PM network problems must be real.

[Tsawwassen]

There seem to be many posts outlining reception and other problems. I used to think that 99% of complaints were due to the posters fault by being hasty  not following instructions , not being technical or lack of common sense. However I just experienced a frustrating problem - was just trying to log in to my CRA account that requires two factor authentication but for no good reason my phone went to SOS mode - I tried again with no luck and now I'm locked out of my CRA account. Also I did refer a friend to PM - he is a graduate of UT computer science - he reports that he did port his number and followed all instructions but can't receive texts or voice calls. He has now switched back yo BELL. My wife some time back reported the same problems and she is back with bell. HEY PM what gives?

PS ---I would assume that 99.9 % PM accounts are problem free and thus have no need to post on this forum. As is a fact with any product or service, only the  customer experiencing  problems will bother to post their complaints.

[Tsawwassen]

I would assume that 99.9 % PM accounts are problem free and thus have no need to post on this forum. As is a fact with any product or service, only the  customer experiencing  problems will bother to post their complaints.

[Kristowhy]

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@Korth wrote:

@dust2dust 

It is a sad state of affairs. You AutoPay always worked before but suddenly it fails, perhaps a system glitch or perhaps your credit card is near expiry or something, You fumble around the community for a while before learning you have to go to Self-Serve. Which you can't do because you've forgotten the email/password you submitted long, long ago, thinking at the time that it wasn't important. You rant on the community a bit before learning you have to get a support ticket through through the stupid chatbot. You wait hours or days and deal with a frustrating back-and-forth runaround while the agents keep on asking you to do simple basic things unrelated to your problem.

It's a system designed to fail. And it cannot compete vs every other third-tier operator. They have stores, you can walk in with your problem, give them money, walk out with problem solved and working phone service in your pocket.

Not at all helped by Public Mobile's consistent unwillingness or inability to properly communicate relevant information. There should be a bigass flashing click-to-say-you-understand warning on the activation page which bluntly informs you that you'll be screwed if you forget your login info.

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I agree with all of your points here.  But remember, this is a Tier 3 flanker brand offering and Telus is not interested in spending/investing more than necessary here.  Those sweet delicious margins flow from their Tier 1 and 2 offerings and they would prefer you be there, so why make the #3 efficient and good? 🤔  PM (and Koodo prepaid) is a good way to attract/lure subscribers in with low price offerings and then try and push them up to Tier 1 & 2. 

Telus does a poor job communicating expectations and requirements for new customers, which is why the forum is full of questions from clueless subscribers trying to fix a glitch or a simple issue that requires an agent touchpoint.  It all goes back to pure economics and it being cheaper to "reward" posters for helping people with the same issues and responses over and over than to invest and do it right.  

[Tsawwassen]

My post has nothing to do with CS - Customer Service reps have always been helpful and eager to please. --------It seems that it was just my bad luck that the network experienced a glitch just when I was trying to login to my CRA account. 

[Korth]

@DDM69 

Sort if the opposite of survivor bias. I might call it "victim bias".

[DDM69]

If only all the happy customers posted on here to express their great experience and pleasure with the service. 😁

[HALIMACS]

Thanks for the reference @dust2dust 

I continue to feel such an aptitude based questionnaire would be extremely beneficial for those customers who are less than confident of their tech savvy abilities.

Alas, public mobile would never do it as it would scare 50% of the customers away from here.

They would just as well have us be their minions to iron out details of their systems with unsuspecting newcomers.

And I guess I would say… Why wouldn’t they?

[Korth]

@dust2dust 

It is a sad state of affairs. You AutoPay always worked before but suddenly it fails, perhaps a system glitch or perhaps your credit card is near expiry or something, You fumble around the community for a while before learning you have to go to Self-Serve. Which you can't do because you've forgotten the email/password you submitted long, long ago, thinking at the time that it wasn't important. You rant on the community a bit before learning you have to get a support ticket through through the stupid chatbot. You wait hours or days and deal with a frustrating back-and-forth runaround while the agents keep on asking you to do simple basic things unrelated to your problem.

It's a system designed to fail. And it cannot compete vs every other third-tier operator. They have stores, you can walk in with your problem, give them money, walk out with problem solved and working phone service in your pocket.

Not at all helped by Public Mobile's consistent unwillingness or inability to properly communicate relevant information. There should be a bigass flashing click-to-say-you-understand warning on the activation page which bluntly informs you that you'll be screwed if you forget your login info.

[dust2dust]

This goes back to @HALIMACS 's idea a while ago of almost like a competency test to become a customer here.

So ya wanna be a customer here eh. Well, just so ya know....etc.

I agree that this is not like a car or computer due to the fact that the customer has to do it all here. There's no smiling clerk walking through the sign up process like in a store and driven to sell you more stuff to get the commission. There's no store to go to when the autopay fails. Then the agents "misunderstand" the question being asked only to provide false and misleading information in reply.

[Korth]

@Yummy 

Very true. But understanding the activation, account, and payment system, learning how to configure your APN/etc, knowing how to identify and methodically troubleshoot specific issues, knowing how the community support and stupid chatbot ticket systems operate ... these are absolutely necessary details at Public Mobile and they are unnecessary (or even hidden) details at every other provider.

Consumers would have a lot more problems with their TVs and cars if they had to dig around in settings and under the hood to turn these things on. Look at things like computers - some people are willing to know and learn and do the tech-savvy things, most people only want to buy a thing which "just works" out of the box.

[Yummy]

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@Korth wrote:

Many customers who have problems are angry and accusatory. And somewhat ignorant about how cellular networks, operators, tiers actually work. .

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Customer does Not have to be PhD or network specialist or whatever in order to USE mobile phones.

Customer expects mobile phone to work all the time and does not care what is going on behind the scene.

You do not have to know how TV creates picture on a screen in order to watch favorite show or to know how car actually moves you in order to drive it.

[Korth · Accepted solution]

Network problems affect everyone on the shared network. Telus and Koodo and Public. And Bell and Virgin and Fido. And SaskTel. And others.

There is, after all, a nation-wide VoLTE upgrade in progress. Third-tier providers (Public, Lucky, Chatr, etc) are the ones who are most likely to be behind the curve, whose subscribers are most likely to be inconvenienced during the transition and subsequent debugging, fine tuning, teething pains.

Problems which are specific to Public Mobile alone are those related to Public Mobile's Self-Serve, Plans, payment systems, and online-only support model.

Many customers who have problems are angry and accusatory. And somewhat ignorant about how cellular networks, operators, tiers actually work. They confuse issues. They don't even care what the issues are as long as they can get somebody else to immediately figure it out and fix it for them. I am not saying these people are (necessarily) stupid and impatient, I'm just saying that traditionally we have expected the a technician at the store in a phone call to take care of things for us - and Public Mobile's DIY model is, sadly, not really the best choice for everyone.

[umnikke8]

Agreed, the quantity of similar or identical problems is quite concerning and I think is indicative of problems at Public.

[softech]

@Tsawwassen for your SOS issue, try your PM sim on another phone to trigger a sim re-provisioning , it might help.  Also, try 3G only

for port issie, I honestly think it is a smooth process.   Did he ever call the porting support?  remember, some issues could be on the source side, old provider didn't release the line.  I know many computer science graduates who can only program but cannot even setup his own computer to work.  They rely others to install everything on the computer so he just sit there and do only coding

[hycm53]

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@Tsawwassen wrote:

There seem to be many posts outlining reception and other problems. I used to think that 99% of complaints were due to the posters fault by being hasty  not following instructions , not being technical or lack of common sense. However I just experienced a frustrating problem - was just trying to log in to my CRA account that requires two factor authentication but for no good reason my phone went to SOS mode - I tried again with no luck and now I'm locked out of my CRA account. Also I did refer a friend to PM - he is a graduate of UT computer science - he reports that he did port his number and followed all instructions but can't receive texts or voice calls. He has now switched back yo BELL. My wife some time back reported the same problems and she is back with bell. HEY PM what gives?

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When your phone showed up "SOS", I think you need to reset network, APN setting or connect to PM manually.