PSA: there is a glitch with AutoPay. You won't be notified, but you'll be suspended.

[NotAnAmbiTurner]

The fix is to log-in to self-serve and pay manually. If you're like me, you'll probably see your AutoPay is set to three months from now. According to the Moderator Team, you will lose any text messages recieved during that period forever, though apparently voicemail continues to function.

There are a bunch of threads on this, but I wanted to summarize. I had the same issue today - it's absurd that:

1. you don't get a notification that your account has been suspended,
2. there's no grace period, and
3. that apparently any text messages you receive during the down period are lost forever and not just held (even for a very limited time) and re-piped to your device.

As for the idea I've seen on some threads that "auto-pay is just a fallback / nice-to-have" or you just shouldn't rely on it: no. Auto-pay literally means "automatically pay." This is something that relies on Public Mobile's technology and Public Mobile actively encourages the use of. There are no warnings as to its unreliability, except on the forums, and the idea customers would have to "learn the hard way" to not rely on AutoPay is repugnant. The fact a company would provide something, on their platform, named for its ability to "automatically pay [your bill]" but then say "just kidding, we meant something more like 'attempt to pay but only if we feel like it and you won't know until you miss calls and lose text messages'" and then immediately, without notification or grace period, penalize its customers, with very real consequences, when its own technology fails, is ridiculous. And when I say ridiculous, I mean it in the literal sense: worthy of ridicule.

Also: lest we forget, Public Mobile actually sends you a text about 3 days before your plan renews telling you that you should pay your bill but "If you're on AutoPay... please ignore this."

Software companies shouldn't have glitches like this, at least not on products that are in production and dealing with payment.

[LovesToPM]

Thanks for everyone's comments so far.

Before reading all your posts, I also made a post
https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Paying-for-your-service/PSA-Am-I-headed-towards-accou...

I have a theory on what caused the May 7 AutoPay date.

During the system maintenance of April 7th, if you did NOT change your plan during the last bill cycle, your AutoPay date was set incorrectly as May 7th.

The change happened during the system maintenance on April 7, exactly 30 days before May 7.

Perhaps I am wrong. Please check your account(s) to confirm.

[srlawren]

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@SLOPES wrote:

I thought this was fixed? I was assured by the moderator team that next months cycle will go through without issue. 

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@SLOPES that's the nature of software. Bugs can be reintroduced (or new variations of them introduced) at a later date in time if not careful and proeprly tested and remediated before depolyment.  I can only imagine the payment and renewal processing code is relatively complex and possibly poorly implemented in terms of maintainability.  But this is just speculation.

[srlawren]

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@NotAnAmbiTurner wrote:

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When you do the manual payment before the AutoPay date/time, will AutoPay still trigger?

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@NotAnAmbiTurner AutoPay is designed to charge your card on file any outsanding amount.  So if you manually top up the full amount required before that date, when AutoPay runs, it won't need to charge anything to your card.  You still get the $2 AutoPay discount and any autopay bonus data (if applicable to your plan), if that's what you're asking.

[SLOPES]

I thought this was fixed? I was assured by the moderator team that next months cycle will go through without issue. 

[NotAnAmbiTurner]

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@srlawren wrote:

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... for anyone reading this thread "in time" (aka you haven't already been suspended), I have a sure-fire way for dealing with AutoPay issues:  don't rely on it.  For years I have left mine turned on (for the reward, and a failsafe in case I forget), but also set myself a recurring reminder to do a manual top-up (payment) a few days before my AutoPay date.  If something goes wrong (maybe my card expired and I forgot to update the expiry date, for example), I still have time to deal with it before I get suspended.  Worst case scenario I could go purchase a voucher if I'm still having trouble.

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When you do the manual payment before the AutoPay date/time, will AutoPay still trigger?

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@srlawren wrote:

@NotAnAmbiTurner speaking as a software developer with nearly 20 years under my belt, I can assuredly say there is no such thing as a piece of software that does anything of importance and does not have any bugs.  That said, yes, PM needs to do far better at quality assurance and regression testing before pushing updates to the production systems.  We of course have zero visibility into their internal processes but from outward appearance there is definitely a lot of room for improvement.

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The issue isn't just that there's a bug I don't think. It's more that what has been created for PM around their fundamental business driver (the service they provide, and payment for it) has been designed not only to fail when really there's really no reason it should ever fail, but fail silently in a way that alienates customers. You're right that I don't know enough about PM to understand how this happened, but I don't really think the "why" matters - this is a mature company, and these services (which again, they tell their customers to rely on) are not in beta.

[srlawren]

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@NotAnAmbiTurner wrote:

Software companies shouldn't have glitches like this, at least not on products that are in production and dealing with payment.

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@NotAnAmbiTurner speaking as a software developer with nearly 20 years under my belt, I can assuredly say there is no such thing as a piece of software that does anything of importance and does not have any bugs.  That said, yes, PM needs to do far better at quality assurance and regression testing before pushing updates to the production systems.  We of course have zero visibility into their internal processes but from outward appearance there is definitely a lot of room for improvement.

That said, for anyone reading this thread "in time" (aka you haven't already been suspended), I have a sure-fire way for dealing with AutoPay issues:  don't rely on it.  For years I have left mine turned on (for the reward, and a failsafe in case I forget), but also set myself a recurring reminder to do a manual top-up (payment) a few days before my AutoPay date.  If something goes wrong (maybe my card expired and I forgot to update the expiry date, for example), I still have time to deal with it before I get suspended.  Worst case scenario I could go purchase a voucher if I'm still having trouble.

This workaround won't prevent every issue, if there's a glitch in the actual renewal process following the payment, it won't prevent that, but it will prevent you from having the payment part fail.  

[Dylan3]

I dont think there tmshould be glitches with autopay and this needs to be fixed soon by the public mobile team

[CellGirl]

@NotAnAmbiTurner 

You're absolutely right -- there should not be any glitches with auto-pay. I've never had an auto-pay problem with other carriers. I don't want to find out if I have one with Public Mobile, so from the beginning, I make a manual payment a few days before my due date.

[LoreckAvery]

This summary is exactly my thoughts! Thanks for posting!!

[Alex888]

@NotAnAmbiTurnerI do agree that with everything being online they do need to do more to make sure the site and account renewals work better.

[katlee]

Just found out my dad's phone was deactivated for this very glitch, with zero notice. 

I better not lose my $10/month promo discount over this suspension.