Is anyone else having issues with payments being taken twice?
I have had multiple occasions where a pending amount remains on my account after the payment has been taken resulting in me having to contact the merchant and Monzo to get the pending amount refunded. It’s getting really annoying. I understand the concept of money being ring-fenced prior to finalisation of the full balance however it should just transition seamlessly in the background.
I have never experienced this with any other bank.
I’ve had it with tesco a few times. The pending transaction does come back if you don’t contact monzo or Tesco’s, but it takes a month. So I usually do the option under the transaction saying “this was wrong” or something to get it back early.
Plus it only really happens if I have to touch the terminal twice - So I’ve isolated it to if I scan my club card with eh bloke at the counter and then their terminals not updating fast enough and I tap my card/applepay it. Then it seems to get stuck a bit on their side but my transaction goes through. I show them the pending transaction and they tell me to try again, which I do and then that’s why there’s two transactions - but the first one can be claimed back earlier with Monzo.
Seems to be caused by their systems being slow - not the bank.
Other banks don’t always show pending transactions, and only remove the money once it’s fully cleared. Because Monzo is supposed to be helping you track your spending better, pending transactions show up instantly, which is why it feels like things like this happen more often. In reality, they’re just more transparent with whats happening in your account.
Transparency is great, and really important but not at the expense of the money in your account in my view.
How can you predict random changes to your balance, especially if it takes you into an overdraft due to the unexpected nature of it?
Perhaps another way of tackling this would be to show it as a ghost transaction somehow that has the potential to change your balance without actually doing so until the transaction has settled?
Anarchist
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12
If you are referring to pending transactions, I’m sure I read somewhere that they don’t take you into overdraft.
You’ve basically described what every other bank does by giving you two balances – ‘available balance’ and ‘account balance’: A system so obscure and confusing for everyone that Monzo was designed specifically to get rid of it.
Overdrafts only become chargeable when payments clear. I’d have thought having a true balance shown at all times means you are less likely to inadvertently stray into an overdraft, if you always keep this balance in positive figures.
Yes. Monzo show you what your balance would be with pending amounts included. Your money doesn’t actually move until settled. You will still earn interest / not pay overdraft until actual settlement.
So if my balance is £150 and I spend £150 I would expect my balance to read £0 but in this situation I get charged twice and my balance becomes -£150. How do you plan for that?
Thanks for this and perhaps that’s what would happen however I received a notification stating that this double payment taking me into my overdraft would incur charges unless I transferred money by midnight.
I don’t know, because in over three years of using Monzo I’ve never experienced these duplicate transactions you describe.
But I’d rather be annoyed by the one in a million transactions which do get duplicated, than have every customer wrestling with available balance, account balance and pending items all the time. Another bank account I use even shows the caveat “some transactions may not yet appear as Pending” which adds another layer of confusion to the mix.
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tbutz
(🏳️🌈 Producer of "low value commentary")
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So have we established which retailer is doing this? Is it Tesco or someone else?
Mine are with Tesco but only because they’re payment terminal sucks and I have to tap twice. the OP hasn’t said which merchant yet or if they needed to process the payment twice.
