What time zone is payment due by?

[kathryncsms]

My son's account said I had to pay by 11:59 PM on October 25th.

He had run out of data so I was waiting til closest to this time to add funds so that the money don't get used on data overage, leaving his account short for funding the next plan cycle.

When I signed in at 11:15 it said his plan had expired. It wasn't yet 11:59 on the day of payment being due.

I have now paid into the account for renewal (it is 11:30) but his account still says Plan Expired (while payment is processing I guess). Shouldn't it have expired AFTER 11:59 on the date of payment though?

Is it a timezone thing?

What time is the latest time I can add funds to his account without the plan expiring, while also not adding funds that then get used by him using data (beyond his allowed plan) before the plan renews?

Does this make sense?

Thanks

[Luddite]

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@CS_Agent wrote:

Hi kathryncsms,

If you need further help, you can register a ticket through SIMon, our virutal assistant and we will take a look into your situation!

Regards,

Ciprian

PM Mod Team.

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@Ciprian_C Really! Offering help 10 days after original post seems a bit lame these days. Besides she said earlier she would trust us and try autopay; voyez: https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Paying-for-your-service/What-time-zone-is-payment-due...

[CS_Agent]

Hi kathryncsms,

If you need further help, you can register a ticket through SIMon, our virutal assistant and we will take a look into your situation!

Regards,

Ciprian

PM Mod Team.

[Luddite]

@kathryncsms Everyone who joins PM and enters your son's referral code during sign up will get a $10 credit AND your son will get $1 credit every 30 days. Some people at PM now have free service from getting enough friends to join. 

Get your son to be a salesperson! 

[GinYVR]

@kathryncsmsThe person at the kiosk is wrong. Think your account is a pinball machine, if you load tokens into the pinball machine with credits and you don't start a game, the credits won't go down. The same thing happens with Public Mobile, you have to consciously change plan or purchase add ons before your balance in your account get paid.

Oh the time zone is EST

[kathryncsms]

I may upgrade him then.

The autopay still makes me nervous because the person at the kiosk said that when people go over their plans with autopay it racks up credit card bills and there's no way to argue it.

But with 4.5 gb I can't imagine him going over, after 4 months with 1 gb he only has run out once so he doesn't seem to be a huge data user.

I may upgrade him to the $40 plan just to provide that extra room and convenience (he never complained or anything, but I know he likes to use his phone a lot and our home wifi does suck) and I will further consider the autopay. Enough people have replied here saying the person at the kiosk misled me so I might try it. Thanks.

[darlicious]

@kathryncsms  I think everyone answered your questions. It's unfortunate you were misled about autopay. If your son wasn't attached to his phone number it would have benefited you to take advantage of the current promo.But that's water under the bridge now. Here's something to consider an taking your questions into account. There are no overages at pm. You get what you pay for so unless you buy an add on whatever is in your account is used for your next renewal. From what I can tell your son is on the $35 plan with 1gb of data. Thu plan has the least amount of value at pm. On his next renewal consider changing to either of these plans w/autopay. The $40 plan had 4.5gb of data for only $5 more. Add autopay it costs $38 And the data increases by 500mb to be total of 5gb. Alternatively if your son can manage to keep his data usage to 1gb every 30 days then switch him to the $25 plan. It comes with 500mb of data but w/autopay that increases by 500mb to 1gb (the same as the regular $35 plan) and the plan will reduce to $23 With the $2 autopay reward. All plans renew and are due by 11:59pm et. They all say suspended and expired when they go thru this process. It is advisable to continue to add funds thru your credit card registered to the account (or by voucher) a day or 2 before renewal to avoid the occasional fail by the autopay system. I hope this clarifies your options and queries for you.

[popping]

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@computergeek541 wrote:

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@popping wrote:

@computergeek541 

That is the reason why I collect 8x$10m after Rogers Mobilicity conversion.  Then disabled autopay, used up the $80 in 3 months and switched to Zoomer Wireless $36 4GB plan.  But I don't use 4GB/m.   I am going to switch to PM $23 plan with 1GB data early Decemeber after completing the Zoomer 2 years contract.

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Are you a Public Mobile Mobile customer?  I always thought that you were. Perhaps you have more than one cell phone line, or were a Public customer at one point?

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I started out with 1 line 15 months ago.  As everyone here, it grows on me.  I have 6 lines with PM ATM.  lol

[computergeek541]

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@popping wrote:

@computergeek541 

That is the reason why I collect 8x$10m after Rogers Mobilicity conversion.  Then disabled autopay, used up the $80 in 3 months and switched to Zoomer Wireless $36 4GB plan.  But I don't use 4GB/m.   I am going to switch to PM $23 plan with 1GB data early Decemeber after completing the Zoomer 2 years contract.

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Are you a Public Mobile Mobile customer?  I always thought that you were. Perhaps you have more than one cell phone line, or were a Public customer at one point?

[popping]

@computergeek541 

That is the reason why I collect 8x$10m after Rogers Mobilicity conversion.  Then disabled autopay, used up the $80 in 3 months and switched to Zoomer Wireless $36 4GB plan.  But I don't use 4GB/m.   I am going to switch to PM $23 plan with 1GB data early Decemeber after completing the Zoomer 2 years contract.

[computergeek541]

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@popping wrote:

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What you just described is exactly how Chatr system works.  Chatr autopay will take your plan payment every month.  Any fund sitting on Chatr account will be use to pay for overage.  Chatr calls pay-per-use.  I was with Chatr for 9 months After Rogers took over Mobilicity.

The way that Chatr charges the full autopay amount even if there are funds in the account balance is just silly. This becomes even more silly if you're a recent signup and received $10 autopay credits. Unless you use up those credits, either accidently or deliberately, you cannot use those account credits to pay for your plan unless you disable autopay.  So, you end up being stuck for 6 or 8 months (or however long the current autopay promotion is) because you'll likely not want to remove the autopay option until receiving all posssible credits. Then, that buys Chatr another couple months to get you to stay if you want to use those credits towards your plan. 

The old Mobilicity billing procedures were miles ahead of other prepaid carriers. The Mobilcity My Wallet system still allowed customers pay the least possible amounts without needing to purchase bulk minutes/add-ons to keep using the service. They also allowed you to remove funds from the "My Wallet" to protect your account balance.  In my opinion, this system was better than Public Mobile's.

[popping]

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@kathryncsms wrote:

Okay I'd like to clarify.

When I signed up they said don't do auto-pay because data overage charges get paid for automatically by preauthorized payment and theyre hard to dispute. So I inferred that having money available on the account would be drawn upon for data overages, once he passes the 1 gb. Is this not the case?

I can have $40 sitting in his account for payment renewal on the 25th, but if he runs out of data on the 21st, having this money available won't let him keep using data? Or will it draw down the balance each time he access data on a pay-per-use kinda deal?

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What you just described is exactly how Chatr system works.  Chatr autopay will take your plan payment every month.  Any fund sitting on Chatr account will be use to pay for overage.  Chatr calls pay-per-use.  I was with Chatr for 9 months After Rogers took over Mobilicity.

PM does not have pay-per-use.   Tell your son that he has x amount of data every 30 days.  His data will stop after he uses all his data before renewal. period.  PM plan is parents' plan and pay the same amount every month.  

[GinYVR]

@kathryncsms yes it can be before. I usually have a month's plan's worth of money in the account just in case autopay fails.

[GinYVR]

@kathryncsms  There no data overages once he passes 1Gb. If he doesn't renew the plan early, or change the plan to another plan, or purchase a data add on he won't have data to use. So $40 will just sit there and won't draw down until he explicit does another of the actions I've listed above.

[ShawnC13]

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@kathryncsms wrote:

Okay I'd like to clarify.

When I signed up they said don't do auto-pay because data overage charges get paid for automatically by preauthorized payment and theyre hard to dispute. So I inferred that having money available on the account would be drawn upon for data overages, once he passes the 1 gb. Is this not the case?

I can have $40 sitting in his account for payment renewal on the 25th, but if he runs out of data on the 21st, having this money available won't let him keep using data? Or will it draw down the balance each time he access data on a pay-per-use kinda deal?

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Whoever said that to you is misinformed.  There is no data or minute overage here so the only way that the $40 you put into his account could get used up prior to his renewal is if he went into the self serve and purchased a data addon.

Not only did this person misinform you they have not allowed you to earn the autopay reward and lower your bill by $2 every 30 days.

[kathryncsms]

Could it be before?

Payment wasn't due til 11:59, but at 11:15 (less than an hour earlier than the deadline) his plan had already expired.

[kathryncsms]

Okay I'd like to clarify.

When I signed up they said don't do auto-pay because data overage charges get paid for automatically by preauthorized payment and theyre hard to dispute. So I inferred that having money available on the account would be drawn upon for data overages, once he passes the 1 gb. Is this not the case?

I can have $40 sitting in his account for payment renewal on the 25th, but if he runs out of data on the 21st, having this money available won't let him keep using data? Or will it draw down the balance each time he access data on a pay-per-use kinda deal?

[GinYVR]

@kathryncsmsThere is no data overages with Public Mobile since every service has to be prepaid before it is available to the user. If your son has run out of data, he won't be able to use data until his account get renews or add on is purchased.

[cellphoneuser1]

@kathryncsms It's random for payment time but the timezone is eastern. It says 11:59PM but it could be any time after.  The system tries to take payment from account during late hours. It's not always at the same time. If you don't have autopay or enough balance when it tries, your service will stop working.

[ShawnC13 · Accepted solution]

All timings are based off of the Eastern Time Zone

ETA:  If he uses up all his data he can't use more and you won't be charged extra.  You would need to purchase a data add-on for that to happen.  There are never any overage charges with PM.