Hi everyone, I just wanted to share my Public Mobile experience here as it may shed some light for some people having the same or similar issue.
I joined Public ($10 plan) in the beginning of May and everything was set-up smoothly and quickly. I was previously with Speakout and was using a Samsung Galaxy Core LTE from Cityfone (Rogers network). I got it unlocked and decided to continue using it on Public since www.willmyphonework.net showed it would work. I took a new number from Public so didn't port over my Speakout number.
When I joined, I tested the service to make sure I could send and receive calls and texts and it all checked out. However, by the middle of the month I started to find out that people's calls weren't coming through. I don't know when it began since I wasn't aware I wasn't getting people's calls. The calls went straight to my voicemail.
I researched here in the Community and did restarts and the "Lost Device" trick which fixed the issues temporarily each time. This happened in all kinds of places, indoors and outdoors. I private messaged the Moderator Team in mid June when I ran out of ideas. We sent messages back and forth between June 16 and June 23. They apologized for the lack of service and asked me questions such as did I port in, what my phone model is, do I not receive calls from all carriers or just a specific one, can I receive texts (I did btw), does this happen everywhere etc.
They reset my account on their end multiples times and again, this helped for a while. But it would still happen intermittently - I wouldn't be able to receive calls and I would have no idea why or when it started to happen. I voiced my dissatisfaction for the lack of service since I had to pay for it and they kindly credited my account $10. The case got escalated to the engineering team on June 19 who called me up on another number to explain nothing looked wrong on their side and because this was happening everywhere and not in a certain area, it was not likely a Telus network issue. He bumped me off the network and then put me back on which fixed the issue temporarily. He even said this would not likely fix the issue permanently (given what had already been tried). I did find it interesting how he knew the phone that was brought over was from Rogers though. I guess it's a common issue with previous Rogers customers?
Anyway, at the end of the call, he said further investigation could be done and he'd get back to me but it wouldn't be for a long time (never ended up hearing back from him...). But his recommendation was changing the Sim card or the phone. I messaged the Moderator Team again and let them know what the engineer team agent had to say and requested a new Sim card free of charge. They complied and I got the sim card very quickly (1-2 days). I changed the Sim but unfortunately it didn't fix the problem.
I got my hands on a spare phone (ZTE Axon Pro) and decided to give it a go. It has been almost a month now and I am happy to report that I have been receiving calls. Previously on the Samsung, a couple of people also reported not being able to hear me on their end. I also haven't had this problem since the phone change. I hope that there will be no more issues hereafter!
Side note: On www.willmyphonework.net, the Samsung Galaxy Core LTE had a blue check for 3G and a yellow check for 4G whereas the ZTE Axon Pro had blue checks for both 3G and 4G. I don't know if this is what made the difference (I didn't think so since I don't have data and don't have it turned on on my phone). Perhaps it was just a coincidence with the phone (antenna issues?) or a Rogers phone issue (I got the impression that a lot of people who came from Rogers have some sort of network issues on Public from that call with the engineer).
Anyway, sorry for the longer than expected post, I just thought I'd share this. I'd also like to thank Moderator Katherine who was always very polite and kind and provided the best service she could, even following up after not hearing from me for about 2 days. 🙂 Also the guy from the engineeer team who called me on the same day the escalation. I really didn't think the phone would be the issue but in my case it was. So for anyone who is having network/connectivity issues and all the other methods have failed, hopefully placing your Sim card in a different (but compatible) phone will fix things.
