Apparent cancellation of all past pre-paid plans.

[was-happy-till]

I have two emergency cell phones that rarely get used but I figured the $100 a year each was good insurance. One was with Virgin and the other is with Fido.
I just discovered that Virgin cancelled my pre-paid $100 yearly plan over a year ago without notice and sucked up all my past credits using an unauthorized $15/month plan till I finally got a notice that my number was going to be lost. I had it set up to auto-renew each year but they ignored that.
This got me concerned about my Fido account.
Lo and behold, I can log in but get no details on the over $500 in past credits. There is just a notice about how they want to hear from me with a number that never reaches anyone. 
I suppose I will have to try to go into a store to see how hard they plan to screw me over. Maybe that's too cynical, but I just want access to an emergency phone with 100 minutes a year and all of the past credit I acquired under the contract I had. 

[was-happy-till]

That is a reasonable answer under certain circumstances however I had both plans set up for auto-pay each year in order to ensure that my balance carried forward. From my Fido account I can't even tell what I have anymore since they just have an ominous message. Attempting to get through by phone has been fruitless so far but I'll try again on a weekday.
https://share.getcloudapp.com/X6unqdDZ

[Cawtau]

Hello again,

  Fair enough. Thank you for the additional information. Unfortunately, Fido has discontinued online access for pre-paid accounts (see here). However, I believe you should be able to access your balance information via their interactive voice response service.

Hope this helps 😀

Cheers

[was-happy-till]

Thank you. It is a shame that you are not one of their employees since your answers are actually helpful, if not entirely satisfying.
I now understand that complaints related to this sort of thing can not be filed in small claims court as I wish to do but through a purported "independent third party" which has to be funded by someone, which I assume is the industry itself and hopefully not our tax dollars. 
https://www.ccts-cprst.ca/for-consumers/complaints/complaint-form/
If this process didn't exist our courts would surely be clogged with all the valid cases that must arise each day.
I honestly suspect that this prepaid cancellation issue will become a class action which could have been so easily avoided.
They worked on the assumption that customers would read text messages about plan changes from a phone that was only used for emergencies while failing to provide any notification to the emails they had for us.
I would suggest they make us entirely whole of their own volition before it costs them $5 million in legal fees before having to do so a few years from now.
https://www.canlii.org/en/qc/qcca/doc/2016/2016qcca1299/2016qcca1299.htm

[was-happy-till]

It looks like I jumped the gun on getting overly concerned. I was able to find that my balance was intact and that they did the auto-fill in June. A rep was able to assure me that the plan would remain the same and that I could, but did not have to transfer the balance to a monthly plan.
So, all good for now.

[Cawtau]

Hello Was-happy-till,

  Welcome to the community!

  Sorry to hear of your situation. I don't know the details of your situation. However, it appears as though you might not have fully understood the way the pre-paid offerings work. Are you aware the top-up vouchers value have expiries? The length of time before expiry varies depending on the value amount (see here).

  For the moment, let's assume you had $500 in your pre-paid account and you had the auto-renew for the Annual Talk & Text plan. (To be clear, I'm not suggesting you didn't have that amount in your account. I'm only assuming a sum for illustration purposes). If you didn't top-up your account on a regular basis thinking there were sufficient funds in your account, the expiry on your entire balance could have passed. Even though there might have been sufficient funds to pay for the Annual plan, you would still have had to top-up monthly, bi-monthly, or yearly to extend the expiry. 

  As far as I am aware, the other providers also have expiring balances. It's possible something similar occurred with your Virgin account.

  You should note that this forum is community-driven and not intended as a venue for customer services. Since you have pre-paid services, you would need to contact their dedicated pre-paid customer service if you wished to discuss your situation.

Hope this helps 😀

Cheers