@hairbag1 wrote:
How was the Community different ? I've been around since '17
I joined mid-2014. But lost that account and rejoined early-2016.
The Public Mobile Community was more or less the same, although many members from that era are gone or rarely visit anymore.
But the Community felt very different. Because the Mods were active participants, they were aware of problems and they were motivated to fix them. They sometimes even circumvented normal procedures to fix or solve things, some behind-the-scenes magic outside of their normal tasks. They always solicited feedback and considered suggestions, they built a reputation as trusted and helpful members. Public Mobile was a little operator without real advertising, they relied entirely on word of mouth, trust, and reputation to attract and to retain subscribers. New members were typically impressed and eager to recruit referrals.
Over time, this evolved into the current tries-not-to-look-like-Telus impersonal corporate stupidbot, support tickets, and email "call" center full of revolving names. There's been a lot of welcome improvements. There's been a lot of changes which eroded, reversed, or ruined previous operations. Public Mobile is a rather obvious subsidiary brand which is sometimes leveraged to "promote" subscribers up the Telus revenue ladder - it's no longer an independent brand working to grow and improve and provide excellent, low-cost service.
A lot of the changes here were caused by changes in cellular technology and infrastructure. I suppose they affected the evolution of every carrier, brand, and operator - but I haven't been an attentive observer of those others so I can't make any real, supported statements or comparisons.
