I was with Telus and remember that feature as well. It surely cost Telus more to do it then than it would cost them to do for PM. It was a great good will measure to encourage customers to be connected and feel special on their birthday. It is still a great idea even if it may prove to be a loss leader.
@kav2001c as a further thought: rather than actually extending the plan (which might be tricky), perhaps this could be implemented as a 1/30th or 1/90th of your plan cost credit added to your account on your birthday? Though, if you were to see it as a cash amount, it probably won't look like much.... EG $120/90 plan would be $1.33 credit. Probably not worth while....
I'm all for ideas which turn my 360-day phone subscriptions into 1-year phone subscriptions, lol. I'm sure many people plan their incomes and expenses in "monthly" terms instead of "30-day" terms. A difference of 5-6 days per year basically uses a portion of an extra "monthly" bill payment, many people would argue that 5 days isn't much though I've observed many people can't endure 5 hours without a working phone.
@Korth are you saying that people would end up without service for 5 days at the end of their plan? That makes no sense, you keep renewing at the end of every 30 or 90 days. To budget for it, budget for plan cost / 30 X 365 / 12 to get the cost per calendar month (or substitute 90 for 30 for 90 day plans)
@srlawren not quite, I was trying to say that we can pay for 12 x 30-days or 4 x 90-days (or even some combination of both), but they only equal 360 days.
I know people who are paid twice-monthly (not quite the same as bi-weekly). I even know people, mostly business owners/operators, who are paid monthly. I would be unsurprised if many PM subscribers - attracted by the "value brand" low pricing - depend on incomes provided monthly by retirement plans, disability, veteran benefits, UI/EI, social welfare, or whatever.
Rent or mortgage, utilities, home phone and cable and internet, home insurance, car payments and insurance, and all the rest of the bills are due monthly - regardless whether the month has 28, 29, 30, or 31 days. Always twelve monthly payments per year. In fact, most utilities and taxes and insurance payments are scaled on an equalized/adjusted 12-payments-per-year basis to provide stability and to ease seasonal/peak payment burdens.
But PM customers must make their twelve 30-day payments then pay for 5-6 days more. Or choose to live without service suspended for those 5-6 days each year. The "little more" isn't much, but it still must be paid and it's out of sync with everything else. To my knowledge, no other cellular operator, telecomm, or datacomm business charges subscribers in fixed 30-day increments. I'm not convinced a lot of people will have to choose whether they pay for food or facebook during those few days, but it could still be a bit of budgetary hardship for some.
For every 6 years of using PM's service, an extra month would have to be paid, in addition to the 6 x 4 x 90-day subscriptions. Not that a free day once a year would solve that either, but it helps I guess.
I've already accumulated various Rewards which, over 9 months so far, have basically paid for "one full month free" service on my plan. Gotta look at all the angles.
But a few (5-6?) "free" days per year would still be great lol.
