Can Monzo block or warn before payments are made to known scammers

Reviews aren’t perfect but eBay, Trusted Reviews et al exist because of them. In the 25 years I’ve been buying / trading online, they’ve been an 80/20 indicator of problematic merchants. They’re useful as a rough guide.

In this instance, it’d be harder to game, because users would actually need to have spent money. And this is only reporting negative experiences; there’s no mechanism for ‘gaming’ good ones. The thresholds could be set high enough, from a diverse enough group of members, before a warning is triggered. Even then, this would be opt-in and overridable.

I’d personally see that as totally low friction.

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The number of people saying ‘notascam’ baffles me.

It’s a scam. At best, it’s a scam by misrepresentation, tricking you into using a service that ‘checks’ you’ve applied correctly. At worst, it’s an actual scam with a fake ETA.

So please, cut out all the ‘notascam’ replies, eh?

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Which is all true, but most people aren’t reviewing items objectively against competitors, they review on the basis of what their own expectation was, and how the hell do I know what that was like?

How do I compare Brand A’s widget’s 4.3 star review against Brand B’s 3.8 review? How do I know if the person giving 1 star has completely false expectations on what the widget could even do?

And anyway reviews don’t belong in Monzo. They belong in TrustPilot/Google/wherever.

You can do this already, via many outlets - TrustPilot, social media, Google Reviews, etc. The Wisdom of the Crowd generally averages out outliers.

Not perfect, but better than nothing.

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If I pay for this service and, ultimately, it delivers what I want (presuming some of them give me a valid ETA), how is it a scam? An overly expensive service for sure but a scam? How about we call it a hustle? Or trick?

The invalid ETA ones, sure, SCAM!

Or perhaps my definition of scam is something where I hand over the money and get nothing in return…?

Language, eh!

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Then offer integrations with TrustPilot and other outlets. Have a feature that enables a warning if the rating is below a definable threshold.

Again, it’s fine saying ‘use your brain’, but in problematic transactions that range from outright fraud to just terrible customer service, far fewer problems would exist if there’s a mechanism to crowdsource negative experiences.

Literally billion dollar industries have sprung up around this concept. I’m not suggesting anything that doesn’t already exist. Might as well connect it to the POS.

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In principle yes. In reality, people will figure a way to game this.

Amazon has changed how it handles reviews a few times, and every time I’m sure they think they’ve cracked it.

For now at least, I say no to this for Monzo. And in future, if anything, I think an industry wide solution is likely better (if less achievable).

Dear FCA…

I’m not talking about ‘reviews’.

I’m talking about a user being able to click ‘complain about this merchant’ on a Monzo purchase, and give their feedback.

Enough of those could trigger a warning to future Monzo users buying from that same merchant.

No mechanism to leave good or bad reviews - only to report problematic purchases and provide some level of public feedback.

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Definitely can’t see any potential flaws with this idea…

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When the site pays for an advert to make it appear above the official site in the Google results, that’s a trick, which makes it a scam.

This site is even craftier than that. It appears in the first proper result not an ad so they must have excellent SEO since they appear even before the official website.

Again - I’m not talking about reviews. I’m talking about being able to flag negative experiences. Same mechanism that already exists, except surfacing it in a way that’s usable data for future purchasers.

“Enough of those” is exactly the problem… there is your gaming point right there, if I can find a way to do that and ruin my competitors credibility in the future where Monzo has 20 million customers I’ll win that marketplace, yasss!!

Doesn’t have to be a review to be gamed and to be falsely influential?

Totally playing devils advocate here, if there was a way to help consumers easily then I’m all for it, just not sure this is the route (and no, I don’t know what the route is)

Monzo has a 4.5/5 total rating. What’s your point?

That’s curious, if I try searching “canada ETA” then my first result is the www.canada.ca site for $7.

Edit: Tried a few different search terms, one of which turned up official-canada-eta.com further down the results page.

If this was it, that smells like a scam. ‘official’ in the URL, a page that presents itself as Canada eTA, the $80 fee buried in some small print under a big red button - so you’re going to press the button before reading it.

TrustPilot exists. And yet the $85 visa service still exists.

The OP was easily able to discover it wasn’t worth the money. Yet still ended up buying it despite the knowledge being right there on the internet. Go figure.

OK.

So the scam is the Google results ‘trick’. Fine with that.

I’m sure I have some other hairs here… anyway, back to the OPs idea, eh! :smiley:

(it’s been a long day already, apologies for the sarcasm!!)

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The problem here is you want to punish someone for making a mistake.

I’m talking about ways to work around human behaviour. Different goals.

My guess is that if the OP had seen a warning from 50 other users that had purchased from the merchant and later discovered it to be an overpriced alternative, they would have appreciated the heads-up.

We live in a world with asymmetric information. Distributing that more effectively and surfacing that at POS would be useful, whether or not people should have the foresight to do that first.

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But where is this warning shown?

Edit: Essentially (I think) you’re asking for the likes of 3DS to be forced to fire for such identified companies, and for the warning to be shown there?

No.

If the user opts in, the payment would be rejected below a threshold and a Monzo app notification would be given.

The user can choose to ignore the warning, and re-attempt their payment.

Same mechanism the card schemes/banks already use for suspected fraud.

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