A two months ago, I went with my girlfriend for a short trip to paris. Her card was acting really weird, most of her transactions were being rejected. We decided that she will send me the rest of our trip money, but we found out that she can’t. Only after contacting mondo team we found out that her account was blocked. They shortly unblock the account.
Last month we went to Morocco and the same thing happened to both of our Mondo cards.
As I had limited access to internet, it took more than a day to unblock it.
I had to use my Lloyds card, which btw never got blocked.
When I pay abroad they send me sms about the transaction and I can respond if it was me or not.
I end up paying around £15 in fees, but at least I was able to pay for my lunch, dinner, etc.
In a last few weeks, my girlfriend’s card got blocked more than three times.
All of the transactions were in London.
I really don’t understand how can you let this happen. You said in your Pitch that you would never block the card, because you know my location when I use the Mondo app.
In reality you block the card more often than any regular bank!
I would also like to say that we invested in mondo, because we really believe the idea, but right now the experience is really poor.
I really hope that you are going to do something about this.
sorry you have had such a negative experience - I have been a Mondo user since January, I am also a Mondo Investor, the card experience I have had is nothing short of fantastic.
I have used it in Austria, and Portugal with no problems at all (save the transaction limits of £1000 ) the exchange rates are superb, with no fees whatsoever. I have had my card accepted on Easyjet flights above France when they are not even online. I have contacted customer services on a Saturday in Austria and had my issue resolved on a Saturday afternoon within a half hour - without the costly telephone call to a legacy bank that wouldn’t have normal customer services on a Saturday anyway.
I have topped up instantly when requiring funds to pay bills. My card has never been blocked except the time when I didn’t have sufficient funds in to cover the bill when payment was declined - I topped up and re presented the card and it was accepted straight away.
I have been able to use it in almost all merchants except the ones that only accept cash (for some reason cash is king in some merchants )
In short it has done all that it has ever said it would do
It’s refreshing to hear that Mondo is indeed ran by humans and therefore aren’t perfect! Add to that the beta tag and I’m still so surprised at the lack of issues that flag up!
Firstly, let me say sorry that things haven’t gone as smoothly as they should have done. Even during beta, we do want to try and provide a really great experience for everyone. Hopefully I can give you some insight in to what has happened and give you some confidence for the future as we continue to improve the beta
There’s a few things at play here – the main one being your card being banned so you couldn’t use it. That’s really annoying for you. We’re continually working on beefing up and making our fraud engine smarter and that’s one of the reasons why during this beta period, we ask you to always carry another card with you, because we won’t always get it right. When it was blocked, we were able to unblock it within about 8 hours – as we continue to expand our customer support team and fraud teams, hopefully we can a) make it much less common that you’re accidentally banned and b) let us sort it out quickly if it does happen.
In terms of your girlfriend’s card – I haven’t looked specifically at her account but my guess would be she’s also been caught by our fraud engine accidentally. That can happen for a variety of reasons – generally, if you top up a budget for a day, week or month rather than topping up for individual transactions (eg. try to use it more like a real bank account) you’ll a) get more benefits from the card and b) be less likely to run in to accidental blocks like this. I’m happy to help her more if she chats with us in the app
I hope that sheds some light on your troubles and thank you for sticking with us as we develop the beta! It won’t always be smooth but hopefully the end result from all of the Mondo team and users like you will make it worth it
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