Account closed through CASS but now I get notifications about unpaid Flex balance I can't pay. How to proceed?

Essentially what the title says. I’ve switched my account away a few weeks back and I assumed that the Flex and all of my saving pots would get consolidated into one balance with my current account before being transferred to my new account elsewhere. However now that the new month has arrived I’m receiving emails / texts “reminding me” to pay a missed Monzo Flex payment. Which is not possible because the only way to do it is through the app and the Monzo current account - neither of which I now have access to.

I’ve send Monzo an email about it but not heard back and now it’s only a couple days until the deadline for repayment passes. I don’t want this to get sent to collections because of no fault of my own.

How to proceed here?

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It’s 100% your fault. You didn’t pay it and closed your account.

All you can do is wait for Monzo to reply.

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If you know you had a flex credit card, why on earth would you close your account?

Unfortunately, unlike a Legacy bank, Monzo do not give you the details to pay off a flex card from another bank account without Contacting them

Personally, I think this is something that should change. They could Very easily put the flex account details and the reference number you have to use plus the outstanding balance in the account closure email however they chose not to do this.

You’ll have to wait for your reply

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It is 100% not their fault.

Monzo do not behave like a typical bank and credit card provider when you CASS out your current account. What transpires as a consequence can be unexpected if you don’t know what to expect (and I only know what to expect because of this forum).

Monzo should have communicated this to when your account was closed. It might be worth checking your email’s spam folder for any instructions.

But you’ve contacted them to ask to pay. That’s all you can do. The ball is in their court now and you’ll just have to wait. You can try following up, but some email systems will treat it as a new query and send it to the back of the queue. If they don’t get back to you and it goes to collections, you complain and go to the ombudsman. They have to treat you fairly.

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You could try recoveries@monzo.com and they may be able to help.

Nope.

They had debt, that two taps would have paid off instead they chose to ignore it.

It’s not for Monzo to decide to pay off that debt. Monzo should definitely provide a mechanism for paying it off after the fact but this is so easily avoided.

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Why does the blame have to sit with one or the other? I think both Monzo and OP are at fault here.

OP assumed that pots and Flex would be consolidated, despite Flex being a Credit Card product. CASS doesn’t include credit cards so they should have checked what would happen with Flex before they switched.

However, Monzo are also at fault for not having a clear process in place for Flex when someone switches out, knowing that Flex is tied to your personal account (unlike other banks where you can usually have a credit card without having their bank account too). If Flex is not mentioned within any of the communications from Monzo regarding the Switch, then it’s also on them for not being clear about what will happen to it.

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I’m sorry, but that’s just presumptive, illogical, and flat out wrong.

It’s only easily avoided if you know to avoid it. OP quite clearly didn’t. It’s not a common practice with other banks.

You’re missing the crux here. There’s fault on both sides that landed OP in this predicament, yes, but OP doesn’t want the debt to go to collections through no fault of their own; meaning they don’t want it to be their fault the debt goes to collections, so they are trying to prevent that from happening and pay it. They’ve tried to contact Monzo to query how to pay it and there’s not much else they can do, so if it does now go to collections it would not be their fault.

I think you mean that it’s not 100% their fault, not that it’s 100% not their fault. They have to take some blame for not thinking it through.

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No, I mean literally what I typed. If Monzo take the debt to collections, it is not OPs fault.

Pretty sure they will contact you to setup a payment plan either via Direct Debit or Standing order.

It’s none of those things. Especially since OP had the money to pay it off.

If they were moving and needed to wait for next payday to clear Flex then that’s different.

“I have money there, Monzo will fix it” is 100% on the OP. If they get a financial black mark then it’s a lesson learned.

Imagine they had £1k in that account to pay the mortgage and bills, but owed £999 to Flex, you’d be saying Monzo were in the wrong for paying off the debt.

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Are you presuming they’ve given them time to respond and not left it last minute? :wink:

This thread sums up why I find this forum so frustrating sometimes.

We here understand what will happen because we’ve seen it play out before, but to respond to this post properly you really need to take yourself out of the forum bubble and think of things how a normal customer would see it.

There’s no guidance from Monzo on what will happen when you CASS out, hell even the Flex Credit Agreement doesn’t make it clear what will happen when you CASS.

The language used by the CASS makes it sound like everything will be taken care of and there’s nothing the customer needs to do. The assumption the op made isn’t even that wild considering the terms literally say this:

On the other hand if you go with the other extreme, lots of other banks when you CASS out will close your Current Account, but let you keep your linked products. How can it be obvious to your standard customer that switching your current account will also remove your access to Flex?

This is the only reference in the credit agreement as to what happens when you CASS out.

I’m not sure without regulatory push there’s much incentive for Monzo to remove the friction here. It keeps customers with the bank. It’s shady, but they’re doing nothing wrong. I would at the very least like to see the process after account closure clearly defined in the credit agreement.

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No, I’m not presuming anything. Revel’s made up a completely unknown variable (that OP just ignored the debt).

I’m taking OP at face value when they say they’ve contacted Monzo and haven’t heard back, and my reply is based on that. I’m not going to presume they left it to the last minute nor that they were on top of it the moment they were notified about the late payment. OP doesn’t clarify and it really doesn’t matter.

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They didn’t. They thought that Monzo would consolidate the payment with their funds.

They were wrong, but it’s an understandable mistake.

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I didn’t make anything up. I completely understand that Monzo don’t make this clear, don’t provide an easy way to pay it off after you’ve done this.

But I’m still blaming OP. Simple common sense. “Credit product at zero” Done. No worries at all. Especially as it doesn’t sound like there was a financial issue to pay it off. You can make this a Monzo accounts tied together issue, but I’d do this with any bank.

Hopefully recoveries will help and they’ll get it sorted with no financial marker penalty.

I’m clearly out of my depth here, because I can’t comprehend how you managed to read that and surmise from it that they chose to ignore it. It doesn’t compute. :person_facepalming:

Why is that common sense, when literally every other bank will let you keep a credit card (along with online and app banking access) if you are only CASSing a current account?

Common sense is “every other bank lets me keep online access and the credit card open, so Monzo would do the same”.

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Ignore me, I was just being cheeky.

From what I gather from the OP:

  • They had a payment plan.
  • They agreed to pay it on X day each month
  • They closed their account.
  • They missed the agreed repayment date.
  • They received threats demanding payment.
  • They’re only now reaching out to Monzo.

There are only two days left, quite a long time has passed. I wouldn’t be surprised if they only contacted Monzo this morning, given how slow and unimportant they seemed to think all of this was.

On the other hand, if they did email Monzo 7 days ago, I also wouldn’t be surprised if they haven’t received a response yet. But either way, it’s been left far too late, and they’ve ignored it until now assuming everything will just “work” which isn’t the case because they wouldn’t have had messages asking to pay.

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