Haha, I’m not pointing a gun at anyone 
I haven’t read the reasoning but as a customer I don’t really care. I have been paying for Monzo Plus for 6 months without access to the most useful feature. So whilst the update is welcome, it’s long, long overdue.
That’s not quite true though is it?
You’re getting all of the features that are advertised and that you pay for.
I suspect you’re being a tad disengenuous here but I’ll spell it out just in case you genuinely don’t understand. People who have joint accounts generally use them for a lot of their spending. Custom categories are absolutely pointless if you can’t use them to categorise all of your household spending. Therefore you are paying for a feature that should be useful but in practice is useless. I can only speak for myself but I suspect that custom categories were the most attractive Plus feature for a lot of account holders.
Perhaps I missed it, but Monzo also didn’t make this totally clear when they originally plugged the Plus account, at least not from the marketing material I received (and no I didn’t trawl through this forum before signing up as I naively believed Monzo would include what is an absolutely essential feature for joint account users).
I mean if you’re going to go to the extremes with everything you post then there’s not a lot of point trying to discuss it with you.
Monzo have said plenty of times that joint account support is something they want to add. You’ll just have to wait for it to appear.
Help push up the demand by voting over here:
It currently sits at 19th in the list of requested & voted-for features
Revels, with respect you have a funny definition of “extremes”. Simply put:
Custom categories were the most atractive Plus feature for me personally.
Custom categories are useless if you do the majority of your spending via a joint account (please free to argue otherwise but this is my persnal experience and that of others).
It was not (to my knowledge - please feel free to advise otherwise) made clear by Monzo when plugging the custom categories for Plus that this feature is useless for joint account holders who do the majority of their spending through the joint account.
If you disagree with any of the points above then feel free to engage.
I should add that I’m a huge fan of Monzo, have been since ther start and made it my current account at Beta. I have no axe to grind, I’m just disappointed with this particular element.
I don’t think so.
I agree, that if you do your spending via your joint account then it’s less use, but at no point did Monzo state it was available for joint accounts. If you mistakenly thought it did, then you’ve had months to cancel it?
Complaining how you have been about something that has never existed or never been advertised seems a bit OTT.
I would dispute that it was never advertised. This was front and centre of the marketing material I received with no proviso that the feature was not available on the joint account. I incorrectly presumed that such a basic feature would be included.
No one is forcing me to continue paying for Plus - to the contrary I’m perfectly willing to pay more to get the feature, which is why this is so frustrating.
Also, suggesting that the tech isn’t groundbreaking and that it’s long overdue is hardly extreme! People are attracted to challenger banks because they lead the way with innovation. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to sit here 6 months down the line wondering why this is taking so long, but perhaps I have unreasonably high expectations.
To be fair, I don’t think the marketing material for Plus does really make it clear that it’s not available for Joint accounts.
Rereading the page, I can totally see how, whatever account you subscribe to, you will take the material as “this will be suitable for my account” - because it doesn’t otherwise clarify.
I can’t go through the sign up flow, so maybe it’s pointed out in there, but I would say the onus is on Monzo & their advertising to make it clear what account it’s for / not for.
But statements like “See all of your spendng”, “full financial visibility”, to me, doesn’t prime me to think Joint account isn’t covered.
I went through the flow as far as I could. The only reference to joint accounts I could find is in the terms and conditions.
Only you – the account holder with Monzo Premium – will be able to use the Monzo Premium features. The person you share your joint account with won’t be able to use these features.
If you have both a Monzo Premium and Monzo joint account, you can use your £600 fee-free cash withdrawals abroad every 30 days and your 5 free cash deposits allowance across both.
Edit: That’s all for Premium, but it’s largely the same for Plus.
If you have a Monzo joint account, only you will benefit from Monzo Plus. Unless the person you share your account with has Monzo Plus on their personal account.
But even that isn’t crystal clear that it won’t work on a joint account.
This isn’t particularly clear either. I mean it’s clear that your partner won’t have access to Plus features but it’s not clear that you won’t have access to Plus features via your joint account.
It isn’t. That’s for Premium, though. In my opinion, it’s even less clear for Plus (I’ve edited my post).
And especially when paired with the explicit language of “all of your…”, “full control”, yada yada.
So I guess then the only time to “see” that ones expectations may not match reality is when you try and use a feature on the Joint account for the first time?
Either way I think it should be made much clearer.
Edit: And even if it’s made crystal clear in the terms, it still needs to be reflected in the advertising material, as I would say not working on a specific account type is a significant term and shouldn’t be contradicted by the marketing material (even if that’s a contradication by omission)
Agreed
Also agree that this could be made clearer.
However…
This part is totally on you. Even if you weren’t aware there was no joint account access before signing up, you are now.
You can certainly complain that there isn’t joint account access for Plus, but you can’t really complain about paying for it for 6months when it’s your own decision to keep doing so.
For the record I want Plus and Premium to be available for joint accounts, I have a joint account and want to upgrade. I’ve voted for it on here and Monzo will get my money when they provide what I want.
Fo what it’s worth, it might be a bit more forceful if you were to sign up (but forgo the new card), and then cancel within the 14 day cancellation period. They will ask you why you’ve cancelled, and you will have a perfect opportunity to let them know.
I’ve only just recent started using a joint account, before this I had Plus on my personal account but cancelled and left my feedback when my habits changed. So hopefully monzo can see that I am someone who is actually willing to pay and the ball is well and truly in their court.
I don’t disagree and addressed that here:
The reality is £5 per month isn’t a massive amount of money and Monzo has enough good will from me to wait it out for a while. Also it’s not like the other features aren’t useful, it’s the pure frustration of the most usefull feature being useless to me, only discovering this after I susbscribed, and now having to wait an age for this to be addressed. It’s really not about the money.
I’ve been a Monzo joint account holder for 2 years now, and I’ve had plus on my personal account for at least a year.
I’ve recently managed to convince the Mrs (she doesn’t like change) to switch our joint account to Monzo, and for me, a large driving force behind this was split and custom categories
I’ve just made my first purchase using the newly delivered joint card and enthusiastically opened the app to tag a portion of the spend as “Beer tokens” rather than it all appearing as groceries, and was frustrated to find that this is not possible on joint accounts.
At no point during the sign up process was this made remotely clear. If anything it’s suggests that only me (as a joint user) would have access to joint features but it talks about withdrawal allowances being shared.
I guess, from Monzo’s point of view, you weren’t applying for a joint Plus account (because there isn’t one) so there wasn’t any need to tell you that you wouldn’t get the benefits of Plus.
I suppose the messaging needs to be made clear around this.
Have any body explored other alternatives ? anybody knows if for example Starling joint account lets you customize the categories ?
