Update: Have received a $10 credit on my account from PM for the incovenience of lost service. A nice band-aid, but the billing system still needs fixed. I just saw another user with similar problems.
This is not a request for help - but a notification of failure to provide service.
At the end of this months billing period, I received a notification via SMS that there were not sufficient funds in my bank account to cover the subscription fees and that my service had been suspended, which it had (Monday 29th Nov.).
My bank account and card were the same I have been using for months on AutoPay, still valid, with more than sufficient funds. I could also use the card for both online and physical transactions.
I tried all of the trouble-shooting advice that had been given in other posts, including removing and re-installing my card details from my account, without success. I contacted user support, with no additional advice to be offered other than buying a voucher (?).
I tried again the following day (today), to remove and re-install the same card, which the system has mysteriously now accepted and I now have an active cell service.
I see that this has been a historically, recurring issue for other users and after losing nearly 48hrs of cell service and having the irritation of trouble-shooting this matter, I would strongly advise that PM does some remediation work to their billing system in order to prevent this issue from happening again.
For my part, if I will have no problem in cancelling my subscription and moving to another provider.
Ahh, thanks for clarifying - everything makes sense now! It's unfortunate that we see this happen more frequently than we'd like, but glad you got it working. 🙂
I have exactly the same problem, very annoying. The autopay did not go through and left me disconnected. I made a manual payment and it went through immediately on the same card and account. Autopay problem needs some attention.
ok,,, but in here community site will no one will see anything what you say for public mobile head office or CSA, the won't check it your post in here if you want to make complaint you need To Contact Customer Support Agent by CS_Agent,
@Kcbass maybe just a temp fraud lock on PM side or on the credit card side. Important thing is you have the service now!!
If you want to assure no service interruption, maybe you can do a manual plan payment this month just before amount due date to confirm everything works, at least do this for one month just to be sure
Sorry, I probably wasn't clear in my previous message. It was my credit card that I removed and reinstalled from the billing system - not my SIM card from my phone.
This was advice I picked up from previous posts and from the PM support team. Like I said before, this worked the 2nd time around after about 36hrs DT.
What are your thoughts about creating an interactive poll?
I was actually thinking about this yesterday when I was replying .. but too bad we don't have the option to do a poll here. would be nice to have this feature
I'm glad it worked, and skeptical whether reinstalling the SIM card was necessary at all. What happens in the process of reinstalling the card is that your phone physically logs off, then logs on to the Public Mobile network. That in itself can fix problems, and can be accomplishing by going in/out of Flight Mode or restarting your phone.
All great comments, as usual... the way I think about it for the big point #7 is this: Avoid the AutoPay glitch by avoiding AutoPay at all. Manual top-ups or vouchers, either works great for people. 🙂
I have never agreed with the reinstall advice given for this problem. I'm not sure if you ran into my usual advice when you were searching.
A few important tips to remember....you cannot add a payment during the renewal process until the autopay system has attempted the charge and it has failed and you are scheduled for the suspension of services about 4 hours after the payment attempt.
If the renewal process is running on time autopay attempts the payment at 2am eastern.
Suspension of services (or account cancellation and deactivation if this now day 91 without paid services) will occur 4 hours later at 6am eastern.
This is the window you are given to then top up manually and push the payment thru to avoid service suspension.
Pushing or forcing the system to take payment usually means you have to suspend via lost/stolen. Log out/in. And resume via lost/stolen.
Then payment is taken and your 30 DAY PLAN/$10 and your 100 MINUTE or ?GB AT 3G SPEED appears in your transaction history ensuring that your service renews and turns to active with everyone else renewing that day.
Renewals can also be delayed by up to 9 hours. When this happens that will push the suspension of services up by that same amount of time.
The best way to avoid an autopay failure is to simply pay manually for your plan the day you get the reminder text by pm and leave autopay as a back up to forgetting to make your payment rather than rely on it solely for your payment.
In my case, I searched the community for solutions and tried them, unsuccessfully. I only attempted to re-install my card once, as per community advice, but again without success. The support person also tried to charge my card directly (?), again, apparently to no avail. By this time it was nearing midnight so I gave up. Re-installed my card again next day and it worked. Live in Toronto, so more likely a rat chewed through the cable 😉 The reason I posted was for awareness. I'm from Europe and not used to the antiquated banking system here, so it might be that. Check book? That's something I remember my Grandfather used to have....
Thanks for coming back and letting know what happened in your situation! Not only is it great to hear that your problem was fixed, but also for us to learn a bit more on what's going on in the world of Public Mobile.
Hmm, good point about people not coming here to report on successful AutoPay transactions. What are your thoughts about creating an interactive poll? We can have some users "vote" on their experiences. Although, with thousands of accounts and experiences, we would probably get an unfair number of people who had problems (although the UNIVAC that @darlicious uses may get us better data!). :).
Can you clarify something for me in this timeline?
Your autopay failed.
Service suspended.
You tried to pay manually by topping up your account and your payment was rejected.
You then tried at least 5 times to readd your card and were unable to do so which probably caused a fraud alert to be placed on your card on pm's end and/or your card issuer.
Pm finally resolved the issue for you and gave you a $10 credit.
Is this correct?
FYI....autopay failures happen at all mobile providers in Canada. Most you do not hear about because they don't depend on a community for help unlike pm where you can easily see when it happens, they have call centres to handle these issues, other providers actively cover up these posts in their community's and do not provide statistics on autopay issues. Unlike most providers pm does not have preauthorization permissions to attempt to charge your card more than once per 30 days.
The average autopay failure is 1/1000 per day at pm. ( Estimate only based autopay failure posts per day.) There are many reasons autopay can fail if you want the list I can provide it but the most unusual is a raccoon chewing thru a telephone cable!
As I highlighted in my original post, I already had a ticket raised seeking support, which I received but which didn't help. I complained in my dialogue with the user support.
what is mean for Rebooting the phone means to turn off your phone about 2 minutes and turn it back on.
you can Remove your credit card and Logout and
i suggest you close all Browser and do clear cache and cookies for any Browser,
and try open one Browser incognito mode,
or try it for a different Browser and open incognito mode,
how to open Browser incognito mode visit Here link,
how to clear cache and cookies and History visit Here link,
and use a Browser from your computer,is better
use Browser microsoft edge or chrome latest version and just make sure your Browser is up to date update sometime is the Browser is not update is give a issue.
then scroll to the bottom of the page and select ‘Manage my card’.
you will have the option to eitherselect ‘Replace this card’, or ‘Remove this card’.
You will need toreview and confirm this change to your account,
and if can't fix it you need To Contact Customer Support Agent by CS_Agent, and Explain your issue to them can solve your issue, they are nice service Team the will help you 100%.
Here’s How To Contact Customer Support Agent by CS_Agent,and Submit a Ticket,
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 Customer Support Agent by CS_Agent,Click Here link,to get started. Type,, Ticket ,, Click ,, Contact Us ,, Select your issue ,, Click here to submit a ticket↗↗.
or you can send a private message to Customer Support Agent by CS_Agent, by Click Here link,
please include in your message,
phone number,
account 4 digit pin,
Email address,
Customer Support Agent by CS_Agent, will Response to your inbox by private message
During business hours, we strive to answer customer messages swiftly. You will often get an answer within an hour. During peak periods, you may need to wait up to 48 hours.Customer Support Agents are available:
Monday to Sunday: 6 AM to 10 PM EST
Note: For public mobile No Support by phone call or Email.. only by CS_Agent, private message..
Check your private message inbox (click on the envelope top right of your screen)
@Kcbass...autopay can occasionally fail. In order to minimize that occurrence, I will load $$ in to Available Funds, just a few days ahead of next renewal. Hasn't failed....yet !
I still get the Autopay Rewards because my cc is set to autopay, but renewal will take those $$ from Rewards and Available Funds first.
As previously suggested...it's not the best...but it does help.
Yes, this seems to be a frequent issue here. We see it a lot in the Community but honest it is hard to say if it is a high percentage. Remember, no one will come here and confirm Autopay Success. So, we will see many Autopay failure but there should be a lot more Autopay Success out there unreported.
I think PM should confirm what was the reason with these Autopay failure. At least if we open a ticket with PM for this issue, they should confirm what caused the failure. I think for now, if it is fix, good, PM support won't tell you what's wrong and I doubt they even look into it.
@Kcbass , you are not the only one up in arms about the renewal failures. Public Mobile is obviously aware of the situation. Somehow, they just don't seem to be able to fully address the software bug. Many customers do advanced top ups to safeguard against the renewal failure. It is not ideal but it works.
