Itâs nice you have lent him the funds to pay rent. I know you frustrating that Monzo donât do cheque deposits but I donât think thatâs going to change any time soon. I think itâs not unreasonable for them not to accept hand delivered post at present with a COVID situation on. Can your friend not open startling as suggested as they are great with cheques if he gets all his payments in future by cheque. Still odd to be paid by cheque nowadays with COVID on.
All customers should be treated equally regardless of how long theyâve been with Monzo.
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Oh, in the old Mondo days Tom stood at the bottom of the stairs and waited for you to hand him a cheque did he?
They arenât âactively avoidingâ it at all. Even if they accepted the cheque there and then, thereâs still a wait. This is delaying it by one day, it wouldnât clear by Friday as per their 7-14 days anyway.
An overly dramatic whinge and ex-employees complaining are what youâre basing this on?
Both. The reception team refused to accept any post addressed to Monzo, we didnât even tell them what it was. Itâs just post. Monzo, via chat, would later reveal that cheques are "not operational at this time. Their corona FAQ that someone linked put this down to them moving offices.
We all know that once the cheque arrives, all someone does it type the numbers on it into a computer. Starling do this in-app via photo. Monzo could have done this today, or at least tried, given the situation. Weâre all human. Instead the support experience was robotic, and keen to wash their hands of it.
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Fair point - and one I obviously donât know the answer to - but I have to assume because there is no process in place yet in their new office, there is a difference in how their mail is delivered / the Freepost stuff is secured / vs how a receptionist would handle it. (Bit of a fallacy there I know⊠Itâs not X so it must be Y).
Iâd also say that itâs not been clear enough where this specific Coronavirus FAQ has lived - it sounds like your friend hasnât seen it (given it answers the part around Cheques) - and I firmly believe that type of info needs to be made super easy to access - and thatâs a common complaint I have with the Help service today with Monzo too - the availability of different versions of info in various parts of their help guide and website can often contradict each other.
Agree 100%. Not asking for preferential treatment because Iâve banked with Monzo for 5+ years. My friend is only been a customer for 6 months.
I am merely sharing my experience that this situation would not have happened with the Monzo of 5 years ago from my experience of having been there at the start. 5 years ago, this would have been dealt with by the team in place then.
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Absolutely, and they should be treated better than this. This is a bad experience, and repeated enough times will lead to people leaving.
Mostly based on chat options being hidden (actively avoiding customer support), forum engagement slowly dropping off, slowed product development for a year at least, prominent staff leaving, and insider commentary like that glassdoor review and comments elsewhere by staff either actively seeking other jobs, pursuing other projects or discussing low morale and mass layoffs.
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Apart from your total lack of empathy, its quite possible that the employer is looking after the staff member if the alternative is to pay via BACS and they are to late for this monthâs payroll.
As it is, cheques remain very popular and I imagine a number of people have a new found regard for their usefulness recently - especially as they now clear the next working day with any institution which uses cheque imaging.
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Actually, while you may think you know that, this is not the case when it comes to how Monzo handles cheques.
My understanding is that Monzo cannot process cheques directly and instead use a partner bank to deposit cheques. No-one at Monzo types any numbers into a computer. Instead they batch up received cheques and send them to their partner bank, and itâs there the numbers are typed in.
Itâs this more than anything else which is why the quoted period for a cheque deposit is 7-14 days. And that means that even if Monzo had accepted your friendâs letter, they still wouldnât have had their payment clear by Friday.
I myself have a high street bank account Iâve kept open for the rare cheque I need to deposit. If your friend has no other account, then the advice given upthread to open a Starling account is going to be the quickest way that they can bank their cheque. In that respect, itâs a good thing Monzo didnât accept it by hand delivery, as if they had he wouldâve had no option of taking it elsewhere in time.
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Iâve just gone down a bit of a cheque-rabbit-hole reading up on the history of the Cheque and how clearing worksâŠ
The best thing I learnt though, The Cheque and Credit Clearing Company (imaginative), who look after cheque clearing, publish a quarterly update about cheques. Itâs called the Cheque-Up.
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Yes. A landlord canât evict without a court order (this is not new) and all such orders have been suspended until 23rd August.
Unless itâs a house share with the landlord and there may be a couple of other exceptions - this person needs to talk to CAB or similar.
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Agreed. And cheques sent to Monzo by recorded delivery go to the office address but there will be a process for receiving, processing and accounting for that mail - and splitting out and processing any cheques received. Hand delivered post can easily go astray. Cheques sent to Freepost Monzo may well go directly to a cheque processing centre and not even go to Monzoâs office premises at all.
I thought there were laws around being evicted?
I would rather hold judgements until Monzo actually comment on why there was a change. Until then itâs all just âifs and maybesâ and no facts at all.
(My personal opinion and not an official Monzo response) I think as @mts has already linked that all the relevant people/processes to process cheques are currently neither still at the old office nor in place in the new one yet 
.
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Sorry for the issues that your friend is having especially during these difficult times.
If I was in his situation, I would apply for an overdraft but if that does not help then he will simply have to wait two weeks and depend on some kind of credit card.
No offence to him, it is something he and you should have researched before applying for an account with Monzo or before deciding to use Monzo as their main account.
Cheques are important, especially if you are receiving refunds from different suppliers and the inconvenience is one reason why i decided not to use Monzo as the main account. Even none branch banks such as Cahoot which no longer accept customers takes 4-5 days to clear a cheques.
There are other online banks which may offer a quicker services or a decent overdraft, but its up to you or your friend to do your research and vote with your feet. Its up to Monzo to review its policy if it desires to keep its customers.
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I operate 2 accounts precisely for this reason, all banking systems are imperfect so to combine maybe 2 accounts gives you the best of both worlds. Iâm also with Lloydâs which has the facility for you to take a photo of your cheque in their app which then âbanksâ it for you. The money is cleared in your account within 3 days however I have had the funds cleared the next day.
Iâm not saying that Lloydâs is perfect by any means and Iâm sure within the near future (if not already) other banks will offer this, but for now their app works very well.
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Thanks all for the comments, just to close off the thread and update about my friend and the relationship with Monzo.
Today was the day his rent was due. If Monzo had accepted the hand delivered cheque on Tuesday rather than just be difficult about it, it would have cleared today. 
In that time, he opened a new account on Starling, and paid in the cheque via photo in their app. It cleared today. 
He paid his rent today. 
Considering how much of a head start Mondo/Monzo had, itâs sad to see that their service standards have slipped, and the feature set has been eclipsed by a late arriving competitor.
Moving to a competitor was the solution to this problem, and he will use this as his account moving forward, closing Monzo.
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Also a note on evictions as some people mentioned these are illegal at the moment. Itâs a week to week paid bedsit with the live in landlord. About 6 rooms. Even if that wasnât exempt, if you come home and youâve been locked out (itâs a pin number entry), as a minimum income worker, what realistically are your options - get a solicitor and file a protest in the court (which are all closed anyway)? This wouldnât actually remedy the immediate present need to need to find shelter. In general the most vulnerable get treated poorly because they have little to no power of retaliation, even if the law was on his side, many bad landlords simply âget away with itâ because access to support has been cut with years of austerity. Iâm on a salaried job, with income and resources, so I would be in a privileged position to fight if I were evicted for some reason. So a 22 year old who works in a sandwich shop/bar, is less fortunate right now.
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Hand delivery has time travel properties?