credit card charged with no account activation

[VanFitz17]

This has happened to me now setting up my own account and then setting up my daughter's. I try to activate a sim card to port over my number from another provider. I enter all the relevant information, the activation process starts, but then it fails with error 821. I discover that my credit card has been charged anyway. After a LOT of running around, I'm able to make a ticket and I have to set up the account with a new, temporary number and the Public CSA has to manage the port. In the meantime I'm being charged twice (3 times when setting up my daughter's account), and I have to fight to convince the CSA that I was charged during the attempts that failed. They say it's impossible to be charged if an account wasn't set up, yet it's happened to me literally every time I've tried to activate a sim card.

HAs this happened to anyone else?

[Angela811]

I haven't set up activation with my number and yet they charged my account. Do u happen to know if they will keep charging me if I don't give them a phone number? Oh also it says complete activation. And I can't get ahold of anyone.

[maximum_gato]

@Glenhest28 

I got great advice when I first joined pm. Always ask for a second opinion when you don't agree with the first one or it doesn't make any sense. The community almost always knows best. Happy to hear you are happy!

[Glenhest28]

All was resolved by a CSA (Kudos to Mary) on Saturday morning.

She unlocked the account and generated a new phone number for me.

Thanks to all here who gave me advice.

[maximum_gato]

Isn't public mobile customer service Grrrrreat!!🐯

@Glenhest28

I cannot comment any further on the quality of customer support you have recieved thus far.....

From the information you have provided.....

• It appears that your activation has gone thru as evidenced by the posted plan amount charge on your credit card account.
• It also seems that the CSA has confirmed this by stating it does not appear on the account. If the CSA can access an account to make this statement then your activation did go thru but not completely. There would not be any extra funds on the account as the plan chosen is paid for already.
• If the Sim card did not provision correctly upon activation it will not work and often the self serve account does not set up correctly as well and will not allow access to the user.
• With the Sim card and account only partially activated its logical that a port request did not occur if the requested phone number cannot be initially assigned to the account.

Close your support ticket and start over with a new CSA. Maybe someone else would like to tag the community manager and the new guy who was introduced to us and then never seen nor heard from again?!!

[dust2dust]

@Glenhest28- This is another of many ridiculous oversights that their system has. They should have a way to find charges made to credit cards. I guess you'll have to do a chargeback at the credit card side telling them that this place won't help you.

Would you be willing to try again using the sim you have? Maybe use a different credit card? Do all this on a non-mobile browser.

[softech]

@Glenhest28 did you get any error like 821 or 837?

and no worry, open ticket with PM support and they will sort it out 

    https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/notes/composepage/note-to-user-id/22437

**Monitor your Community inbox (envelope icon on the top right) after the ticket is opened.  CS Agent will reply to you there

[Glenhest28]

And now it's a posted charge.

A charge has been posted by Public Mobile to my credit card account despite the sim failing to activate. I am also unable to access the Public Mobile account I created.

[softech]

@Glenhest28   Please note that pending charge is NOT a real charge.  Pending charge is a hold fund, no transition took place and hence it was correct that PM cannot reverse the charge

[Glenhest28]

Thanks for your help.

Here is the latest response from PM:

"We can't reverse a charge, when there is no charge on the account, as mentioned multiple times. The bank is the only one that can reverse that amount, if it's still in pending. Please contact them"

I don't get this. I provided them with a screenshot of my CC statement indicating a pending charge from Public Mobile. How can a company apply even a pending charge if the account set-up was not complete because of some error 831.

I really am disappointed and thinking of using a different carrier.

[softech]

@Glenhest28 cool,  usually error 821 is with porting issue, but I guess this one is different

Then just make sure the pending charge is off from your credit card and you can try to activate again.  

Please try to use Incognito mode to activate and it should work this time

[Glenhest28]

This is a new SIM. No porting from a previous number involved.

[softech]

@Glenhest28   pending charge could be just pending and now real charge

your Error 821 is likely because you provided IMEI instead of account number as porting info

I also suggest you to open an ticket with PM and ask them to confirm your earlier request is cleared from the system and not stuck, so your later activation will be successful

Please open ticket with PM using direct message:

    https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/notes/composepage/note-to-user-id/22437

**Monitor your Community inbox (envelope icon on the top right) after the ticket is opened.  CS Agent will reply to you there

Again, when you try activate again, please provide account number instead of IMEI as the porting info

[Glenhest28]

Yes,

Just happened to me.

New Account, no port of old number also error 821. A pending charge appears on my CC account. Public CSA advised me to use another browser/device and start again. I said what about the pending charge to my CC card. He said that he did not see a credit card attached to the account. Also I could not sign in to my account, he said it was because the transaction was not complete?

It was complete enough to submit a pending charge to Credit Card. Very poor business practise. I will not try to start again until this credit charge is reversed.

[L1llyPut1an]

Over a week later and I'm still trying to get one of the erroneous charges reversed. After hours wasted dealing with a rotating cast of CSAs, I have: "I submitted the Payment Investigation Request #xxx to our Financial Dpt. they will contact your bank if necessary, the resolution time frame is 7 to 10 business days".

Worst customer service I have ever encountered. If anyone ever asks me to recommend a mobile carrier, I will be sure to tell them NOT to choose Public

[VanFitz17]

That's really great advice, thank you Darlicious!

[darlicious]

@VanFitz17 

If you tried to activate her SIM card and account on Wednesday and the payment went through but the activation did not complete then once you get this sorted out I would ask for public mobile to also apply the bonus referral credits to your both of your accounts. That promotion ended at 11:59.59 p.m. Eastern on September 30th.

If the payment went through then you should qualify for the $25 (5 months×$5) referral credit bonus even though your activation didn't end up working until now. It's the least they can do after all this hassle. I'm assuming that after you activated your account you meant to apply your referral code during the activation of your daughter's account if you forgot to because of all this confusion caused by the error messages.

Did the similar activation issues you experienced when activating your account also cause you to overlook adding the referral code you had? If you activated any plan over $25 there are promotion codes for extra data that could have been added as well. Customer support can add both of these codes to the accounts after the fact. The referral credit bonus promotion will have to be added specifically upon your request and insistence.

[VanFitz17]

The first time I tried to activate her account was Wednesday - she splits her time between her mom's and my place, and Wednesday was the last time she was here before today. When the activation failed, I didn't really give it too much thought. WE tried again today, and when it failed I had an inkling to check my credit card account. There was a  charge from Wednesday that had gone through.

Today I was able to activate a new account for her after another failed attempt. For today, there are 2 pending charges: one for the failed attempt and one for the successful one. So possibly the 2 from today might not go through, but I'm not counting on it.

[darlicious]

@VanFitz17 

Are the charges listed as posted on your online credit card account? This issue used to occur commonly after they had changed the activation portal about 2 years ago. However they have recently reintroduced the one hour activation lockout. So that with a failed activation you are unable to reactivate the same SIM card without waiting out one full hour. So if the first activation took place then after 1 hour you would not be able to use that SIM card over again. How long has it been since you did your daughter's activation? Less than 24 hours? If so at least give it that amount of time to see if the credit card charges drop off your online account statement.

[VanFitz17]

I get the idea of a card authorization, like with gas purchases, but in this case the charges went through

[VanFitz17]

They keep telling me that it's impossible that I got charged if the account activation didn't go through, but it's happened to me now with 2 account activations: mine and my daughter's. Thankfully I have my credit card online account as proof of the charges - when it first happened to me I was able to convince them to apply the extra charge to my account, but in the current situation with my daughter's account, they're putting up a fight. I'll report back here with the outcome.

[softech]

@VanFitz17 ask them to escalate.  Error 821 and multiple charges is a common glitch,  a senior support staff should know right a way

[VanFitz17]

The reason I know about the charges is that they showed up on my credit card online statement. They don't show up on my Public account but they're actual charges from Public

[softech]

@VanFitz17 Error 821 usually related with incorrect porting info supplied.  Likely you have provided IMEI instead of account number of your old provider

Usually it is east to ask PM support for the refund of the duplicated charges.   Please work with then via ticket.  Yiu have opened ticket already, so I guess there is no need to provide you ways to open ticket with PM support

Let us know how it turns out

[VanFitz17]

I made a ticket 5 hours ago and spent all day dealing with a variety of Public CSAs.

[will13am]

@VanFitz17 , I have not activated an account in a long while but never had issues like this.  My activations were prior to the recent portal makeover.  In terms of multiple charges, are these charges placeholders or actual charges that have been confirmed?  When I buy gas, I do a prepay and I have to select a prepay amount to complete the process.  That prepay amount will show up on my credit card account but for a day or two but will not complete.  It gets replaced by the actual amount of fuel dispensed which the retailer's computer system will submit to the credit card company.  

[hairbag1]

Keep an eye on your credit card account to make sure your were actually charged...perhaps the charges were just "pending charges" ?

edit; grammar