And to the fact that there are a growing number of 1 out of 5 reviews on sites like Trustpilot for similar reasons.
Can someone explain what these customers are referring to, and should existing customers be aware of any impending risk that they’ll be faced with a similar situation or is there anything we should be doing to avoid that situation?
Accounts are never blocked for no reason. The FB thread is hard to follow and I suspect exaggerated. As for what you can do to avoid being in the same position- never have all your eggs in one basket. R-
Well I’ve had my account for almost 2 years and never had a problem, I’ve had my wages paid in from day one & a few large transactions and everything’s always gone smoothly. However I am starting to find the amount of people coming forward abit concerning because obviously some of these are genuine cases and most likely are false positives, which I think monzo should be abit quicker at dealing with the false positive cases.
All banks have a legal obligation to report suspected fraudsters to the relevant authorities. Frustratingly, they are not legally allowed to tell the account holder that they are suspected of fraud known as “tipping off”. Therefore people will have had their accounts blocked but receive very little explanation as to why. There is very little Monzo or any other bank can do about this within the law.
Of course, some people will be incorrectly suspected, but I chose to believe this figure is pretty small. Most of the people sounding off on social media are fraudsters frustrated that their revenue has been frozen and erroneously believing that causing a stink will result in the bank releasing their funds.
Some people may also be involved in fraud without knowing it, by doing a favour for a “friend” etc.
We bought our house using our Monzo account and have had pretty complicated finances in the past (large, random transactions coming in and leaving again in a short space of time), with no issue whatsoever.
I must admit I’m somewhat concerned by the number of TrustPilot reviews stating their accounts have been frozen. Obviously it’s probably a very small number of people in comparison to the number of happy customers, but it’s enough for me to be deterred from having my wages paid in to the account for the time-being. I’ve only opened my Monzo account today, but already feeling a bit miffed as to whether or not I should be concerned by the number of accounts being frozen. I imagine it’s nothing to worry about though – I’ve had my Halifax account for 14 years and never had a problem with it being frozen etc.
It’s interesting that Monzo seem to get more negative reviews than other banks for doing this.
I suspect part of that is the in-app-chat nature of repsonses, lend themselves to being more screenshottable and Facebook sharable than an official letterheaded updated from your bank that comes 5-10 working days away.
I’m sure other banks do this at the same frequency, but seems Monzo certainly gets more online chat about it.
Also that Facebook page is a mess. It reads a bit like Anitivaxxers or Conspiracy Theorists ranting. From someone demaning an answer in like 12 minutes of chat time, to someone saying that Monzo are bad and at fault because their in app chat team had some grammar errors…!
Firewalled at work so can’t read the FB page but the URL indicates that Monzo legal need to be aware and taking action as that’s slander… (or the other one).
