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Public Customers: Your information is being leaked

templeofhylia
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

I'm making this post for the sake of two purposes: one, to warn fellow Public Mobile customers that their information is at risk of being leaked to parties that have no business knowing the details of their phone plan, and two, to let Public Mobile know that I intend to tackle their incredibly poor customer service practices in any and all ways possible.

I'm one of the people that got that "As a thank for being loyal, have 5GB of data" bonus this month. I've been using it without really thinking about it, so today I dialed 611 to check on its usage. Instead of hearing "Hello Welcome To Public Mobile" from a computer, I heard a very distinct human voice talking to a customer. I hung up out of confusion, and then called back a few times to see if I could replicate it; and I was able to. Every 3rd or 4th call, instead of that robotic voice, I got what was clearly a private call between customer representative and customer. I won't reveal any details I heard, but I will say that the representative couldn't hear me, and they obviously had no awareness that they were leaking the details of someone else's data plan to a random party.

The fact I had to access and post within a web forum in order to even inform anybody-which I can't even guarantee will actually happen—of this massive privacy leak is embarrassing. My boyfriend, consistently for the past several months, has been unable to make or receive phone calls in his hometown. If he travels to my house, it all works fine. Not only that, but you won't let him make a community account to solve the issue because the email he signed up with is deleted and you won't let him change it. The fact that you clearly and obviously have a customer service line but won't transparently provide it to your paying and loyal customers, or even potential customers, is embarrassing.

 As far as I'm concerned, I will no longer be recommending Public Mobile and your affordable plans to friends and family on the account of your inaccessible (but also publicly leaked) customer service line; my mother, boyfriend, and I will all be cancelling our services and filing proper complaints with the CCTS.

I'm guessing that this post will be deleted for violating some sort of guidelines despite being nothing but factual and appropriate, so I hope that anyone that sees this in time will be able to make informed choices, and that any Public employees that are able to respond have a very good explanation for all of this.

Good day.

14 REPLIES 14

TwitchyPuppy
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

Koodo prepaid customer service was able to help me because the backend was the same. The CSR couldn't get into my account however he managed to reset the connection and it fixed the issue!

hi @MrNoodel 

call again, maybe the line got jammed. Some people had that issue

MrNoodel
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

I called in the other day and I was able to listen into the reps call telling the customer what plan they were getting. He could not hear me and I couldn’t hear the customer. I didn’t even get the automated recording

@TwitchyPuppy Koodo customer service will not be able to help you. Though the backend systems may be the same, the front end systems are not.

TwitchyPuppy
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

No thanks. I've already done that and waiting for an answer since Saturday. My calls and texts aren't working..

HI @TwitchyPuppy 

what is your current issue? 

you need to submit ticket with PM for help

  please submit a ticket with CS Agent using this Chatbot link:  https://widget.telus.tiia.ai/publicmobile/publicmobile.html  Type the question "Submit ticket", Then click the following in order: "Contact Us" ,  "Other",  "Log In".  
If any issue with ticket submission, you can  submit by direct message:  
      https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/notes/composepage/note-to-user-id/22437        

TwitchyPuppy
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

That's valuable info! I'll get in touch with Koodo prepaid and check if they can assist me with my issues with PM.

Priority
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire

This still occurs, I just gave up making a big deal about it since no one seemed to care or wanted to do anything about it. :,(

Quite often I call 611, and someone literally picks up or you hear people talking instead of the Automated System, it literally happened the other day. 

templeofhylia
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

Okay, I'm writing this now after being a little less angry (It's very frustrating having my family struggle heavily with a cell phone service that I recommended to them because I always thought highly of Public for being cheap and easy, only for one to have absolutely no service and no options to even reach out to Public, forcing them to go to a new provider) to just add that as of at least 11:30AM EST, the problem still persists; I was able to replicate the issue twice. This time, I was able to get about a minute collectively on video before the calls killed themselves mid-sentence. It was all French, so I can't verify the contents or context this time around. I won't be posting anything in case something sensitive was mentioned, but I hope this glitch gets wiped away soon.

Obviously, I was pretty wrong about Public having a customer service line (What other assumption should I have made when I dialed a self-help automated Public Mobile number and tapped into a space that hosts either recordings or live conversations of agents, if not that this was some sort of Public hotline, Alexander of Public Mobile Escalation? I'd be happy to amend my complaint with the new information shared by your oracle below that I perhaps tapped into the information of customers that aren't even yours instead. Would that have been better? Please advise.)

...but it's still weird. Ticket's been made though so I'm tapping out.

DennyCrane
Mayor / Maire

@Priority had something similar (not quite the same) happen in September.

https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Get-Support/611-Answered/m-p/1049484/

Dunkman
Oracle
Oracle

@templeofhylia 

I tried to replicate your findings right now, but unable to.  Public mobile does not have a phone number to call for customers service that I know of. All customer service is done via the PM ticketing, private messaging system.  

 There is the Telus porting team number, but that is a Telus number that helps porting issues with all Telus companies including Public mobile and Koodo.  

I know that Koodo prepaid share the same backend systems, so it might have been a technical glitch with your phone calls.  

Please reach out to Customer service agent.  I know that one of the oracles have flagged your post on our oracle forum.  

fixin
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire

@templeofhylia - Yeah, that does sound unusual. Whenever I have to call TELUS nowadays, I only hear chuckling and screams. The screaming part is rare but I usually hear chuckling at least once per call.

templeofhylia
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

I guess I can't conclusively say it was live, but here's what I'm willing to transcribe from what I heard:
"...Oh. Yeah, okay. I see here (details of their current data usage) and that you want to upgrade to 3GB of data. I'll go ahead and..." and then the call cut out at some point. There was a bit more than this, like the representative acknowledging what the customer was saying, but I don't really recall it. I tried saying "Uh, hey, I can hear you. Can you hear me? What's going on?" and got nothing. Regardless if it was live or not, it isn't normal for random customers to be explicitly connected to the sensitive information of strangers.

Thanks for the information, I'll be making a ticket right away.

fixin
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire

@templeofhylia - Are you sure that it was live? All I've heard since 2021 of being here was that same... old voice. Couldn't hear anything in the background. Probably some PR workers talking about stuff while he was recording.

If you are really concerned contact CS_Agent:

⬇️ Click the link for an Agent * ⬇️

https://urlshortner.tiia.ai/xYpc_I

If the link above doesn’t work, please go here to create a ticket to CS_Agent: https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/notes/composepage/note-to-user-id/22437

* - CS_Agent will typically get back to you within 48 hours. They work 7 days a week from 9 AM to 10 PM EST.  You will be required to login to your Public Mobile Community Account to contact CS_Agent. Once you are finished making the ticket with CS_Agent, please ensure that you monitor for an agent because they may notify you asking for some information via Private Message, in your mailbox by clicking this link here: Messages

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