A 24hr Grace Period For Account Problems Before Service Is Cut

[Anhtuanco]

Public Mobile already alerts customers of account problems through text message alerts such as:

"Public Mobile here. Your plan did not renew because we did not receive your payment. Make a payment at publicmobile.ca/selfserve. If you have recently made a manual payment, please ignore this message."

However, as the massive Service Down problem in August showed, this isn't always a problem on the end of the customer. While customers could contact the mods, until they get a response they are stuck with zero service instantly when their account shows "Plan Expired" or "Account Suspended". A 24 hr grace period where their plan is still in place for 24 hrs after the initial Plan Expired message would allow customers to alert mods, have the issue looked into, while still having service for a short period of time. I would hope the mods would be able to respond within 24 hrs. 

[youbme]

I think this is an excellent idea that would have relatively low-impact on Public Mobile (from what I can tell). At the same time, it would give members a sense of comfort knowing that their service will not immediately be cut-off due to a glitch in autopay, expired card, etc...

Additionally, it might be a good idea to also provide a link to the PM community - specifically the post on contacting a community moderator - when the account shows up as 'expired' or 'suspended'.

[srlawren]

I'm not sure this would work well with PM's prepaid model. 

This is a sincere question as I don't know the answer:  do any other Canadian providers offer a grace period (of any length) for non-payment on a pre-paid account, regardless of cause of the non-payment?  I don't have the answer, but would be very suprrised to see that any do.

[stonechucker]

With the recent working credit card, failed legitimately AutoPay processes, something needs to be done.  If a card is setup, and is in an active status (ie not expired, at its limit, or closed), then there should be no reason for AutoPay to fail.

Sure, top up early to get funds available, but shouldn’t have to worry if AutoPay is setup.

[mimmo]

@srlawren  I do believe you can go at least a little bit with post paid carriers not paying your bill.  other prepaid cariieres i would imagine expiry date is expiry date, as it should be. 

I also  agree PM has several issues on the  backend and those seem to cause expired plans happening for no reason.    But puttng a bandage on an issue is not a soulution I would rather see PM fix the underlying issue(s) rather than try atempt a bandaid solution which could cause other issues.  

[srlawren]

@mimmo agreed, it's the actual issue that needs resolving.  A grace period would--in all honesty--probably just delay the problem a day for most people anyway.  

[peosteve]

Agreed. In my case, I recently had my service shut off because my credit card was compromised and I forgot to update it in my account. I was never contacted, texted or emailed to inform me - my service was just shut off. After I realized (it took me a while to figure out what happened), I had to find wifi (because my data was shut off) and the phone-in system does not allow you to change your CC. After I got my service back up, I got a text a few hours later, informing me that my service was shut off due to non-payment. 

It was a very frustrating day...and 24 grace period (or even 2 hours) would have saved me lots of frustration. The text needs to get to the customer before the plan is shut down!