It's time for PM to step their game up.

[BearFBI]

I think it's time PM should step their game up. Lucky mobile is offering E-SIM activations now, it's even advertised on their website. Lucky also has unlimited data. 

For only about a dollar more (because of the new garbage reward system) you can just go for Lucky Mobile and get a much more feature rich carrier with an actual call center, more features, etc. 

PM is not competitive anymore. Sure the new reward system still has friend referrals and what not, but not everyone refers a large amount of people or even care about it at all. I bet 75% of PM accounts just have the autopay discount and mabey a few loyalty. 

PM has extremely disappointed me in the past few years. Remember when PM had the absolute best deals over the other 3rd tier competition ? even the 2nd and 1st teir for higher data plans ? or when PM had very few moderators. I'm not saying that more moderators is bad, but if it means more money then at least try to match the competition. 

PM lost its hype. Honestly if you are looking for a new carrier I'd suggest Lucky at this point. 

[Korth]

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@softech wrote:

Lucky has been aggressive.  They have app, award winning apps.  PM does not even try.

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The app.

Probably the most common topic from new PM customers. "Is there an app?" "Where do I get the app?" "Why don't you have an app?" "You need an app!"

If an app will make things better than I'm all for an app. But that's basically my counterargument against the app. Why do we need an app? What, exactly, should it do which makes things better? What could it do that we can't already get done well enough through Self-Serve?

I think the most useful thing an app will produce is a constant advertising presence. On your screen all the time.

I know that, for a company like PM which lacks in-house dev teams, this is possibly one of the most expensive forms of advertising they could invest into. Better bang for the buck in other advertising channels.

I'm not trying to be confrontational or obstructive. But if the why-do-we-need-an-app-and-what-can-it-do questions don't have good answers then the app isn't going to be necessary or useful. It'll be unnecessary and useless. A solution to a non-problem. One which itself causes new problems.

We can already put a lazy one-click shortcut/favourites icon on our desktop screens which goes straight to Self-Serve. What else could/should the magical app accomplish that can't be done now?

One change I think would be "easy" to implement is to give stupid Simon chatbot his own phone number. So PM subscribers (even those with "expired" plans or without any data left this month) could send msgs, get information, get support, and request support tickets directly from their devices. Indeed, they could even get text notifications the moment a CSA is on the case, which would drastically reduce the usual delays caused by back-and-forth two-way interactions.

[softech]

Great post @Korth , I almost miss that..

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No more 10-day plans. No more free "10-day passes" to ease worries for new customers caught by

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They "brought back" 10 days plan.. at least 2 members reported in Jan that their plan magically changed to 10 days, they got charge 3x every month!!

honest, I never heard about the 10 days plan.. now I understand where the bug came from..

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PM SIM cards were free, with about 3-5 day delivery. Then they were $5 with about 5-10 day delivery. Now they're $10 and get delivered whenever they get delivered, people typically start complaining after the first 3-4 weeks.

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Free SIM? that would help for people to test it out.  But honest, even not free, at least be like Lucky, $4 each at Dollarama.  Reasonable price and easy to get

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They did lower the price of data add-ons from $30/GB to $15/GB.

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This is more just going with the market... not its choice.

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Legacy Pioneer plans were discontinued. They were given a few months warning, PM did make genuine attempts to inform these customers and to provide them fairly equivalent plans or compensation. But in the end they were discontinued - which makes me wonder when (not if) other legacy plans or things like Rewards will eventually be discontinued. Nothing lasts forever.

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Give it a year or two, depends on how many of us on the old system still here (and how many of us paying the monthly plan again or still getting "free" plan from the reward, if the number is low enough and "affordable" for PM, maybe they won't do much. But if majority of us still here and no sign of leaving soon, then they will force us out then.

And PM really lost the interest to lead.  Sometimes, I find them don't even have the interest to follow.  Lucky has been aggressive.  They have app, award winning apps.  PM does not even try.   Lucky now have eSIM support, not a single words from PM so far.  

And for the Community, from the different posts I read, different PM agents used to come on the forum often and  interact with the members here.  Now, none of the agent come on here.  Jade came sometimes with some very formal reply, very business.    

We have multiple "serious" discussion here .. PM has been staying away and make no comment at all.  This  Community is really not a proper forum.  A forum is where there are communication both way.. 

PM "hires" more Oracles now than before, so they can pass all the daily administrative tasks to the Oracles and they can hide themselves away from spotlight.  Some members argue about some administrative works here, Oracles now are the one to be blamed and PM can now keep their hands clean. 

As I said, the only good news is that they have updated the Community and bring in a cost cutting rewards system, at least it shows that the light won't be turn off anytime soon.  Very likely PM won't shutdown with 3G together.

[BearFBI]

@Korth Wow that's the most detailed response of every change yet. That pretty much sums it up for me as well, I've seen a lot of change around here. I remember those old "pioneers" too

You are right. PM is not the way it was when I signed up for it. Ive been trying to explain that. PM is NOT living up to its original name, mission, and slogans. "No frills" or "less for less" is a joke now. I see PM ads everywhere, even on Tiktok ! 

[Korth]

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@softech wrote:

PM has not bee doing much in the last 2 years.  No major promotion, no major "upgrade" in terms or plan or so.  Community has been dead quiet (I saw a lot of interactions between PM and members here before.. last 2 years or pretty much NO interaction.  Everyone hide in the back stage..)

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PM's been going downhill and passively following the other third-tiers longer than that.

I saw the beginning of the end when they kept pushing waves of botched Koodo migration offers. A series of blunders which cost PM (and Koodo, and Telus) a lot of customers. But at least back then they had a core team of real Moderators who were active on the forums, genuinely interested in their customers, and actually capable of promptly resolving issues - even if they had to sometimes bend rules a little or invent entirely ad-hoc workarounds.

I've seen a lot of changes since the Koodo blunders. Some of them made things better. Many made things worse.

PM SIM cards were free, with about 3-5 day delivery. Then they were $5 with about 5-10 day delivery. Now they're $10 and get delivered whenever they get delivered, people typically start complaining after the first 3-4 weeks.

No more plan building calculator.

No more 90-day plans.

No more 10-day plans. No more free "10-day passes" to ease worries for new customers caught by delayed number ports or other transitional problems. I think Public Mobile can afford to spend such small amounts on buying happy customers who'll positively advertise the brand and loyally stick around for years.

No more LTE options for those who want to buy them.

Savvy full-time active mods on the spot replaced by a dumb autobot and the part-time multi-tasked attentions of an impersonal outsourced call center.

Stupid surveys. As in, shallow predictable questions which are obviously meant to just feed some managerial's meaningless make-work statistics.

Broken AutoPay is still broken. Fixed, they say. And yet it's still broken.

Billing, accounting, and add-on systems which have never been made less convoluted and cryptic for consumers. And here we are in the 2020s, still unable to export our Self-Serve records into a printer-friendly format.

No 4G talk for customers in areas with retired 3G networks.

Community forum "upgrades". Haha. Haha.

And now the new Points are causing unease for those of us who prefer our old Rewards.

Legacy Pioneer plans were discontinued. They were given a few months warning, PM did make genuine attempts to inform these customers and to provide them fairly equivalent plans or compensation. But in the end they were discontinued - which makes me wonder when (not if) other legacy plans or things like Rewards will eventually be discontinued. Nothing lasts forever.

They did introduce $10 and $15 plans. Although the $10 plans are gone. And the $15 plan had to be revised. There was a lot of criticism about having "Limited" plans at first - no more "Unlimited" plans across the board - but they seem popular, they actually work out fine for myself and my referrals.

On the other end of the plan offerings, there's the heavy hitters with US Talk and big data buckets. I've seen a few $50+ plans come and go over the years, but I think the current offerings are possibly the best of the bunch. There have been one or two plans with separate built-in US Data provisions, but they apparently weren't popular (or profitable) enough to keep around.

And all plans are Canada-wide now, Province-wide is a thing of the past.

They did lower the price of data add-ons from $30/GB to $15/GB. But, honestly, I think you can't really call it an "improvement" given how much of an unsellable ripoff the original price was. The new price is only double or triple what you'd pay elsewhere.

They restructured their long-distance add-ons. An up-front cost inconvenience for those who need to now purchase multiple add-ons when calling multiple countries. And they expanded their lists with more foreign calling destinations. These changes are cheaper and better, overall, at least for most of us.

They did provide "free" US Talk add-ons for customers trapped across the border during the initial covid event. Which I'm sure must've been immensely helpful for those customers.

They figured out how to use the promo code functions built into this software. And they've been using it nonstop ever since. So that's a good deal for all new customers.

And they did give us gifts. Many gifts over recent years. Thank you. Unexpected and very welcome. Regardless of the coincidental timing of these gifts with competing offers - no reason to complain about being bribed to stay "loyal", lol, although I wonder how many other subscribers might've left without these bribes.

They sell phones now. With a respectable warranty. And some (not all) of these are priced competitively. Well done!

They can't promise any sort of proper delivery schedule or tracking number on these orders, though. And they ship the SIMs separately, which causes inconvenient problems. Not very helpful for people who want to get a working phone with a working phone service ASAP.

New marketing. New branding. New artwork. Yay.

But I have to wonder how "the phone company without a phone number" can afford these expensive, pointless, cosmetic things while still offering "no frills" and "less for less".

Perhaps PM's new slogan should be "service without service"?

So, all told, it's a mixed bag. Public Mobile today is not the same company as the Public Mobile I signed up with years ago. Each passing year I'm a little less confident that the promises made to me by Old Public Mobile will still be kept. And there are certain critical areas which have declined or which really need to be improved. The other third-tier operators don't have these issues so why can't Public Mobile manage to fix them?

[Camera4617]

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@softech wrote:

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@fdrcamb519 wrote:

@BearFBI  each provider has pros and cons, 

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The question is .. what is the Pros of PM now , especially for those who join now with the Public Points  🤔

trying to name couple.. still thinking.. thinking hard.

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@softech  For me #1 advantage was always add-ons that don't expire, especially valuable for people on 15$ plans. Gifts are also nice + rewards that even are not so great, still better than what others have.. eSim is great as an option but as I use PM for voice, then SIM is better to have. 

[jor123]

The rewards are largely what's keeping me here now (not switching to Public Points as long as I can help it).

With that being said, voice over LTE would be nice. 

[CountyDownIeUk]

@softech 

I bought them......they are new and free. 

[softech]

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@fdrcamb519 wrote:

@BearFBI  each provider has pros and cons, 

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The question is .. what is the Pros of PM now , especially for those who join now with the Public Points  🤔

trying to name couple.. still thinking.. thinking hard.

[softech]

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@BearFBI wrote:

PM is not competitive anymore. 

.....

PM has extremely disappointed me in the past few years. 

....

PM lost its hype. Honestly if you are looking for a new carrier I'd suggest Lucky at this point. 

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PM has not bee doing much in the last 2 years.  No major promotion, no major "upgrade" in terms or plan or so.  Community has been dead quiet (I saw a lot of interactions between PM and members here before.. last 2 years or pretty much NO interaction.  Everyone hide in the back stage..)

I have been saying Telus has been pretty much just keeping the light on here.  If not the new Public Points, I would assume we will see the end of PM pretty soon (maybe together with the death of 3G).    

It's good Lucky up the game a bit.  Just waiting for Chatr to make some move and then we will see Telus has no choice but to follow.  I guess no worry, All 3 Tier 3 have been offering pretty much same plan, same $ , same promotion for the past year or two... So, PM will follow closely , as long as Telus is not killing PM.  

[softech]

@CountyDownIeUk   why are you so Lucky to get all the Lucky Sim for free?

or you are spy from Lucky ? LoL

[CountyDownIeUk]

@BearFBI 

Lol.  But do keep in mind we all want referrals from eager and those that are ok with points. 

Are you updating gas buddy for Chevron....it is always wrong?

What I don’t like is the rewards and points roll out is full of discrepancies that need to be fixed and find that to be embarrassing. 

[BearFBI]

@CountyDownIeUk I am staying with PM as well because of the grandfathered rewards system, but for new users, PM isn't the best option anymore. 

I Just felt the need to rant. 

[fdrcamb519]

@BearFBI  each provider has pros and cons, if one thinks another is better than just move yo that one.

[CountyDownIeUk]

lol. I have been trying to give away Lucky Sims for over a year. Not ESims though. If any one wants.....PM me. I am staying with PM. 

[ShawnC13]

Once PM went into retail locations that is when everything changed and they were no longer going to be a leader.  That is when everything started to change at PM from what it was when I joined just over 5 years ago