My experience with Public Mobile after 2 days without use

[Spellminer]

Hi, I am writing this message to explain my overal experience with Public Mobile on day 2 of using it. Here is my story.

So I had been doing research for quite a while now about different phone providers, and I had come across Public Mobile, I did alot of research about it and noticed that one big part that was lacking was support. Now, I decided to go ahead and give it a try since I dont mind if I have to wait for support. If I get the services that I am paying for, I am happy with this. This is my second day using Public Mobile, I got my sim card yesterday and went and installed it, after doing a frustrating activation proccess that apparently said my sim number was reserved at the time and to wait 50 minutes, after a checking every couple of hours, it finally worked and let me order my plan. After being fully activated, I was very happy and I saw how great the reception was and the features that I would be getting along with saving. I then decided to go on the self-serve page to see the limit status that people had been saying about which could be a nice feature. I went ahead onto it, just to find out that 2 texts had been used and I never sent them. I thought, ok, maybe it was from adding a referal, they text the person to say they got a new referal. But no, after refreshing a couple of times, in less then a minute I was up to 11 texts used that I had never sent. So I contacted support to ask them about this. They asked my to look at my conversations to see if one came up, I said no. The more that they looked into this, they said it was a problem with android that when you reboot your phone, it sends random texts to a random shortcode. I didnt think this was actually it, so what I did was I rebooted my phone once again. Now I was up by another 11 texts that I did not send. This seems crazy since I wanted to only try it on the 50 SMS/Month plan for 10$, which didnt seem bad. I could understand it being alot better if your on an unlimited plan since you wouldnt have to worry about this. But now I am up to 22 texts that I did not send that are being used up in 1 and a half days. When the moderator told me about this, he also mentionned that it was an issue like iPhones. Now im thinking, then what phone am I supposed to use with Public Mobile that WONT use up my texts for no good reason. And also if this is really the case or if it is just a bug with Public Mobile when phones initially connect to their towers when having the reception hooked back up. I also went ahead and did a bit of research after getting this email. I noticed that alot of people are having this issue with not only Public Mobile but also on Koodo and Telus. So I am not taking my hate only on Public Mobile, but aiming more towards Telus since they own Public Mobile. Also, I asked if they can then readd the text messages so that I can use them, and they said that they cant but what they can do is renew my plan earlier when im out of texts, which will just cost me more money for something I did not want to happen or use, even on their website is mentions "Why should you pay for features you didnt want in the first place", im not saying this is a feature, but it is the same principle, why should I pay for texts that I didnt want to send, I have used Bell, Rogers, and a few others in the past with the SAME phone and never have I ever had this issue. To sum this up, I will just be staying with Public Mobile till the end of this month and till my plan needs renewal. Until this is gonna be fixed on their end. I have to say that I am quite upset with the services that I have received from Public Mobile in the 2 days of using it. I feel like they have good potential, but they need to fix oncoming bugs before starting to offer new stuff, like the Billing issues that people have, the no talking issues, all of the bugs and issues. I dont feel that they should have gone out of Beta till all of this was fixed as customers who do see potential in this, will be upset just as I am. There goes 20$+ just wasted down the drain that I wont even get to use. I hope that you understand my situation, and once again, I will no longer be recommending Public Mobile to people unless they manage to make it right and to fix their stuff... 

Thanks.

[asima12]

Great your problem solved but these posts really help new users like me when facing the same problem so should remain posted.

[Karnbot13]

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@wleung wrote:

Just want to share the result of my inquiry into the mysterious outgoing texts problem.

Firstly, I have confirmed that incoming texts are being handled properly by my text counter.  They have not been deducted from my 50 outgoing texts quota.

In terms of a resolution for the problem, the Public Mobile moderator has given a quick fix by crediting the mysterious text count back onto my quota.  The mysterious texts remain on my usage history log and unanswered.  She told me she will be initiating a ticket internally for further investigation of the problem.

I have also contacted Apple technical support for an inquiry, however, the Apple technicians also basically know nothing about this kind of problem and require me to factory reset my iPhone as the first step for their investigation.  They were unable to offer anything further unless I perform the iPhone reset for them.

Fortunately, the mysterious texts have not appeared any more so far since my 2nd day with Public Mobile.  Considering this, the text count quick fix done, and that a phone reset will be too troublesome, I will consider this settled for now and hope with my fingers crossed that the mysterious texts never appear again.

Thank you everyone.

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Yeah, sounds like a typical, effortless solution from Apple. "Having trouble? Factory reset the phone, that'll work." Staffed by monkeys

[wleung]

Just want to share the result of my inquiry into the mysterious outgoing texts problem.

Firstly, I have confirmed that incoming texts are being handled properly by my text counter.  They have not been deducted from my 50 outgoing texts quota.

In terms of a resolution for the problem, the Public Mobile moderator has given a quick fix by crediting the mysterious text count back onto my quota.  The mysterious texts remain on my usage history log and unanswered.  She told me she will be initiating a ticket internally for further investigation of the problem.

I have also contacted Apple technical support for an inquiry, however, the Apple technicians also basically know nothing about this kind of problem and require me to factory reset my iPhone as the first step for their investigation.  They were unable to offer anything further unless I perform the iPhone reset for them.

Fortunately, the mysterious texts have not appeared any more so far since my 2nd day with Public Mobile.  Considering this, the text count quick fix done, and that a phone reset will be too troublesome, I will consider this settled for now and hope with my fingers crossed that the mysterious texts never appear again.

Thank you everyone.

[JL9]

I had no idea, I took a look at usage to see the same thing. Thanks for the heads up. Good to know. Nice work @will13am

[will13am]

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@wleung wrote:

I am eagerly trying to figure out the similar issue I have encountered since joining Public Mobile yesterday and want to see if anyone might have some solution for me specific to iPhone which I use.

I am using the $10 50/50 30 day plan.  Like others have reported, my text message count mysteriously started with 4/50 right off the bat after registration, and is now standing at 6/50.  Until the present, I have sent nothing but 1 short SMS that included only 28 characters, spaces included, plus 1 emoticon.  In my Usage History, the mysterious texts all appear as outgoing texts originating from my phone to 474663, Usage Types being "Minutes".

The number of the mysterious texts does correspond to the number of incoming texts I have received, which are all automatic account notification texts from Public Mobile, including 1 welcome text, 2 PIN setup notification texts, and 2 reward credit notification texts.  As I don't seem to see an option to opt out of these Public Mobile communication texts, it would be quite unfair to count them towards the 50 outoing texts/30 days quota.

I have privately messaged the Moderator Team about this.  I started eagaerly writing this message here hoping to get more input from others as a Moderator had responded to me privately that "I would like to confirm that the 50 text message plan, deduct all incoming text as well. This means if your phone is validating an application such as WhatsApp, Viber etc then the 50 messages are being used. Therefore, this is the reason why you seeing text message usage since your phone is communicating with application shortcodes."  I then pointed out to her that this is a clear contradiction of the official published plan advertisement at https://www.publicmobile.ca/en/on/plans/10for50talk50text, which states that the plan includes "UNLIMITED Incoming Text" and "50 TEXTS Outgoing International Text" and if what she says is true, I feel misled into joining Public Mobile by the misinformation in the advertisement.  A short while ago as I was part way through typing this post, I have received an apology and a promise to investigate this issue from the Moderator.  I eagerly look forward to a satisfactory resolution and not having to file complaint to the CCTS.

Meanwhile, does anyone in the Community have any input regarding this problem that might be helpful?  @will13am, I see from your replies to this topic that you might have some good knowledge.  My device is an iPhone.  Do you have any solution for me?

Other than this issue, I am quite satisfied with everything else about Public Mobile so far, however having read about multiple reports of the same issue but no reliable fix from the Public Mobile side on the Community forum here, I am feeling quite concerned right now.

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@wleung, I have never owned an iPhone and so I will defer to the iOS users out there to go into the specifics on why the iPhone consumes SMS messages through iCloud and other iOS related verifications on top of those mentioned coming from Public Mobile.  As you mentioned, there are also other user apps that consume text messages.

With respect to the advertised 50 outgoing text, unlimited incoming text for the plan in question, I am going to offer my thoughts on things differ from advertised.  I will add a caveat that this is only my hypothesis and the ideas expressed have not been fully tested.  I have an unlimited text plan.  When I look through my usage summary, I see incoming and outgoing text shown in sequence based on time stamp.  I would assume that for the limited text plan, the usage history is identical.  I have good reason to believe that there is only one message counter regardless of plan and that all incoming and outgoing are counted together.  In the case of limited plans, when the counter reaches 50, outgoing text are blocked because the limit has been reached and incoming text are still allowed.  @Alan_K, can you confirm/deny whether my theory on treatment of text messages for the limited usage plan is correct.

Regardless of outcome, to me the solution is more than just fixing the counter to match the terms of the plan which is a must.  There needs to be an option for customers to buy a bucket of text messages similar to offerings for long distance minutes.  This is something the customer base needs to lobby for in hopes that the decision makers will listen.  @Luddite has the magic voice when it comes to making things happen. 

[wleung]

I am eagerly trying to figure out the similar issue I have encountered since joining Public Mobile yesterday and want to see if anyone might have some solution for me specific to iPhone which I use.

I am using the $10 50/50 30 day plan.  Like others have reported, my text message count mysteriously started with 4/50 right off the bat after registration, and is now standing at 6/50.  Until the present, I have sent nothing but 1 short SMS that included only 28 characters, spaces included, plus 1 emoticon.  In my Usage History, the mysterious texts all appear as outgoing texts originating from my phone to 474663, Usage Types being "Minutes".

The number of the mysterious texts does correspond to the number of incoming texts I have received, which are all automatic account notification texts from Public Mobile, including 1 welcome text, 2 PIN setup notification texts, and 2 reward credit notification texts.  As I don't seem to see an option to opt out of these Public Mobile communication texts, it would be quite unfair to count them towards the 50 outoing texts/30 days quota.

I have privately messaged the Moderator Team about this.  I started eagaerly writing this message here hoping to get more input from others as a Moderator had responded to me privately that "I would like to confirm that the 50 text message plan, deduct all incoming text as well. This means if your phone is validating an application such as WhatsApp, Viber etc then the 50 messages are being used. Therefore, this is the reason why you seeing text message usage since your phone is communicating with application shortcodes."  I then pointed out to her that this is a clear contradiction of the official published plan advertisement at https://www.publicmobile.ca/en/on/plans/10for50talk50text, which states that the plan includes "UNLIMITED Incoming Text" and "50 TEXTS Outgoing International Text" and if what she says is true, I feel misled into joining Public Mobile by the misinformation in the advertisement.  A short while ago as I was part way through typing this post, I have received an apology and a promise to investigate this issue from the Moderator.  I eagerly look forward to a satisfactory resolution and not having to file complaint to the CCTS.

Meanwhile, does anyone in the Community have any input regarding this problem that might be helpful?  @will13am, I see from your replies to this topic that you might have some good knowledge.  My device is an iPhone.  Do you have any solution for me?

Other than this issue, I am quite satisfied with everything else about Public Mobile so far, however having read about multiple reports of the same issue but no reliable fix from the Public Mobile side on the Community forum here, I am feeling quite concerned right now.

[Spellminer]

Well if they could take it down, that would be great since I revoke my statements from above, and will do a review later on, I can open a new thread saying about the problem and how to fix it if you'd like

[smp99]

Don't take down this thread. People need to be educated on this subject. Like me.

[will13am]

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@Spellminer wrote:

Is it possible to have a moderator take this post down since now I feel really guilty for blaming Public Mobile. I take back what I said. I have went ahead and done like @will13am@ said he would try, after a couple reboots. My phone is fine and I have not lost anymore texts. It does seem to be something to do with Android. I guess I wrote this post out of hate since I find it weird that it wasn't happening on other carriers that I was on, but come to think of it. I never had Android O back then. Thanks again @will13am for your help in fixing this, I'll just use a third party texting/calling app.

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No problem.  I appreciate the angst when you have a limited use plan and you find a hole at the bottom of the proverbial bucket and you don't know what caused it but want to point to something convenient.  I have always believed that all carriers' measurements of whatever we do is "legal tender" so to speak.  For something like that, they don't just answer to the customer but the regulators.  Often when there is discrepancy, much if not all of the cause is at the customer end. 

[stonechucker]

There are various bugs on both iOS and Adroid that seem like problems, until you realize that it's not the provider, but the settings in the operating system.

Many of the bugs most of us here will never worry about, as our talk and data are unlimited for the most part.  This new plan with 50 minutes / 50 texts is an unusual plan, and everyone is learning on the go right now.

This one is definately a hassle for anyone who rarely texts, and it's really strange in my mind, that the phone dialer would be sending out the txts.  A phone dialer should have no need for this, unless it also sends regular txts.

On the iOS side, WiFi Assist is the one that hurts a lot of people, as it's on by default from Apple.  Nothing but a data hog, when your wifi is painfully slow.

[Spellminer]

Is it possible to have a moderator take this post down since now I feel really guilty for blaming Public Mobile. I take back what I said. I have went ahead and done like @will13am said he would try, after a couple reboots. My phone is fine and I have not lost anymore texts. It does seem to be something to do with Android. I guess I wrote this post out of hate since I find it weird that it wasn't happening on other carriers that I was on, but come to think of it. I never had Android O back then. Thanks again @will13am for your help in fixing this, I'll just use a third party texting/calling app.

[Spellminer]

So your saying it is caused by the phone and not Public Mobile?, Cause I have used other providers and never had this issue.

[will13am · Accepted solution]

A while back another customer had issues with errant SMS usage and it was reported that the google phone apk may be the culprit sending out sms to 7723 and reported as minutes in the usage history.  I saw the thread and didn't really delve into it deeply as I have unlimited text and didn't really care whether it was happening to me.  Seeing that this is somewhat of a pervasive issue, I checked into my usage logs and sure enough my phone is sending out lots of sms to 7723, 5 sms outgoing sms were logged within a 4 minute timeframe this morning.  I am on stock android O using the google phone apk.  I have now disabled sms permission for phone apk.  Let's see what that does to these errant outgoing text. 

https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Phones-Hardware/Pixel-on-Oreo-tries-to-send-Int-l-SMS...

With respect to Public Mobile experience, I don't see this as being relevant.  I made that comment previously and I stand by it.  As the carrier, it is not Public Mobile's job to police SMS traffic.  We own this responsibility. 

[Spellminer]

Thanks, see, if this plan worked as it should, I would be more then happy to pay that price for it.

[smp99]

I am going to have to agree with @Spellminer on this one. This plan should not have left beta testing if you use up 11 texts per restart. Others have reported similar issues as well. This along with CallFwd not counting towards your minutes when many poeple claim that sometimes it does count.  

Get on top of it now or cut your losses - shut down this plan, or offer unlimted txt for $15 and leave those alone who are on $10 at that price but also offer unlimted txt.

[Spellminer]

I already have, they didn't even mention that they would try to fix it, they just said they can renew it early or I change plans...

[meocon]

@Spellminer 

I recommend you send a private message to the moderator team and ask them to fix that issue for you.  include your account# or phone#, as well as your account PIN (if know) to help speed up the identification process.

Click here to send the moderator team a private message.

You can find information regarding the moderator team by following this link.

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• There is no need to send multiple messages.

[Spellminer]

Hi, I understand that, but think about it, on average I reboot my phone atleast once or twice per month, thats like 22 texts just gone like that, in other words 28 texts/Month, that is barely anything and on the site it says 50, that I can live off of since its mainly an emergency number. I think it could be great, but this issue NEEDS to be fixed. I dont want to go back to the Big Three or any other providers either. But atleast they tell me what I will be getting and they give it to me, unlike here where I was told 50Texts, but they didnt say that rebooting my phone would chew up 11 texts, that is basically taking away like 1$ or so for each reboot. Another thing is that they didnt even mention that they would try to fix it, they just said they can make me renew it early (pay more money) or upgrade to 25$/Month

[meocon]

You need to stay more days with PM to satisfy. I have been with PM for over a year now I’m really happy and satisfied with PM. I dont want to change back to Big Three anymore. I also referred my friends and family to PM as well and all of them is very satisfied. Thank you PM. Hope you guys will have more rewards and unbeat plan soon 🙂