I am confused. You has activated a service with Koodo for 4 months. Did you receive any email saying that your bill was paid? Koodo postpaid service normally continue until your bill reaches certain amount.

In addtion, was there any email from Koodo saying that your method of preauthorized payment has been saved? If you had that email, you could come back to Koodo and dispute.

But didn’t you agree to these Terms of Service when you entered into a contract with them? The 4 months is the deadline after which they have to send you to collections if you don’t respond to them, unfortunately. “Presuming” things, especially when your credit score/financial assets are involved, is never a good idea. 

Also, did you check in your statement history for your Credit Card that there were any KOODO payments being taken out? It may have been helpful to check your Credit Card transactions to ensure it was actually coming out and being paid. I do this with every service I’m subscribed to monthly, just in case they for some reason don’t pull the payment automatically. 

There is even a self-serve option online with KOODO where you can see your account balance and any notifications pertinent to your service. I check mine each month to make sure I’m not falling behind, and to see exactly how much I owe. This may help you as well. 

It seems like there were a lot of steps you could/should have taken to prevent this, and this was a really hard lesson for you to learn regarding due diligence, bills and credit scores. Unfortunately we can’t trust technology and others to do all of the work for us, we have to be responsible for ourselves and not make presumptions about important matters like this. 

If all carriers cut off service after 1 late or non-payment there would be even more complaints.

You cannot reply on service being cut as the notification that payment did not go through.

Just like a late or missed mortgage payment does not immediately result on you getting evicted from your house.

Unfortunately, as you just experienced, you have to exercise more due diligence. The credit score system is punitive and greatly impacts your life. I look for confirmation that an automatic payment worked before letting it continue on autopilot.

They typically did cut service at 30 days past due or thereabouts but perhaps it changed or wasn't caught for you. It can be seen as a poor policy, but déception isnt accurate here I think.

FWIW you should still be able to get a mortgage from a credit union if you intend to buy before your credit has a chance to recover. The interest rate wont be as good though. If it get settled from collections it'll slowly recover.

For future reference, you can ensure that you are receiving billing notifications on your Koodo Self-Serve account. This can be set up by clicking this link.

To set up billing notifications, log in to your Self Serve account. Click on the Self Serve tab and select Billing. Click on the Bills Tab, then click on Billing Notifications.