Upcoming Changes to our Old Rewards Program

[J_PM]

Hey Community,

We have an important announcement to share with our subscribers who are currently enrolled in our old Rewards program.

We’re making changes to our rewards program and are sharing how these changes impact some of our subscribers. Starting in May, we’ll be retiring our old Rewards program and moving all subscribers to our Public Points™ program. 

We launched the Public Points™ program in January 2022 to provide our subscribers with more ways to earn and spend rewards, with greater flexibility. As part of our commitment to continuously evolve our products and services, it's time to retire our old Rewards program and shift our focus on enhancing our Points program.

To show our appreciation for your continued loyalty, subscribers on our old Rewards program will receive a special thank you. We'll send you a text message when it has been added to your account by March 31st. 

We’re excited to continue providing you, our valued subscribers, more opportunities to earn and spend rewards with Public Points™ moving forward.

To learn more about your move to Public Points, check out our FAQ here.

The Public Mobile Team

[Leela3]

SO BLOODY GREASY!!! I am honestly just furious about this. I want to start by saying that yes I am new to the community aspect of things but not to PM. I joined back in March of 2011. I still have the receipt. Some of you may remember the unfortunate "migration" over to Koodo as we were led to believe PM was on it's way out. So I foolishly took part in 2017. I came back to PM during the pandemic as I could no longer receive calls and texts with Koodo and no fix was on the horizon. I was happy to return to PM and have been receiving auto pay and loyalty rewards for years now. I am truly disappointed with this change and I will be shopping around for sure. Please know that in order for a CCTS complaint to be effective you must first go through PM customer service. Many try to bypass this step but you must be able to prove that you attempted to resolve this with  PM first. Otherwise it's a waste of time. Keep any proof of communication you have with PM as it will be required. Fingers crossed they decide against making this change!

[Zahir_h]

What's funny..... I have not received an email from them about the change yet and it's already March 9th

[dudesbot]

I just checked my email from when Public Points first launched. Proudly in bold text:

"We want to emphasize that joining Public Points
is optional for all existing customers."

What a complete 180! But hey, now we get expiring data that can't be easily used.

[bb8715]

From the FAQ about the move:

How long is my bonus data valid?

Your bonus data will be valid for 150 days from the day it’s applied to your account.

What is the special bonus being provided to customers? As a token of our appreciation, we're rewarding you with bonus data. You’ll find the specifics of this bonus in the email that will be sent to you by March 8th.

It has an expiration date of 5 months...

[Salvo1]

Don't go with freedom freedom sucks

[Zahir_h]

You can also argue that their notice/disclaimer about change is quite vague.  

Change = modification

What PM is doing is cancelling this rewards program. They should have said change/cancel/remove/replace etc

[public_999]

I'm not so sure about that.  The email I received back in 2022 says otherwise.  There is a disclaimer about their right to change system but the link provided only takes you to the terms and conditions of the new point system with no reference to the old

[geeloo]

Prepaid 

[geeloo]

I thought I hated Bell (who is behind PC Mobile). But with this latest news for PM to retire the old reward system, I now hate Telus/PM even more. So it's either Freedom (still spotty network) or begrudgingly PC Mobile for me.

Sidenote. Telus has done the math already. The lost customers expected from this change has been factored in. Maybe they actually *want* to lose us low revenue customers to bring up their ARPU. 

[on2wheels]

Did you label public mobile as prepaid or post paid in your complaint? Just so we're all consistent in our submissions.

By the way, who is "bravo'ing" this announcement post?!

[ninjastar]

That's what we switched our 4 accounts to and, gasp, you can call them for help setting it all up...

[Laurier1]

I am extremely dissatisfied with the change in points as I will go from a $6 discount to a $2-$3 discount (you only give the $10 off every year so that is less than a dollar a month for being a loyal customer)per month.   The extra data you give as a bonus for a few months is useless as I don’t use the data I have!  It’s time to look at the PC mobile plans as it is a much better plan for pc points that can be used for shoppers drug mart or the PC grocery stores.  I am extremely disappointed in Public Mobile after being a loyal customer for 4 years. I certainly will not be recommending them to anyone anymore! 

[Creme]

This is B.S!! Loyalty my A$$! I'm losing $50 a year with the new points program. I'll be leaving, along with my 3 family members that are with PM. No bragging to friends and Co workers about this company anymore. Bye bye!!

[ily]

Note to PC Mobile and Freedom admins: set a reminder for April 30th to beef up your servers because the next day, you'll get flooded with a whole lot of new signups.

[Dunkman]

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@stormy13 wrote:

And what good is the bonus data to those on the 5G "unlimited" plans going to be? Pretty sure it will be incompatible just like all the previous annual bonus freebies became for those that still had them when they switched to the 5G plans.

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@stormy13 

According to PM staff, this bonus data add on should work with the unlimited throttled data plans.  Once your plan data is used up, then the bonus data add on should kick in and you will receive full data speeds (instead of throttled data speeds).  Whether it works in reality, we will find out.  You are right that the grandfathered data add ons (ie. XMAS bonus) don't work with these unlimited data plans. 

[homer]

This is disappointing. Time to consider porting to freedom / fizz... 

[stormy13]

And what good is the bonus data to those on the 5G "unlimited" plans going to be? Pretty sure it will be incompatible just like all the previous annual bonus freebies became for those that still had them when they switched to the 5G plans.

[Dunkman]

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@joe77 wrote:

Maybe PM could give us access to their $24 or $29 plans that they are currently only offering to new subs.  That would help ease the hit on most of us that have $34+ plans with $7 or less loyalty rewards.

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@joe77 

Agree with you comment.  Offering these new "activation" only plans ($24 or $29) would help many several legacy customers transition to the points system.  

It has been recommended to PM staff, but no response yet.  

I doubt that Public mobile will backtrack from the migration to points. Hopefully, with all this negative feedback, PM will offer more than the inadequate expiring data bonus.  The migration won't happen until May, so we still have time to see whether PM will adjust their response. 

[Hosna]

Will switch and also make a complaint with the CCTS.

[Dunkman]

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@Annelise wrote:

What happened with the guarantee we could stay this way??

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@Annelise 

Unfortunately, there was no guarantee that the legacy rewards will stay the same forever.

In the terms and conditions, Public mobile reserves the right to change the reward system with notice.

[hairtothepie]

Swing and miss. The only reason I am still here is the savings I get from the loyalty of being on the rewards vs the points. With the difference moving forward. I might as well go with the cheaper company that has a number to call.

[Octavian1]

Now and on Anfield tomorrow...

[Dadkhah]

This absolutely outrageous. I'll make a complaint with CCTS.

[RynoHazard]

This is unbelievably disrespectful to old customers. This change goes against the core values that made me stay with public, consistency, and transparency. There is no value to me anymore without these. I will certainly be considering switching if this change takes effect. Thanks public for the good years but this would push me over the edge, there’s other great budget phone carriers. 

[sgiuseppe]

This is completely unacceptable

The biggest thing are the loyalty rewards. I currently get $48 off per year. It’s a big reason why I stayed and didn’t port out over Black Friday. The new rewards system comes no where close

[steveb11]

UPDATE:

I just filed my complaint with CCTS. It took just under 10 minutes and the process was pretty painless.

For those of you who want to do it, the only additional info you'll need is an address for Public Mobile. I just used the main Telus headquarters:

510 West Georgia Street

Vancouver, BC, V6B 0M3

Maybe if enough people complain, Public Mobile will backtrack.

[dannycdee]

You will not be alone! I've notified everyone I know and we're all going to be leaving

[PublicMobile300]

Freedom mobile appears to have some discount plans, here is a link to check them out. This isn't a referral plan post, just posting plans as many of us will be leaving.

Goodbye sweet prince

https://shop.freedommobile.ca/en-CA/plans?isByopPlanFirstFlow=true

[Tony72]

25GB of data for$29 from pc mobile looks ideal for me 

[MaximeFil]

I'm an old reward system customer that has invited multiple people over to PM in the last few years. The reward system gave me a reason to recommend PM and to look away at other offers. I'm quite disappointed that I'll be losing it all. Nothing really ties me to PM as a 'loyal' customer. I was just spat in my face. I disagree with this change and our old program should not be annihilated.