension.

[Saratoga]

So I had to supply some CC details to have my card unlocked within the public mobile system … now I’m being told that it could take up to 24hrs to unlock the card & reactivate my account!! I’ve done nothing to justify this suspension and yet I’m subjected to no service for up to 24hrs. It makes no sense at all. It also makes no sense that I can’t process the payment using any credit card on my account .. so I’m not clear how removing the block that public mobile has put on my registered CC will solve the issue if no CC payment of any kind is being accepted. I’m so incredibly frustrated .. I had been a huge proponent of Public Mobile for years. I guest I can’t refer anyone else to them going forward. 

[dust2dust]

Go to recharge.com and buy a voucher. Enough to cover the difference needed. Dial 611 and enter the voucher code. The service should reactivate.

Or go to lots of stores for a voucher. Or use the real time payments method.

[Saratoga]

I’m currently going back and forth with a support agent. They are indicating my CC was locked in their system due to too many failed attempts…. Not clear to me how there could be multiple failed attempts using the correct CC info that has been entered into the public mobile system and used many times in the past for auto renewals. In addition, attempts to use an entirely different card also failed immediately the first time & every subsequent time using correctly entered CC info. We’ll see where this goes. Still suspended at this point.

[Saratoga]

Yes I see $$ in the available funds area. The amount due is the $$ remaining after deducting the available funds amount. But the system will not process a CC payment for the outstanding balance. 

[Saratoga]

I’ve submitted a request to a support agent through the ticketing system about an hour ago - no response so far. I’ve now also submitted a private message to a support agent via the link provided by “HALIMACS” - thanks for that. I’ve tried incognito mode multiple times without success so far in addition to trying to apply custom amounts to the account. It seems like my account is caught in a behind the scenes technical glitch that will require someone with more access than me to correct. Can’t believe this.

[hairbag1]

@Saratoga 

when you log in to your account, do you see $$ in Available funds ?

[HALIMACS]

You did process a ticket, @Saratoga ?  If it’s been more than 8 hours, submit another.

To contact a Customer Support Agent, there are 2 methods:

1. Use the ticketing system for a faster response time. Click here and type Customer Support Agent, then select Contact Us, then select Other (or the topic that more closely matches your request).  Click the result which states Click here to submit a ticket and follow the prompts,  or, 

2. Send a private message to the Customer Support Agent by clicking here  You’ll need to be logged into your Community account for the link to work.

Watch for their response in your Community private mailbox which will be indicated by a number on the small envelope icon to the left of your Community avatar.

[Saratoga]

Thanks for the suggestions so far. I tried incognito mode using a Chrome browser. Tried 2 different CC’s and both failed to work. I then tried the Custom Amount option. It continued to fail to process the transaction. It seems there’s no path for me to pay my account currently. I’m dead in the water without connectivity… can’t believe this. So frustrating as people can’t reach me today & didn’t have time to mess with this but now have no choice. I really hope someone from the public mobile support engages my request soon. Any other suggestions are welcome. Thanks all.

[HALIMACS]

@Saratoga 

Select pay “other” amount, not plan amount

[hairbag1]

@Saratoga 

log in to your PM account > Payments > Add funds to My account.

[Saratoga]

Will try the desktop / incognito option now. Not clear how to add $1 to my account … Thanks.

[hairbag1]

@Saratoga 

you're not the only one !!

Try adding $1 to your account to Reactivate it.