Pausing subscription - issues with going abroad and no refunds

[alives]

Hi everyone,

I want to report on my experience with Public Mobile, which for the most part is great! Good coverage, infrequent service issues and fair pricing compared to many other options. I've used the service for 5 years.

I do however want to flag up a recent interaction where I've been let down. I'm hoping this time around I will get a different result.

I'm from the UK originally, and am now a permanent resident in Canada. Last year I found out my mum's cancer of two years past cured had returned during a three week trip home to visit family. It's terminal, and as a result my short visit became a 7 month stay to support her through emergency treatment.

On my return to Canada, I realised I had not stopped my Public Mobile subscription (I believed I had, and didn't check). I contacted customer support who I thought might be understanding of my oversight (seeing no usage for this whole period), and accept given the nature of my situation: providing full time care, visits to the hospital and attending chemotherapy sessions was enough of a mitigating circumstance to show some leniency.

Not a bit of it. What I was instead told, was that it was my responsibility to check, and that no refund etc could be issued. In the future I could pause my subscription.

I've had to return again to the UK, again to be with my mum, and I now wish to pause my subscription until I return next month (hopefully). Payment went out for the most recent period on March 27th, and I've been in the UK since the 20th of March. I don't see why I should have to pay for a service I'm not using, but I'm left cold by the procedure of interacting in this portal.

I sincerely hope customer services will reconsider my situation and help me, at least this time.

Thanks for reading 

[alives]

Thanks all for the the responses- it's disappointing that the customer service doesn't exist when needed. I worry with the suggested workarounds it's creating more unnecessary complexity. I will try, and wish again that some more personal response from a PM representative was available.

[funpig1]

@alives 

You need to Go into your subscription and suspend the account, before your renewal date in order to prevent money from being charged.

Just remember not to let the account stay suspended more than 90 days at which time, your account will be deactivated and you will lose your number.

If you are out of the country for longer than 90 days, you can make a payment before the 90 days and then suspend your Account again for a further 90 days. Unfortunately, you're not going to get any partial refund of any money that you've already paid. Good luck.

[slusagm]

first, please note you can only suspended the account for no more than 90 days.  Any account suspended over 90 days will be closed.  So, some people have to reactivate for a month around 80+ days and suspended again.  

in your situation, did you turn off Subscribed in My Account, Payment, Manage Subscription?  Always best to take full screenshot with a date showing.  You might want to make a formal complain with PM and see what they can do

Just open ticket with PM using the Orange Chatbot icon on the lower right. (For 2FA when login, you might need to use email to receive if you cannot receive the text on the phone.)  Type the question Submit ticket and select Contact Us to get to ticket open screen       
Or message them using this link:
    https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/notes/composepage/note-to-user-id/22437

CS_Agent will reply to your community inbox, check here:
      https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/notes/privatenotespage   

[Techfish]

I'm sorry to hear that. You could suspend your account under "Lost or Stolen Phone?" or disable automatic payments and then reactivate it within 90 days.