Last night I made a purchase using Flex. The notifications I received are screenshotted.
Notification:
Choose a plan for your £237.50 purchase. Otherwise, we’ll select the lowest monthly instalment. That’s 12 instalments of £22, including £21.26 in interest overall.
On the face of it, seems pretty harmless, “Select an option to get going”.? I suggest that users should be able to select a different default when we don’t want to ever be charged extra.
I personally saw the notification as:
Choose an option now — or be charged extra.
I disagree with the friction required to not be charged.
Could I suggest that Monzo Flex has an option allowing people to change their default? I for one prefer and exclusively use three months (No Interest). Having an option would mean people won’t ever be penalised with interest if they forget to act in time and their default was no-interest only.
Suggestion:
You’ve not selected a plan for your £237.50 purchase. We’ve used your default 3 months with no interest for you. You can extend this to 6, or 12 months in-app if you want to.
Hopefully allowing a user default is a relatively small change for a better user experience for all.
You’ve an entire day to make that decision, Monzo make plenty attempts with notifications to make sure that you actually review the transaction and place it into the right plan for you.
Like Revels said it’s not a threat it’s being a responsible lender by reminding you multiple times, if you take no action then this is the plan you’ll be on and this is what it’ll cost you.
Better to be automatically on a lower monthly payment that you can afford with interest than a higher monthly payment you default on. It’s pretty common. It’s no different to a credit card taking a minimum payment at the very least.
If your notifications are going missing, I’d suggest looking at why they do. I’m assuming this is Android, so make sure that Monzo is exempt from any kind of system actions related to battery optimisation etc.
Automatically put on the lowest - I can’t afford those high payments, now I can’t feed my kids. Automatically put on the longest - You’re greedy and stealing my money by charging me all that interest, I didn’t want it over such a long period.
Can’t win either way.
Surely you must have planned to use Flex in advance and decided what payment term you wanted? Perhaps next time you can factor in a little time to pick a plan straight after purchase to avoid this from happening again. This is what I do
You wouldn’t btw, as if you haven’t done it after a period of time, they switch to SMS, and then phone call, and then pigeon, then owl, then hawk, then @TheoGibson will eventually turn up on your door step and ask you to pick one
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I mean, I’m pretty certain this is in the T&Cs you sign up to when applying for Flex. I’m fairly certain I recall reading it.
For me it’s just a reFLEX (hehe) when I pay via Flex to go and choose a plan straight away. It’s how Flex works and should be something you do when you agree to the line of credit.
Please bear in mind I put this in the feedback forum section and I’m entitled to my opinion too.
I understand that it’s the terms, but as per my feedback, I personally would prefer to not be automatically put onto a more expensive plan. If I want the interest I believe I should explicitly opt in for every payment I make with Flex.
There’s zero ‘tone’ in the responses, just because people aren’t agreeing with you that’s not tone. You’ve been presented with actual facts and how the process works.
Perhaps the wrong wording then. I think people are focusing on my feelings rather than the suggestion.
I too would prefer the pay in 3 and that’s what I was somewhat suggesting; that we should each be able to set our defaults. Personally, it should be a frictionless process.
Ditto. But taking 10 seconds to tap a notification and choose isn’t really an issue.
And the reply from Theo hints at that, that might be the case. I think it would cause chaos personally, so I think the current way should remain. But what do I know It’s less of an issue now the first payment isn’t taken instantly.
Virgin Slyce do pretty much the same. You have around a week to choose a plan but, if you don’t, it defaults to 12 monthly payments with a fee (i.e. interest).
I haven’t read the whole thread - pretty much just the original post.
We’re working on this at the moment - you can hopefully expect more in the next 2 - 3 months.
For what it’s worth, for clarity - For the time being:
You have until “the end of the next day” to select a plan. If you don’t then it’ll default to the 12 month option.
During this time we’re quite noisy in sending notifications reminding you to pick a plan.
Even if you (or our system) selects the 12 month option you still have until the first payment date to change it to the interest free option before you’ll be charged any interest.
Absolutely. The OP was a suggestion to allow customers to change the default flex plan and an explanation why they thought it a good idea… No more, no less.
It’s less of an issue now the first payment isn’t taken instantly.