Delays sending out cards

We’d like to apologise for the recent delays some people have experienced in receiving their Monzo cards :disappointed:

Our Head of Operations @leah explains what’s happened, what we’re doing to fix it, and to make sure it doesn’t happen in the future.

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So does this imply Golden Tickets won’t be turned back on for the Prepaid program given it is essentially almost finished?

This was the best thing I read:

“we have made the decision to turn off golden tickets”

Keep it off now I say :eyes: :upside_down_face:

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To be honest (as I mentioned in previous posts about the silliness of having a queue that could be skipped by visiting a thread on these forums), I don’t see the point of the golden tickets anyway, they just negate the purpose of having a queue and encourage people to use it as a prepaid travel card.

Quite sick of the number of posts I see saying “please help, I need a golden ticket because I’m going on holiday”, with the whole international ATM issue I’d have thought that turning them off would be a great way to stop it by making those holiday users wait (like many of us have).

What is wrong with a good old fashioned British queue?

That aside, glad to see that there was a clarification and that it shouldn’t happen with the current accounts :slight_smile:

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As am I. The purpose they were originally designed for (I would assume) and which I use them for is telling a friend how awesome the app is and showing them how it all works and they go “I want that too”, I can skip them past the queue which helps reduce the “apathy factor” - ie people not bothering to sign up later.

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Same, though actually the last time I persuaded someone to sign up I totally forgot about the golden ticket and he happily waited the relatively short amount of time it took to get through the queue.

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To be fair, a lot of my friends and family are using the card only becuase I sold them on it, and offered a golden ticket, and none of them have used it abroad. I imagine most of us are in the same boat. The people demanding a card immediately becuase they’re off on holiday next weekend and ‘only just found out about monzo’ are probably more visible because they’re always on the forum. I don’t think it’s a huge problem, and once the pre-paid is turned off and people know it’s a full bank account they’re signing up for, these numbers will go way down.

The blog post mentions the current account will eventually have golden ticket invites? I’d rather see they just went away, and everyone queues the same to be honest. Or perhaps you get one a month to give away, or you can input someone’s name and email to send them one directly rather than them popping up in your feed and you feeling like you should give it away to whoever asks.

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Exactly, My point is that like a nightclub queue yes giving the odd mate or family member a slot in the queue is probably ok but holding it open for anyone who asks you (i.e. the golden ticket thread) isn’t really fair, especially to those who have been waiting a long time.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on how golden tickets are going to work with current accounts? presumably, with the system becoming more automated the backlog will eventually clear and they’ll become redundant. As above I’d rather just shut them off now and not revive them, they’ve served their purpose.

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On public release of the CA, what would the purpose of a Golden Ticket anyway?

If there’s a queue for an account then I would see that as a problem rather than a ticketing opportunity. Surely the last thing that anyone would want is to artificially constrain access to the actual end product of all of this development work?

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The entire golden ticket thing is a marketing construct used to stimulate demand by introducing scarcity.

It’s a nonsense and should be removed from the prepaid app given it is said to be closing in the next few months. Why annoy prospective customers by giving them access to a dead product walking? :thinking:

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Have to agree with both of these statements. With particular reagrd to the second, it is quite complicated explaining to people that for now you get a prepaid card…but in a few months it will become a current account card :stuck_out_tongue: The transition was always going to be a bit awkward but I’m looking forward to when the migration is complete :slight_smile:

So is this the start of the full rollout, or is this just an expansion of the current account testing. If it’s the former, does this mean the investor cards are ready/almost ready?

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This has been answered by Naji on the thread discussing the blog post you quoted:

Is this still an issue @bea @simonb?

I have a friend in the prepaid queue (which is about 70k I think) and he’s moved about 2000 places in a couple of weeks which isn’t great :frowning:

Hey man, DM me your friends email and I’ll look into it. The backlog is cleared now.

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Cleared? How so?

Two of my friends used and sang the praises of their Monzo prepaid at a restaurant; Great idea I thought so read up on it and signed up. There are over 65, 000 people waiting in front of me but my place keeps fluctuating as there is an option to jump up 2000 odd places if I send a link to friends. How is this better than a “Golden Ticket”? Basically I can jump up the queue if I encourage more people to join the queue…?!

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Yeah It doesn’t compute for me either. Tom said (in his recent city am interview) that there are over 50,000 people waiting for a prepaid card, but that backlog should be gone by the end of the week. You guys saying you are issuing ~10,000 cards a day when the highest you’ve ever issued consistently is ~3k? I highly doubt that, but I would be extremely impressed if I was wrong.

Just to clarify - I was referring to the backlog mentioned in the original post, which affected people who were already at the top of the waiting list and due to have cards sent out. This was the delay that happened due to the low supply of cards from our manufacturer combined with the batch of faulty cards we were sent. That’s the reason the queue moved slowly over the last couple of weeks.

Regarding the current waiting list (for prepaid) it will move quicker now, as we aren’t issuing any more golden tickets and new signups to prepaid have stopped for anyone not already on the list, as explained here : https://monzo.com/blog/2017/10/10/current-accounts-are-coming/

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