What does one sacrifice in switching to PM?

[helloPM]

I thought that the 'cost' of moving to PM was that you had to get all of your C/S and T/S via the website, which could entail some small delays.  And I was fine with that.

I've now moved 4 cell numbers to PM and its been a terrible experience, such that now I'm thinking that what we are getting in moving to PM is a lack of resources allocated by Telus, such that they are understaffed and their systems are terribly buggy.

This could well be a brand segmentation strategy by Telus - if using PM is too smooth an experience then higher paying Telus customers could move - but I sure hope not because it is insulting to treat your customers' time as worthless.

And that is how this last experience felt.  In the end they found that it was a problem on their side and they seemed to find it and fix it quite quickly once T/S tried.  But to get there I had spend 20-30 hours of my time over a week, endless messages with the reps, 3.5 days with no service at all, 5 trips across Toronto because this activation was for my neice, and most of all frustration!  

I recognize that I have just a few data points (and I don't know what was happening behind the scenes) so I'm resisting drawing a conclusion, and I'm not blaming any of the PM reps I dealt with, but I'm very scared about what I've got myself into now.

Do you believe that PM's backend systems and self-serve portal are worse then the other carriers?  And that their customers are expected to endure more?

[helloPM]

Glad to hear about them hiring new systems personnel!

Yes, it sure would be nice if I could put all four lines (one is me and three are family members) in one account.  I hope that is on their list, and that they allow people to merge existing accounts into one once they've implemented this (rather then just allowing it for new accounts).

I am hopeful that, for the accounts I've now moved to PM, everything should be smooth sailing - as long as I don't make any changes!

[canucks4life]

I would be going a bit nuts trying to manage 4 seperate accounts...PM really needs to make multiple lines on account a reality soon.

[Watoko]

Thanks for not blowing your top off, as I know you may be frusturated given that this did not happen in isolation, rather a recurring problem with each of your activations.

To answer your questions, I do believe that PM's backend systems and self-serve portal are worse than the other carriers. Especially compared to when I was with Koodo previously, and I am pretty sure the big 3 probably have systems that are leagues more user friendly and less buggy.

That being said, I agree with @vinions that after all the activation storm and once everything is fixed and fine, it should be smooth sailing from here on. The only issue that I could forsee in the future is just with the payment system as PM has a rather complicated billing system.

I do believe however, these issues ARE recognized and they are working to fix them, so while we do have to endure a bit now, I am optimistic that we will be rewarded soon. Right after the problems created during the promo period, PM is now hiring a systems guy/girl to fix all these issues and to rehull the web experience for us.

And it seems PM IS listening, given the recent community web layout changes that might be more user friendly (some might argue), and ongoing minor improvements based on ideas suggested by community members.

So don't lose hope! I hope you'll feel your money's worth in due time!

[helloPM]

No, all 4 lines are working fine now, and I'm not thinking of moving them out at this time - I'm just not going to bring over any other family members.

The issues I had with activating the other lines were not as bad, eg. for one of them I made a mistake in my password - I find it a little annoying that PM blocks pasting passwords which makes it harder to use my password manager so more chance of error - and tried to do password reset but could not get it to work.

Eventually I contacted one of the reps about it and discovered that it was an issue they had known about for quite a while and it was causing trouble for lots of people.

This was a miniscule problem compared to what I went through this time but it is equally illustrative:  password reset is pretty basic and should be working and even more importantly they didn't put up a message on that page warning users but just let everyone waste their time.

And the e-mail confirmation system is broken too!  Again a really basic thing, not a big deal at all, but I'm surprised that so many basic things don't work.

They must be really short staffed!

[jpar]

I wish the self-serve site had more features & was a little more user-friendly, but other than that I haven't had many issues yet. I hope it stays that way. 

[vinions]

I feel like once all the issues have resolved itself, things are fine.  I was on this forum a lot during my first couple of weeks with PM but I've barely been on in the past 1-2 months.  Didn't have to.  Didn't need to.  Everything was working with.  Everything is good as long as you are willing to be patience when something does go wrong (which has been rare for me).  

[ShawnC13]

Sorry to hear of your issues.  I have moved over 3 phones and have had no issues on any of them and my experience is just the opposite of yours.  I have had no issues that have required attention that I could think of that were service related.  All 4 of your phones are experiencing a problem?