What companies can/usually do isn’t the point. Public Mobile built its business through a loyal customer base on the promise of operating differently, and loyalty rewards was the keystone of that promise. Sure they can change their reward program, they’re entitled to, but it’s not just changing the program, it’s changing the business model they claimed to be using.
No one should be at all surprised that loyal customers feel betrayed by this move, least of all Public Mobile - their lack of any good faith attempt to make one final gesture of appreciation for loyalty shows this.
They removed the one transition points offer that would have softened the blow of a forced transition - there are no longer any one time loyalty bonus points. From a customer perspective they are actually punishing people who didn’t willingly change to points.
Then they offered a “thank you gift” that is insultingly problematic for at least 3 reasons:
1 - it is unusable by customers who don’t need/use data, or those with unlimited data, and they won’t let people change plans down to a lower rate that would allow them to actually make use of this “gift” - and they tied the size of the gift to the price of your plan, not how long you’d been with Public Mobile
2 - it is a huge amount that few people could use up in even a whole year, but expires in less than 6 months - it’s not even in keeping with previous “thank you gifts” the company has offered to customers during holiday periods, so it’s not as though they don’t know how to actually show appreciation, if they wanted to
3 - it doesn’t address the primary concern people have with losing their reward program
All Public Mobile is doing is showing us who they are now. Whoever they were when we signed up is gone. They are showing us in a number of ways through how this has been handled that they do not value loyalty or longevity at all (dollars coming in over time) - only dollars coming in right now. They can value whatever they want to, of course, but so can we as customers. We can place a value on being treated with respect, on being communicated with honestly and openly, on having the lowest possible price for services, on the most service/add on value per dollar spent …
So maybe there will be an exodus because people don’t like the change, because people don’t like how the change was handled, because people can get better value elsewhere, all of the above, or something else entirely.
Whether the company can do this legally or whether other companies would behave similarly, is really irrelevant. They are doing something inconsistent with what they told us when we signed up.
