autopay stopped working and service stopped

[MeltingSnowman]

I've seen variants of this problem elsewhere on the boards but no firm solutions:

-I have AutoPay on multiple accounts and it has been working well until today (when one of the accounts was due to autopay) and I haven't been able to call/text/surf.on the account that was to autopay. 

-I went to self service for the relevant account and see Account Status "Plan expired" with the usual message saying "disregard if you are on AutoPay"

-I've tried topping up both through *611 and through self service but get "Sorry, we are unable to verify your credit card information,"  Tried this with other accounts (that are not suspended/expired), all with the same result.

-called the credit card company but they say no transactions have been denied (and others vendors have gone through today) so the problem must be on Public Mobile's side.  That is, the card is good, not expired, and not over limit.

-AutoPay has worked for me so far.  In fact one the accounts was autopaid just a couple of days ago.

Any suggestions?

[darlicious]

@nerasmus 

Good for you....you have never had an issue in the past 'til you came to pm. Its happened twice in as many months so have the moderators and/ or the tech team look into what is causing it. Nothing in life works perfectly....have you never had a card get declined for no good reason? Nobody or business has screwed up your paperwork? Everytime you have dealt with the government you have never encountered red tape? You've never been served the wrong meal or your steak been overcooked? Are you telling me after going thru the drive thru at mcdonald's they have never forgotten part of your order or didn't give you ketchup for your fries?!!

Ok it sucks but just get pm to figure why its happened twice to your card.....maybe your address isn't quite right, maybe a raccoon bit thru the wires at your bank or you had another automatic payment charge your card at the same time on those dates......

[Anonymous]

 @nerasmus : All the regulars here are entirely sympathetic to your issue. We all collectively shake our heads at this continuing problem. It has been ongoing for as long as I've been here. We come here for the rates. The foibles are a part of the package. 

We're giving you some options to. get. your. services. going. again. Whatever choices you make with that is entirely up to you.

[nerasmus]

I appreciate all the back and forth about some people do this, most people do that, go in the night before, check in before, etc. You forget the one single most important point: AUTOPAY. In 18 years I have never had a single pre-authorized payment lapse, whether directly from my bank, or via credit card. That included multiple ISPs, cars, utilities, etc. In the year that I have been with PM now, it happened twice. What is irkingly mindboggling is the fact that not only is your service activated, but your method of payment is also blocked. 

[darlicious]

@Anonymous 

 Given that at the end of 2011 pm had 200,000 customers and was adding approximately 50,000 customers per year at that time and one would assume a higher rate once telus took over in late 2013 and our own look into sequential account numbering was showing account growth between 30,000 and 40,000 per month. While I believe pm has a churn rate well above the industry average of less than 2% estimating 1,000,000+ active accounts (w/2,000,000+ account numbers) is not out of the realm of a good estimation.

[Anonymous]

 @darlicious : I highly doubt that likely sequential account number is all active accounts. I would be about certain that it's all activated accounts but as we know many customers come and go. But new accounts just get the next sequential account number.

But what do I know. 🙂

[darlicious]

@nerasmus 

Public mobile is quite reliable but its system is not perfect(nor is any providers) but an autopay failure does occasionally happen for no reason.  There are 1 or 2 help inquiries on this issue here everyday but with 1,000,000+ (up to 2,000,000?) active subscribers to pm's service that is a very low failure rate.If this is the second time it has happened to you then you should have the moderators look into your account to find the cause as normally an autopay failure is from an expired card etc....

Also about 2 hours ago you would have recieved the first of normally two texts messages from pm. The first will tell you that your rewards were successfully applied. The second which you didnt recieve would tell you that your payment was recieved and your renewal was successful. But you may recieve a message or email advising you that your renewal was not successful but this is very YMMV in my opinion as is a supposed text reminding you to update your cards expiry date. 

It has been mentioned by @daki28  that paying for your service by topping up your account ahead of renewal by a couple days ( like after you get the pm reminder text) is a prudent way to ensure no interruptions to your service. It's just like paying any other bill....I like to review my "bills" first to ensure they are correct before I pay them. I don't like to set'em and forget 'em.....companies like rogers love that because they can bilk you out of thousands before you notice and youre up a creek without a paddle for all but the last 60 days.

Go to make a payment. Choose the "other amount" option and add $1 more than the amount owing and submit the payment. If that is successful go back to your overview page and if it does not say active  click on the reactivate button. If that works log out and reboot. If that does not work and your payment is in your balance rather than showing $1 then go to the usage or plans page. Click on lost/stolen and suspend your service. Log out/in. Resume your service. Your balance should be $1. Log out. Reboot and carry on with your day.....or port the heck out! Your choice.....

[Anonymous]

 @nerasmus : Most providers won't let you port out without active service so that point is moot.

You can always buy a voucher online or in many stores and use the 611 service to redeem it. Or use the Instant Top-up in a few stores.

Unless you blocked the texts from here, you would have received a text giving you a heads up that your account was up. Many of us log in the evening of the last day to check where they're at before renewal. And log in again the next morning to check where they're at after renewal to make sure it all worked.

But again...many people go on without a thought in the world for their renewals.

[nerasmus]

Can't even leave PM without reactivating my account because in order to transfer my number I have to be able to receive text. PM not only stop your service immediately and without notice, it also blocks your form of payment, so another hassle to go through. I'm considering leaving immediately in any case and write this off as education money. I am busy spending my 6th hour dealing with this. My time is worth more than be to having to waist it doing this every couple of months. So much for an affordable service. My advice to others is to leave PM while you still have service.

[Anonymous]

Autopay definitely has its problems for some but then many thousands of customers go on with their lives year after year without a problem.

With this being a prepaid service, there's no extended time of grace. Maybe into the morning of the new term and that's it.

[durbanad]

I've just had the same problem. 

My phone got totally disconnected and I will in the middle of a business call with clients. I logged in and saw an issue and did a manual upload from the credit card and that failed. Fortunately, I managed to use another credit card and it worked. I just came off the bank/credit card company and they said they saw no attempt to run my original card. So somethings broken.

I'm interested to know when this resolved so I can add my original credit card back.

Thanks.

[RosieR]

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@nerasmus wrote:

This is unacceptable!! Seems to be a common problem; too common. What is the use of autopay, and even the reactivate option? This is the second time that this happened to me and the last time - I am dropping Public mobile. Public mobile's OWN system fails, then they disable your account as well as block you form of payment, meaning you cannot activate without spending hours on the web with a moderator? Does that make any sense in this day and age? No! Bye-bye public mobile.

I was told Public Mobile uses an old pre-paid system that they tried to configure in order to handle autopay. Well that is not working very well. I don't think people should be subject to ad-hoc service cuts and hours of frustrating work for a fault that lies with the service provider.

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@nerasmus I agree.  Public Mobile should fix their autopay.  We are fellow customers here in the forums and we emphasize with you.  All we can say is contact the moderators to fix this for you.

However, if you already decided to leave PM, we wish you well.

RosieR 

[Camera4617]

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@JK8 wrote:

@nerasmus 

Autopay sometimes fail. To prevent you from losing service, the recommendation from the PM forum is to make a payment a few days before your renewal date to cover the cost of the plan. The renewal will take the money out of your Available Funds and you can leave your cc on file for the autopay reward.

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Yeah and that's what I do for my 2 lines. But what if I managed more like 5-6 lines? To login and pay for each once in 30 days is quite time consuming. PM should resolve this issue for multiple reasons and one is that they will make more money if system doesn't fail. Also, customers need reliable service, not the one that is out of blue failing to renew. So, while I'm kind of OK with paying manually, I'm not happy about it and it will me matter of time when you ask yourself 'is this worth my time'? 

[nerasmus]

Having to make a payment before the autopay date is the same as not having autopay. If you cannot promise an working autopay service, don't make that promise and take down the service. 

[JK8]

@nerasmus 

Autopay sometimes fail. To prevent you from losing service, the recommendation from the PM forum is to make a payment a few days before your renewal date to cover the cost of the plan. The renewal will take the money out of your Available Funds and you can leave your cc on file for the autopay reward.

[nerasmus]

This is unacceptable!! Seems to be a common problem; too common. What is the use of autopay, and even the reactivate option? This is the second time that this happened to me and the last time - I am dropping Public mobile. Public mobile's OWN system fails, then they disable your account as well as block you form of payment, meaning you cannot activate without spending hours on the web with a moderator? Does that make any sense in this day and age? No! Bye-bye public mobile.

I was told Public Mobile uses an old pre-paid system that they tried to configure in order to handle autopay. Well that is not working very well. I don't think people should be subject to ad-hoc service cuts and hours of frustrating work for a fault that lies with the service provider.

[Anonymous]

 @tpwade : There's no "normally processed" day. It's a floating 30 days...not a month.

But yes autopay should be much more solid than it is.

[tpwade]

This problem just hit me now.  MC not expired, no reason for the payment to be declined.  I'd say something funky would seem to be happening on the Public mobile end.  The odd thing is, my payment is normally processed on the 8th, but I got the payment could not be processed notice today on the 7th. . . I switched it to another MC, and made a payment just to make sure things didn't go sideways. This really shouldn't have been necessary.  PM need to fix this so it doesn't keep messing up their users.  I shouldn't have had to spend an hour trying to figure this out.

[Dunkman]

@MeltingSnowman 

Thanks for update.  The payment system is finicky at times.  

You could try to manually load $1 into your available balance.  If that works, then your credit card should be set up properly for next payment date.  As mentioned before, you could also manually load up the full amount a day or so before your due date. Kinda of a hassle and defeats the purpose of having autopay.

[hairbag1]

@MeltingSnowman...

on the evening of your renewal, your rewards are converted to $$ in Available Funds. If there's not enough $$ in Available Funds for your renewal...the process then asks your on-file credit card or debit card for the remainder. For various reasons, the renewal process has been known to glitch out on rare occasions.

By manually adding $$ to Available Funds, that seems to minimize occurrence of the "autopay glitch" that could potentially occur.

Most times, the problem is caused by incorrect credit card info....but not always.

I haven't had any problem with payment since I've adopted this method.

[MeltingSnowman]

Just a followup on how this was resolved...

I contacted a moderator and the solution apparently was to "whitelist" my credit card. When I asked what, specifically, the problem was, the moderator responded "From our knowledge, this type of situation appears when updates on the bank side are performed and small details get changed related to the account on their part that leads to this mismatch."

This is all very curious because as I mentioned in my original post, I contacted the credit card company and they said PM had not made any payment requests that were declined. And, as far as I can see (by looking at my credit card account online), the bank has not unilaterally changed my information (e.g., my name, the way my address is expressed etc). Additionally, I have since made other online credit card purchases elsewhere with previously-stored information and everything continues to work fine. 

Bottom line: whatever the moderator did, it's working for now. Let's see what happens on the next AutoPay date.  By the way, I also asked the moderator the truth/necessity of avoiding AutoPay problems by making "manual" payments before AutoPay dates --- but they didn't comment on that.

[dabr]

@MeltingSnowman    Have you tried removing the CC first and then adding it back yet?  Or even replace it with a different CC.   Then see if you can make a manual payment and reactivate your service. 

Make sure you have cleared your cache/cookies and use a different browser with incognito/privacy mode enabled before attempting to add your CC.  Also just a reminder that the info for name/address matches what's  on your CC statement and no spacing for postal code.

[MeltingSnowman]

@BearFBI I've tried the lost/stolen trick and it didn't work.  From what I gather, my account was already suspended (notwithstanding the message telling me to disregard the suspension if I'm on AutoPay).

It is interesting to note, as I mentioned in my original post, that while I'm feeling the pain on one particular account (because the service is suspended), I get the same credit-card-not-accepted message if I try to make top up payments on non-suspended PM accounts (wife and kids) that use the same credit card.  So it appears to be a credit-card-specific problem on PM's side (since the credit card company says they're not receiving payment requests from PM) as opposed to an PM-account-specific problem (because the credit card payments are not going through on any PM account).

I'll submit a ticket.

[Luddite]

@MeltingSnowman  Indeed bugs crawl about in PM's systems. Fingers crossed they continue to miss me.

Get Fongo, or TextNow, as backup for calling/texting; free when on wifi.

[kb_mv]

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@MeltingSnowman wrote:

VIrtual assistant is virtually useless ... just gives me the run-around.

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@MeltingSnowman I think SIMon has a steep learning curve not for the faint of heart lol. All you need to is this:

1. Click Chat Bubble and type "Open Ticket"

2. Click "Contact PM Support"

3. Select "Account Specific Question"

4. Click "No, I Need A Human Now"

5. Select the link "Click Here To Submit A Ticket"

6. This opens a new window. Log in with Community Account NOT your self serve. Follow prompts.

[BearFBI]

@MeltingSnowman Have you tried the lost/stolen trick ?

In self-serve, go to the plans/add-ons tab and click on "Lost/Stolen Phone" and suspend your service. Wait a few minutes and then reactivate your service.

If that dosent work then follow @JK8's instructions to submit a ticket to the moderators 

[BearFBI]

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@MeltingSnowman wrote:

VIrtual assistant is virtually useless ... just gives me the run-around.

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@MeltingSnowman Dont bother with SIMON. Its absolute garbage. We can help you out here on the forum, and if we cant the moderators are tier 2 for help. 

[MeltingSnowman]

As mentioned my original post .... card is not expired/over limit/etc ... and credit card company said they did not receive any payment requests from Public Mobile today/yesterday. So the problem is with Public Mobile ... not the card.

[MeltingSnowman]

VIrtual assistant is virtually useless ... just gives me the run-around.

[BearFBI]

@MeltingSnowman Make sure your Credit Card didn't expire. Ive had this happen to me. I had no service for the whole day and never realized untill someone said they tried calling me. I opened up selfserve and remembered I forgot to update my card info. Try doing that.

Under selfserve overview click on payments, then at the bottom click on manage my card, then replace this card, re enter your CC info and try paying again

[JK8 · Accepted solution]

@MeltingSnowman 

Autopay sometimes fail. To prevent you from losing service, the recommendation from the PM forum is to make a payment a few days before your renewal date to cover the cost of the plan. The renewal will take the money out of your Available Funds and you can leave your cc on file for the autopay reward.

Contact a Moderator (Public Mobile representative) for assistance to get your service working.

• Get help with your account the easy way by starting a conversation with our virtual assistant, u. It’ll take you to relevant help articles, or if it’s something more urgent, it can help you submit a ticket to the Moderator Team. Click here to get started.
• Alternatively, you can send a private message to the Moderators by clicking here. You’ll need to be logged in to your Community account for the link to work.