Hmm, I distinctly remember another thread where somebody was being a jobsworth about alpha auth codes and refusing service.
This is a classic pragmatic problem though. You can stand and huff in the corner saying “well, I’M complying with the spec”, but given there are crap systems out there, and mastercard are sufficiently laissez-faire to not slap anyone in a timely way who contravenes to the spec, what do you do? Maintain a blacklist of cruddy retailers and give them numeric-only auth codes, or just give everyone numeric auth codes, be a little bit disappointed with the state of things, and move on.
I have similar issues in my field of work - you can wave the spec all you like until you’re blue in the face, but if the customer is having a problem because of someone else’s system, or all the implementations already out there only use a subset of the spec, then you better make sure you fall in line or it just hurts your customers. Nobody is paying for a service that is beautifully aligned to a spec, they want a service that works in the real world.
Their customer services have been nothing short of perfect in my experience. They’re available 24/7 instantly and are always polite and helpful as they can be. Don’t know what you’re referring to.
But does that not happen with EVERY card? One thing I love about Monzo is how reliable it is and how often it does work. Even in situations many others fail.
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Anarchist
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I don’t know, it might.
Going from my experience, I use a Visa debit card around 60 times a month, and I use my Monzo card about 12 times a month. In the past six months, I’ve had my Monzo card declined twice, and my Visa card has not been declined in that time.
I’ve never had any problems with setting up Direct Debits with Santander (or any other bank, ever, in over 40 years of banking) and yet every week there are people on the forum reporting difficulties with setting up Direct Debits.
It seems to me that the banking system probably has a problem with new banks (and maybe with MasterCard Debit Cards). Of my 4 current accounts, these particular problems only appear to happen with Monzo. I’m not suggesting that any of this is Monzo’s fault, or that Monzo isn’t working hard to get it sorted; it’s more that this is one reason for me to not go full Monzo.
It’s still happening today - they entered 000000 instead of the alphanumeric code and system ignored and order proceeded okay. Disconcerting. They also take £1 for the credit check … and refund it in cash, not back onto the card.
they entered 000000 instead of the alphanumeric code and system ignored and order proceeded okay
The system ignored it because the entire thing is bullshit security theatre and the value is never actually checked against anything ever.
They also take £1 for the credit check … and refund it in cash, not back onto the card.
Idiots. I wonder how this works regarding money laundering; normally any shop will frown upon refunding to any other payment method than the one that was used to pay in the beginning for this exact reason. Sure, it’s a token sum but surely if there’s an investigation they will still be in a bit of a mess having to explain what happened and reconcile everything?
I don’t see why this would be an issue or why they would have to explain anything? They charged someone £1 as a security check - they have all of their details already - then give them £1 back. It doesn’t seem that bad.
It’s still happening. I signed up with Three online - they took the payment for my phone, and it never arrived. The order was cancelled in their system - I went to the store to sort it out & when I pulled out my Monzo card he told me they can’t accept it. That it happens all the time and their systems do not work with Monzo cards as part of account setup. SO infuriating.
Just dumped Three and went back to EE. No issues with Monzo there, in fact I knew the check had happened before the guy in the store did because the notification buzzed on my watch about 10 secs before his system updated!
Never had any issues with Three on Monzo, but having said that never had to use the card as always had a DD setup for when I was sim only and when I got a new iphone on contract thought i would have to pay via card the upfront cost but added it to the 1st bill which is out in 2 days
Yeah, I work at EE and our card checks seem to be way more advanced than Three’s. It’s all automatic with the card reader talking directly to the POS terminal (normally a tablet), albeit slow. None of this 'typing in a non-alpha alphanumeric auth code that supposedly goes on with Three
I had this issue in store with Three and Monzo, simple solution was to use another card.
The reason it’s not working is because Monzo issues authorisation codes which are letters, not numbers. Whilst it’s in the specification that letters are allowed - Monzo are one of the extremely few to actually do this. Three’s system doesn’t support letters as an authorisation code so the IDV fails. No issues with online verification or with Direct Debits. Whilst this shouldn’t be an issue - other major providers don’t have this issue I suspect because of experience and they know that it will cause acceptance issues.
