Edit : Adding a reddit post which I made which has more details. As few people in comments think I am ommiting details - here you go. I wanted to keep this post as a feedback post and make it verbose with all the details. If you are interested in all details please go to reddit post.
Update : This has been resolved now and account is ublocked. I am still disatisfied by the support that Monzo has post blocking someone’s account.
Original Post :
I have been using Monzo now for last 3 years. And slowly it had become one of the main banks for me. All of my transactions happen though it.
Today I tried to transfer some amount to a friend ( someone I have known for 20+ years ). And BAMMM! It was flagged as suspicious and asked bunch of proof of relationships and why this money is needed. The friend was really in need and it made the situation worse.
Provided all that information and now silence. Got a message in app stating that scam specialist will call you now - been over 2 hours waiting for the “now”.
A couple of feedback
Please improve the customer service. It doesn’t work in real need.
Build responsive integrity team where the blocked customer knows about an ETA.
Improve fraud detection. I know it’s an ever evolving hard problem - but If a customer provides pdfs, chat screenshot and detailed reasoning - they must know what they are doing.
Integrity teams should be enabling and not blocking by default. Have options to do video verification - to reset the block, or have an option to cancel transaction in question - allow smaller transfers upto a limit of 50/100.
Situation like this will now push me (and would have pushed others ) to use a high street bank for all my transactions where I can call my relationship manager and sort things out.
Will still use Monzo for pots and foreign transactions - but for everything else and dealing with large sums I am moving away from Monzo as soon as my account gets unblocked.
I’ve had the same happen with Monzo and other highstreet banks, highstreet banks win everytime here. Sadly it’s something you have to experience first-hand with Monzo, and is so far pretty much the only bad thing I have to say about them. The team that deal with this is clearly way overworked and has a huge queue in front of you, you cannot seem to ever contact them, they can only contact you (also different with highstreet banks)
What is a very simple call to, say, HSBC to assure them a transaction in legitimate, is a blackhole with no communication from Monzo, in my experience
Most highstreet banks will also just block the transfer, not your entire account. Monzo trying to protect you will be a reality to check to anyone who thinks about going Full Monzo with no backup
And in case of a false positive like this one, this is causes a lot of stress and issues for the customer. And I would definitely move my business from Monzo to some place else.
In this particular case my friend would be moving homes for renting. A delay for even 2-3 days would mean they need to restart the search and put in a lot of effort.
To be fair to the OP this is not an area where Monzo excels.
I’m all for robust fraud detection but then have the customer services ready to back that up to allow genuine customers manage their money on their terms (within the law, of course).
I’m not saying that another bank would necessarily do better (though in my experience they have) but whenever someone posts about these things it’s just a pile on when they really are just having a bad customer experience and it may not be their fault.
I have had faced similar issues with other banks twice - on first occasion I could visit branch, talk to a person and get it resolved; and on 2nd i could get someone on phone and resolve this.
The issue is not with all these protections, it is with the support post that ( as you said ).
rightly or wrongly, monzo has earned itself a reputation of being over officious & hard to deal with in these situations. I transferred some money the other day (an unusual transaction for me) and was concerned it would trigger something.
