When selecting a plan it should be made more clear that if you select a 90 day plan with 6GB of data, it should be made very clear to the end user that the 6GB is for the course of 90 days and does not replenish itself every 30 days.
I agree with the idea of clarifying the 90days plan a bit more. I myself thought that it will replenish after a month. Which i think of as a dumb overlook but yes it could need a more clarifying so that people can understand better.
And they should realy look into getting the LIVE CHAT HELP working because that will definately speed up the conflict resolution process.
I'm shocked how few bravos this idea has received! In my mind, there's no real argument AGAINST making this clarification on the plans page. And it wouldn't take much effort to clarify, either. Why wouldn't people want PM to make this clarification on its website? Can someone explain?
I think @imm1304 really hit the nail on the head: it's because we've been conditioned to think in monthly allotments. It isn't an issue for voice and texting with PM, as each is unlimited and not metered.
To quote myself from the thread I linked in the reply just above this one:
Thinking about the data in a 90-day bucket would be roughly analagous to signing a 2-year contract with one of the big 3 with a "24GB" option (being 1gb per month). Because we never ever see it presented that way, it's hard to think of it this way at first.
Hopefully that helps make it clearer why someone might misunderstand this!
Hello, In my case, PM is my first carrier. When I became a customer, there were only 30-day billing cycles. In due course, I was replying to questions about how long data would last in a 90-day cycle. The answer was evident to me because I was answering post after post pertaining to the same question. That said, I eventually became to realize that, if one was with a carrier with 30-day cycles, the default understanding was 30-, not 90-day cycles.
@srlawren, Why not relocate your post, plus the best suggestions from others, to the Public Lab? The Lab is the only area where PM reads posts and considers the merit of implementing them. FYI.
Yeah it's not really an issue of whether it makes sense in the framework of PM's model (which it does), but more to the issue of new customers who are conditioned to think a certain way (which others have pointed out). And given it's really just a matter of adding another disclaimer, I can't see why this wouldn't be implemented.
I agree that it is obvious when you THINK ABOUT it that 6GB of data on a 90 day plan is for the 90 days... BUT - many (including myself) ARE conditioned to think on a 30 day cycle and when I selected a 90 day plan I also selected 1GB data - and I made a mistake, as many obviously have.
The result is disappointment with no way to recify the situation other than throwing away the whole 90 day plan ($) and paying for a new 90 day plan with more data - or by adding more data at a much higher per GB price (and after all we are all here because we are frugal - !).
Also, some voice their concerns here - but many do not. How many really are getting disappointed and are not saying anything? These are the newcomers that run into this - and it's not a good introduction. What is the long term cost to customer satisfaction and retention? How many get frustrated by this and decide that "Self-Serve" is not worth it to them? I can see many comments of people who give up for that reason, unfortunately.
In summary - I think it would be so easy to avoid disappointment by simply adding some qualifiying words beside the GB (ie "total over the duration of the term selected"). Or - by allowing people to change/upgrade just the data portion of their plan. Extra money for PM and no disappointed people.
Allow the GB upgrade only ONCE if you are concerned that it would nulify the reason to have GB add-ons and are worried about lost revenue. Do it Just for newbies who get "caught".
That's all we are talking about here - the first-timers. And isn't that who you want to make a good impression with. Once a person "gets it" - they are trained. But, why disappoint anyone?
I have to agree with the OP. While many here may think it is obvious (and I understand it fully now), that is not how I thought about it when I first joined. Our mentality is to think on a monthly basis, and I too thought that because I was paying in advance for 90 days, that I was simply getting everything indicated per month, and my discounts were because I was paying up front for more than 30 days.
I do feel that the design of the webpage in this manner was intentional, fully knowing that from a pyschological point of view, many people think things are monthly, and as such would inadvertently think the data was "per month" with the user just paying for the service in 90 day blocks.
I'm not super happy about the fact that I can't change my data package to say 6gb (giving me 2gb per month) without paying for the entire 90 day plan again. I probably would have re-thought my options if I realized that.
@rorielly Thanks for upvoting, I think this is an important issue! I don't know that I believe it's an intentional thing that PM has done, however. It would ultimately be pretty self-defeating to mislead your new customers, especially when you are contract-free and under no obligation to stay with PM. MIsleading your new customers would ultimately lead to many of them simply leaving rather than renewing and giving more business to PM in the long run.
Nothing I have seen from the company nor its representatives here in the community lead me to believe that they are untrustworthy or manipulative.
