Direct Debits & Standing Orders (recurring payments) Feedback

As mentioned above, more information when you click on your direct debits would be better than an immediate option to delete the direct debit.
Information like:

  • Last taken out (date)
  • amount taken
  • frequency (monthly,yearly etc)
  • reference number
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This has probably been mentioned previously, but the ability for DD’s to be retried if they have previously failed would be a good idea, also being able to edit standing orders (amounts/dates)

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Call me old fashioned, I am, but isn’t it the account holder’s job to ensure that there’s money in the account to pay standing orders and direct debits?

I do think that there are some things that Monzo can do to help like notifying the day before that a SO or DD is going out.

Also, I think that a Safe to Spend amount in the summary page would be helpful comprising of income - planned SO & DD - spending to date / days left in month. If Safe to Spend was going below 0, notify customer do they can take action.

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I agree with you, people should know what DDs & SOs should be coming out of their accounts.

Martin from MoneySavingExpert says that “Many of us have costly subscriptions on gyms, mags, dating sites, packaged bank accounts and more, yet rarely or never use them – or with time and house moves, forget about 'em altogether. It’s likely hundreds of millions are wasted this way.” One customer proclaims to have paid insurance on white goods for six years after getting rid of them.

I am fiercely in control of what goes in/comes out of my account and I’ve moved all DDs as close to the 1st of every month. I have some sympathy for people that don’t control their finances as rigorously as I do, because of time constraints etc. So in the manner of helping to improve financial productivity, some sort of notification system would come in handy for a lot of people, so that they can control whether the DD gets processed or not.

If your balance is too low for direct debits due to come out the following day, you do get a notification about them.

This will be a big tick in the box for to use Monzo more;

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@MxChris 100% agree. I have my S/O’s D/D’s as close to payday as possible so I don’t have to worry. My question stems from not having a D/D go out due to TSB’s system being more wobbly than a 1 legged man standing on a 2 legged stool

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It’s just a shame that this only got addressed because the CEO got a charge. Normal customers have been asking for this for ages, but it only happens after the CEO was affected.

@nanos it’s funny you say that, I was wondering about that myself

That’s not actually what Tom said. He said it was annoying for him. He also said it will be added in the near-ish future. He never said or implied those two were linked. Staff have previously said that this issue would be addressed, but it required non-trivial changes to the infrastructure, so it would take a bit of time. Most recently:

It has clearly not been ignored up to this point, just that the solution is not yet out.

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Ditto

Well, I guess correlation isn’t causation, I give you that.

But consider this change in narrative over just a few days:

  1. 13 days ago the status was “not sure. Really complicated. Maybe at some point. But what can we do in the meantime?” (This is my paraphrase of my potentially wrong understanding of the post you quoted above.)
  2. 12 days later: Along comes CEO and says “really annoyed because I got charged recently. Will be changed soon”.

Sure, the fact that CEO was annoyed by a charge may not be the cause for the sudden change from “should happen at some point” to “will […] in the near-ish future”, but then it sure is a coincidence …

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That is certainly a possibility, I guess this is getting into reading tea leaves territory. For what it’s worth, though, I read Hugh’s post 13 days ago as confirmation that Monzo had acknowledged the lack of retries was a real issue for people, were scoping out how to deal with it, but wanted to alleviate as much pain as possible in the meantime. As Hugh is not on the engineering side of things, I took his “should” to mean he doesn’t know what the engineering commitments are.

But the overall point is this: If you step back and look at when Monzo has developed features, it has not been based on what the CEO wants.

  • The timing of when direct debits come out was changed early on because of community feedback.
  • Joint accounts recently moved from, “maybe one day we’ll try and do something that meets people’s needs,” to, “this is happening soon.” All indications are that this is because of vociferous community feedback, not because Tom suddenly wants a joint account.
  • Pots were developed because the community requested them.
  • Coin Jar was a community idea which was then implemented in a matter of weeks.

If suspicion is raised whenever Tom shares his thoughts about points of friction and provides details of features in development, we’ll get less input. I’m not saying don’t question, but there was no indication in the comment that the CEO’s wishes are more important than the community.

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Well, to be fair: There wouldn’t be anything inherently wrong with that either.

Anyway, I see what you are saying. I feel there has been a distinct shift in how I perceive many of Monzo’s actions to a more corporate banking style, and that’s just one of them. That’s not even necessarily wrong. It’s just at odds with what’s often stated…

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I haven’t noticed this, what are the others?

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Well, I have discussed some of them with you. Not in a mood to go through them all again. But I suggest to use the search functionality to find them if you want to refresh your memory …

I genuinely have no idea what you’re referring to. Which keywords should I use “corporate”, “suit”, “PPI” or ..?

very funny!

How about overdraft or transparency to name just two. (Is your memory really that short lived?!)

Ah so you’re talking about business decisions, ok, thanks!

yes absolutely. Sorry, I thought that was clear.