I think it’s perfectly fair to challenge a product based on how well it fits within its market, otherwise you’ll end up with an echo chamber of “true believers” while everyone else just silently goes to the competition and enjoys the better product.
If we want Monzo to succeed I think it’s perfectly fair to discuss its shortcomings and where the competition does better.
I find it amusing reading these threads because you can really tell the fanboys from general users. I’ve said this a few times but selling software as a subscription model just won’t work for banking. It’s unfortunate but if this flops like the old plus, people hopefully will start to ask why. There’s 2 types of people using plus, those who are doing it to “support Monzo” and those who are actually interested. The majority it seems are the fanboys supporting Monzo.
These same Fanboys are following the Apple trend of defending a product to death because they don’t want to think their choice was a poor one, which is fair… but if you really want to support Monzo then it is important to criticise and reflect and say… wait a sec, I guess this could be a little better.
Heck I think they have some okay stuff in there, I’ll admit that…
My opinion, it is poor, it doesn’t interest me and as OP said you can get it all free elsewhere, all it take is another bank to come along and show off those features for free. It’s nice having all of it in one place but should another bank come along, I’d probably switch… we as a community need to learn to critique our favourite companies and products if we want them to succeed even if we like them.
Thanks for the correction - it appears I had downloaded old T&Cs.
I’ll compare it to my old company that went into liquidation instead then - we were FCA regulated and held a client account. It was around 4 months for the return of finances to those who had money in that account. I’m not comparing the businesses, I’m comparing the process of insolvency - it takes time, and the bigger/more complex the business, the longer it’ll take.
Okay, so we’ve got something to compare it to - this is good!
Overall, you see a ‘return’ of 2.3 x what you put in. However, let’s compare Monzo in exactly the same way you’ve compared Amex (as an example, the taxi credit is £10 per month rather than all in one go).
1% interest gives you a £20 return per year when maxed out.
1 free deposit per month, gives you £12 per year.
£400 foreign withdrawals is £200 more than standard, so that’s a £2400 increase per year - netting you a whopping £72 value.
You get 15% off plant and pot orders over £50 - £7.50
£15 off HelloFresh for 4 boxes - £60
50% off 6 bottles of wine from Naked Wines - £24.99
20% off Babylon Health - £29.80
25% off Fiit TV - £30
50% off a Basuu Premium Membership - £29.99
Total Annual Value: £286.28
Total Annual Cost: £60
That’s a 4.7 x value compared to the cost of Plus, in the first year.
What I’m trying to get at is that the value is dependent on your personal situations. I look at the Amex Platinum offers and see less than £570 value per year. Many of the ‘benefits’ require you to go and spend more money elsewhere with another party / on another thing just to get the benefit (30K rewards in your first year if you spend £4k within 6 months). Monzo’s main offering is to help you manage finances - the other offers are sweeteners, in excess of the main offering. Amex’s main offering is to get you to spend money, to generate them money (all of those benefits generate them revenue from their partners).
FWIW, I’ve already got my value from plus by taking up the HelloFresh offers. Heck, I could cut my losses after 3 months and only spend £5 to get £60 in value. I won’t though, as I continue to get non-financial gain through software features. In 12 months, I will re-evaluate what’s on offer - for now, I’m happy - if Monzo rests on this as their ‘final’ offering, then in 12 months I too may be looking for “the value”, but equally I may also want to learn a new language, spruce up my garden, and continue to get £20 interest (at which point my second year has value too) - who knows 
.
Perfectly valid point, and they don’t always give value for money. I have Amex Platinum but the taxi benefit of £10 per month is very dubious… I have used it a couple of times but found that the vehicle which arrives is from a local firm. On one occasion Addison Lee charged me £18 for a journey, I received a £10 credit from Amex. A couple of weeks later the same journey booked direct with the same local taxi firm cost £8 on the meter.
Perhaps slightly off topic but always worth checking what “benefit” you’re actually getting.
The Amex Eurostar lounge access benefit however I really value. Perfectly happy to travel Standard class but enjoy the lounges.
Fair enough about Revolut it would take a longer period of time to get your money back but you would get it back eventually.
About how you calculated the value…
Interest - Agreed but you can get higher interest rates free of charge elsewhere netting you more
Cash - The majority of monzo users won’t really need to deposit cash let alone every month
Foreign Cash Withdrawals - You have assumed people will max out that limit, if you travel constantly then yes it would yield you this but for the everyday person it would not. And if you are in the category of travelling frequently and dealing with a lot of cash then why wouldn’t you use a card that gives unlimited withdrawals?
Discounts - You have assumed people will make use of all of these discounts, I don’t think many will.
Realistically speaking the average person wouldn’t get the whole value out of it, but if you are the type of person to use cash a lot and shop with the discounted merchants than it would save you a bit, this is a big but. However even then you can get a lot of these features for free elsewhere with the savings and even a bigger return with no annual cost.
I agree that platinum offers can be the same as you may not really shop with the merchants offering discounts, However I have found a few that were quite useful and saved me a few £ where I wasn’t going out of my way to shop with them.
I personally though make good use of the credits as they are useful and I don’t need to go out of my way to use them and so get a very good return and these are credits not offered by other products on the market. But it is not for everyone.
I didn’t realise that Money Dashboard exported data. Can you point us towards a how-to?
I click download.
It is worth noting, in this case that, whilst you will get it eventually, you might well not get all of it, as the cost of the administration/liquidation of the company would be taken from those funds.
This is the difference (as far as I understand it) with the FCA 85k protection that Revolut doesn’t have
How do I justify it? All the functionality above in one package without having to sign up to several different accounts or services. It’s fantastic.
As to “looking after the pennies and the pounds will sort itself”. That might be true in certain income brackets, but if you have a good income, time becomes the more important currency so you gladly pay for convenience to focus on the things that matter.
Ah nothing live then.
They power of the Google Sheets export is that it’s live and can power all sorts of integrations. If you have to click export then it’s not really comparable (Monzo not Plus has this too).
So not auto?
I don’t have a need for for live exports and I did not say it was live. Whilst not directly comparable and not something you can get elsewhere, it still does not justify Plus and paying £5 per month…
Thanks for sticking with the discussion thus far! It’s healthy to see arguments from the other side, and dissect them!
Not in an easy access account, as far as I can see. We’re comparing apples with oranges again.
https://community.monzo.com/t/paypoint-shops-don-t-know-how-to-process-cash-deposits/53912/482
There are 449 posts talking about the problems people face when depositing cash with certain merchants in this thread alone - let alone the numerous others on the forum. I don’t deposit much cash, but I can’t let my personal situation ‘inform me’ about everyone else’s. I’ll gladly bow out if there are statistics to the contrary…
…but to compare your argument to, well, your own argument - not everyone will need a taxi every month, or a hire car, or a night at an OFS property.
And you assumed people would spend £4k on Amex (in addition to their membership fee) just to get 30,000 reward points, netting you £210 in returns.
It was a like-for-like comparison with your Amex outline, though - I used the same assumptions as you (I go back to Taxis, and airport lounges, and spending £4k).
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I do feel like we’re comparing totally different leagues here though. It’s a bit like comparing my local private member’s club, to somewhere like The Court in Soho where you’re going to pay ~£600 for membership. You can buy alcohol and food at both, and you also buy the same alcohol and food elsewhere without paying a membership fee. The people that use them, see value in different ways though and expect very different levels of quality (compare Airbnb to OneFineStay).
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@Brad1 - here’s some serious questions for you, to help progress the discussion rather than scrapping over the same points:
1 - Given the lockdown and the impact that Covid has had on travel, what ‘value’ did you get for 3 months? I see many travel-related bonuses, which are entirely dependent on you traveling.
2 - Assuming you are beyond your first year, do you find yourself actively checking whether you’ve “got enough” in returns each year, to exceed the value you paid?
3 - Following on from the above, do you find yourself using premium services, just to justify the American Express lifestyle? Taking OneFineStay for example - the $200 barely covers 1 night in most places. Is it a fallacy that doing so is ‘benefitting’ you when overall you’re spending more on the property, just to benefit from your Amex membership?
4 - How do you find Amex acceptance in the UK?
reduced to nitpicking have we?
You should be used to people correcting you in this thread by now.
You do realise that you have to (click/open/download) the google sheet that Monzo auto export transactions to?
Simple: I want a bank that sells me a banking product. I don’t want a bank that profits from my data, nor one that tries to upsell me random junk (Travel insurance! Gadget insurance! No.), nor one that exploits the poorest customers with unfair fees. I want to pay directly for the product so that I’m the customer - and so I’m not the product.
Monzo Plus is an honest product in a market filled with junk. So it’s trivially easy for me to justify paying for it. And you should, too.
Whilst it’s useful to test this sort of thing, we do need to compare like for like.
If you don’t get value in the live Google Sheets export that’s one thing (and totally fine) but let’s not pretend that it’s the same as a manual export from Money Dashboard (or, indeed, the same as the non Plus CSV export).
Not in an easy access account, as far as I can see.
My Marcus account pays 1.15%, there are also other instant access accounts that match or exceed (NS&I Direct Saver)
There are 449 posts talking about the problems people face when depositing cash with certain merchants in this thread alone - let alone the numerous others on the forum. I don’t deposit much cash, but I can’t let my personal situation ‘inform me’ about everyone else’s. I’ll gladly bow out if there are statistics to the contrary…
I don’t have statistics but this is an app based bank, I think it’s safe to say users are not likely to deposit cash every month and thus max out their free deposits.
not everyone will need a taxi every month, or a hire car, or a night at an OFS property.
Correct, I was talking about my personal situation, when taking a product out and deciding wether or not to pay any fees, you should see what you will get out of it realistically. Users are more inclined to use a taxi than pay cash into their account with an app based bank.
And you assumed people would spend £4k on Amex (in addition to their membership fee) just to get 30,000 reward points, netting you £210 in returns.
again based on my circumstances, this £4k needs to spent within 6 months so you would need to spend £666 per month to meet the bonus. This may not be a stretch if you put your daily spend on it and pay bills etc… This is also a premium card if you can’t meet the bonus the card is probably not for you. Those who take out the card are more likely to use the credits and get the welcome bonus as its more appropriate to their circumstances instead of a few random discounts chucked in.
I do feel like we’re comparing totally different leagues here though. It’s a bit like comparing my local private member’s club, to somewhere like The Court in Soho where you’re going to pay ~£600 for membership. You can buy alcohol and food at both, and you also buy the same alcohol and food elsewhere without paying a membership fee. The people that use them, see value in different ways though and expect very different levels of quality (compare Airbnb to OneFineStay).
agreed, but I was asked to elaborate on the card I get good value out of and I did mention that you can’t expect monzo to offer something similar but that more value should be given.
Answers to your questions:
Amex have given us a £100 credit at places you would normally shop m&S Waitrose, Dilveroo and Apple. And if your annual fee is up for renewal or wish to cancel they may give you a reduction on your annual fee or free MR points. But of course I haven’t gotten as much value out the card as I would like, but no one was expecting this…
Yes. I am not paying just to have a fancy card, If I am not making use of the benefits or it is working out to be too expensive than I will downgrade or cancel.
No. I don’t spend more to get a credit that would make no sense… Work reimburses some accommodation expenses and for pleasure I want to stay somewhere nicer. I won’t always book through OneFineStay though hence I only used $400 worth of credits in the last year
Very good. I live in London so acceptance may not be as good in other parts of the country.
I agree they are not the same thing. I’m not trying to mislead anyone, I just don’t use google sheets and so said I have money dashboard as I am perfectly content with that. But yes it’s important to compare like for like.