I've had the ol "The number entered does not belong to a valid Public Mobile Subscriber." issue a few times when signing up my parents and again when signing up for myself. I signed up my mom, then my dad and used my mom as his referral. But it gave the error and the only option was to sign up without referral then message a moderator. You can not sign up without either entering in another "valid" number or removing the referral. That was understandable as I had just signed her up so maybe the number wasn't in the system yet or something. But 1 year later, I sign up and use my dad as my referal and he's already been with PM for a year and I get the same error. So I try my mom's number as she's been even longer. Neither work. So again I have to sign up without then message a mod. But the wait time to hear back right now is a long time. I send the message 2 weeks ago and nothing.
I propose that if a customer enters an "invalid" number as a referral during sign up, instead of only giving them the option to try another number or remove the referral altogether, you ask for confirmation on the phone number. Say a popup that says this number appears to be invalid, are you sure it is the right number. Response being yes, or no, I'll reenter the number. If yes is selected, the sign up goes ahead as it should and a message is send to a mod or emailed to the right person or put on a list or some such with the customer phone number, the referral number etc. All the information the mods ask you for when you message them about it.
This sort of failsafe would be easy to build into the webpage and much easier for both the new customer and the mods as all the information required would be provided right away without the back and forth asking for help, asking for required info, etc.
Then maybe just fire off an email like companies always do saying we have received your information, someone will get back to you within x time to discuss the issue.
It seems like a straigh forward error handling issue. Maybe the webpage didn't like the format the phone numbers were typed in, or maybe they just hadn't been added to active PM number list or something. But it's a very very simple fix that would save everyone time and save on a lot of complaints.
