Chatr and Lucky are Zone-Free - Time for Public to Fix Problems and to Rethink Self-Serve Model?

[computergeek541]

I'm not sure when this happened, but all of Chatr Wireless's and Lucky Mobile's currently advertised plans are now zone-free (although there will be some existing customers still remaining on zoned plans).

https://www.chatrwireless.com/web/chatr.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PlanBrowse

https://www.luckymobile.ca/shop/plans/prepaid

So, Public, Lucky, and Chatr are now carbon copies of each other, right down to the 0.5GB autopay bonuses.  It's important to note that both Lucky Mobile and Chatr Wirelss both give customers the option to call customer service.  I wonder if it is perhaps time for Public Mobile to reintroduce that.

As it stands now, the main advantage of for Public Mobile customers are the autopay, community, and loyalty, and referal rewards.  However, I would dare say that most customers probably don't take advantage of the community and referral rewards.

With all three brands just copying each other now, I believe it imperative that Public Mobile fix all of the self-service and activation issue nonsense that has been going on for years, once and for all.  If they don't, customers (existing and new) will just go over to the other two Big 3 budget brands.

[hairbag1]

Those others don't seem to have US Roaming features like PM options.

[computergeek541]

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@Effort wrote:

Honestly, all this competition doesn't affect current customers because you're not going to get any benefit from switching. But if the company wants to grow, they need to change things up to bring in more customers.

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Yes, exactly - but when it comes to newly signed up customer who can't get the service working quickly because of the website or activation server, or because of a slow customer service reponse, this will cause the customer to quickly switch to one of the others.

When it comes potential new customers, I fear that Public Mobile will shortly see a decline in new sign ups, simply because of the no phone in customer service.  As I said, I do not believe that most customers are going to chase after referral and community rewards.  That only leaves Autopay rewards ($2/30 days - minor percentage-wise), and loyalty rewards that customers won't see for at least a year, or 5 years for the maximum.

[computergeek541]

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@srlawren wrote:

@computergeek541 they must be assuming text-heavy pages, rendered in mobile format and/or via a responsive framework.  

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And what site is text-heavy or all text these days?  And FTP site?  Clearly, it's just b.s. that Chatr is doing just so that they can advertise "unlimited".

[Effort]

When set at 3G on the phone; Chatr's 3G is equivalent to Public's 3G in terms of signal. Bandwidth is unlocked on Public so there's a plus there. When connected to LTE, Chatr doesn't have a LTE network but Public does. The latency decrease is enough to make it much better than what Chatr offers.

I haven't used Lucky before but as far as I know, they also have a LTE network locked at 3Mbit with also a customer service line.

Talking plan details alone, Public is behind Lucky but ahead of Chatr. If you factor in rewards, Public is ahead of the three but only if the customer pursues it.

Honestly, all this competition doesn't affect current customers because you're not going to get any benefit from switching. But if the company wants to grow, they need to change things up to bring in more customers.

[srlawren]

@computergeek541 they must be assuming text-heavy pages, rendered in mobile format and/or via a responsive framework.  

[computergeek541]

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@srlawren wrote:

@computergeek541 64kbps??? omg.  No thanks.  That's dial-up speeds. I wonder what web sites they're browsing?  LOL.  Though an extra 1.5GB for $15 isn't too bad in the grand scheme of things.

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From chatrwireless.com:

"If your data usage in a month exceeds your 3G speed data allotment, you can continue to use data with no overage charge, but managed data speeds will be reduced from up to 3 Mbps to up to 64 kilobits per second (for both download and upload) until your Anniversary Date. Many applications that do not require high bandwidth (such as email and web browsing) should not be significantly affected by this speed reduction. Applications that will likely be affected by this speed reduction are those that demand higher bandwidths (for example video streaming). "

They use the wording of "should not be significantly affected".   That really is funny because most sites these days are bandwidth hogs.  I remember the days of dial-up when you go for a bathroom break and the website would still be loading a minute later.  I can only imagine how long current media-rich websites would take.

[srlawren]

@computergeek541 64kbps??? omg.  No thanks.  That's dial-up speeds. I wonder what web sites they're browsing?  LOL.  Though an extra 1.5GB for $15 isn't too bad in the grand scheme of things.

[computergeek541]

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@srlawren wrote:

Here's a couple more things to consider:

- with Chatr, if you use up your "3G" speed data, you can keep using data, albeit at a further reduced speed (I'm not sure what it drops to) until your renewal.  So unlimited, albeit slow.

- with Lucky, you still need to purchase data add-ons if you run out, but they are significantly chaper than PM's:

https://www.luckymobile.ca/shop/plans/prepaid/add-ons/data.

I'm guessing they don't roll over, however?

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I don't think the data add-on ad Lucky rolls over, but I could be wrong.

As for getting more data, Chatr's speed gets reduced to an extremely slow 64Kbps.  Chatr's website even goes as far as saying that web browsing will be fine at that speed.  LOL.  They do allow customers to purchase an additional 500MB for $5, and customers can do that up to 3 times in a month. 

[computergeek541]

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@srlawren wrote:

So with Lucky and Chatr you have access to a call centre now and no more in-zone/out-of-zone worries?  I wonder what the actual support experience is like.  I know for example with Koodo (I read the Koodo community too), people are complaining a lot about 2-3 hour hold times.  They have a feature where you can schedule a callback in a certain time window, but that doesn't seem to have made people any happier.  I wonder what the experience is like with Lucky and Chatr.  If it's fairly hassle-free, that might well be the deciding factor for a lot of new customers.  I think I'd rather tell friends and family to pick a provider with easy support when things go wrong (rather than a 2-3 day wait just to get a reply--who needs that hassle??) than to potentially save a few bucks with rewards, assuming the base plans are equivalent, the networks are similar or equivalent, and there's no more zones anywhere (thank goodness).  Interesting times.

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Honestly, customer service is probably junk. Some people would use that word to describe Public Mobile's customer service, although in Public Mobile's case, the complaints that I read about aren't usually because of the quality of customer service, but because of the length of time before heading from them. 

I'll say that I had a short stint of Chatr and customer service was always excellent, and even much better than Rogers or Fido.  This is a small sample size only though of the couple of times that I had called them in the past, and probably isn't representive of the broad customer base.  Also, the last time I spoke to them, they had a very small customer base, so that might have been a factor.

I can't say that I have any experience with Lucky Mobile customer service.  What I will say is that Bell, Virgin, and Solo had some of the worst customer service when it came to prepaid customers.  There was a noticeable difference between postpaid and prepaid customer service.  It even came to the point where you would sometimes have customers service answer the phone and once they saw that you were a prepaid customer, they said they could not help you and had to transfer you to the prepaid customer service department.  I mean I know carriers do that, but they made it so obvious and would even tell you that they were doing it.  And, this trasnfer to the prepaid department wasn't because the prepaid department specialized in giving better service to prepaid customers either;  it was quite the opposite, clearly with more junior people taking the calls, people with little to no authority to do anything on your account,, and had to check with someone else to be able to do anything to perform any type of account fixing.

[computergeek541]

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@popping wrote:

@computergeek541

Agree. It may be enough if PM fixed up the moderator wait time down to a few hours and have a faster server.

I don't know about Lucky signal.  But Chatr/Mobilicity 3G was not working well with me.  I use Flipp app to do price match at Superstore.  I got no data or very slow inside the Superstore near me. Zone or no zone, I will noy going back to Chatr.

I don't like Chatr pay-per-use charge.  I need to make sure that I don't have fund in my account.  Otherwise, out of zone charge will wipe out my fund in the account.  I will not trust Rogers any more even with no zone Chatr.

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I agree with your on the moderator times.  But, there are certain things that would benefit from a full duplex conversation with customer service in real-time.   Lucky is 100% owned by Bell and is the same network.

As for the Rogers network, yes it is crap in some places, as is with all carriers, including Telus if you go to the right (wrong) places.

As for Chatr pay-per-use outside zone charges, those no longer exist on the in-market plans.  There's sitll pay-per-use charges for other things, but not for being outside zone. 

[krazykiwi]

@srlawren I agree and will point out that my wife is with koodo. During a promotion I was not able to get through and the call back was not even offered during that time. Took days to finely contact them at which point the promotion was over and because I was calling on a different phone because my wife was working they said that they could not see where I was attempting to call so they could not give the promotion. However they did give 2gb bonus data for 2 years and then a week later customer retention called backed because I emailed them and gave the promotion as well as let her keep the 2gb bonus, So in the end it all worked out but took over a week and alot of frustration not to mention 2 days waisted trying to contact them during the promotion. this is the only reason she is still with them and will probably shift to PM when the bonus is up.

[srlawren]

Here's a couple more things to consider:

- with Chatr, if you use up your "3G" speed data, you can keep using data, albeit at a further reduced speed (I'm not sure what it drops to) until your renewal.  So unlimited, albeit slow.

- with Lucky, you still need to purchase data add-ons if you run out, but they are significantly chaper than PM's:

https://www.luckymobile.ca/shop/plans/prepaid/add-ons/data.

I'm guessing they don't roll over, however?

[srlawren]

@popping it's a crap-shoot, really.  In some areas, the Rogers network is better, and in others, the Bellus network is better.  Everyone's mileage is going to vary.

@computergeek541 I'd love to see PM step up their game as well, now that Chatr and Lucky are zone-free.  You're right that many people are not taking advantage of the various rewards (other than AutoPay, that one's basically a gimmie as long as you have a credit card you can put on file). 

So with Lucky and Chatr you have access to a call centre now and no more in-zone/out-of-zone worries?  I wonder what the actual support experience is like.  I know for example with Koodo (I read the Koodo community too), people are complaining a lot about 2-3 hour hold times.  They have a feature where you can schedule a callback in a certain time window, but that doesn't seem to have made people any happier.  I wonder what the experience is like with Lucky and Chatr.  If it's fairly hassle-free, that might well be the deciding factor for a lot of new customers.  I think I'd rather tell friends and family to pick a provider with easy support when things go wrong (rather than a 2-3 day wait just to get a reply--who needs that hassle??) than to potentially save a few bucks with rewards, assuming the base plans are equivalent, the networks are similar or equivalent, and there's no more zones anywhere (thank goodness).  Interesting times.

[stonechucker]

@popping, the Lucky service will be the same as Public Mobile, as it's the shared Bell and Telus network nationwide.

[popping]

@computergeek541

Agree. It may be enough if PM fixed up the moderator wait time down to a few hours and have a faster server.

I don't know about Lucky signal.  But Chatr/Mobilicity 3G was not working well with me.  I use Flipp app to do price match at Superstore.  I got no data or very slow inside the Superstore near me. Zone or no zone, I will noy going back to Chatr.

I don't like Chatr pay-per-use charge.  I need to make sure that I don't have fund in my account.  Otherwise, out of zone charge will wipe out my fund in the account.  I will not trust Rogers any more even with no zone Chatr.