How Monzo managed to make large payments even worse

Feedback & Ideas
1

You might remember this post. I wanted to buy a house, contacted Monzo in the chat so I could make a large payment to pay my deposit and was muted for hours until they raised my limit. I spent 25 hours just trying to raise my balance both via chat and phone.

Well the outcome of that was that Monzo ended up sending me an apology as well as some compensation, yipee! And it looks like they’ve changed the way large payments work on the back of that by adding a permanent flow, Yay, I thought. But no…

So on Saturday I went car shopping, I hadn’t realised I wanted to buy a car but finally after months of looking and searching I finally finally found a car that I wanted, right there on the forecourt I decided to buy it! I was so excited.

I did a test drive, checked the whole car and decided today’s the day I spend my hard earned dosh on a Ford Fiesta!

Went in, tried to pay, realised the car was above my limit. I was like okay! Sounds good, I’ll get my partner on the joint account to call to get the allowance raised, 10 minutes of going through a billion layers of redirection to try to request a limit raise, and finally… “We can’t help you on the phone, you MUST use the app”

surely this can’t be I thought, I did this the last time and they raised it while I was on the phone, so I called and went through the layers of options on her phone and again… ". “We can’t help you on the phone, you MUST use the app”… okay, let’s try the app. I went into the app, tried to speak with them on live chat to get my limit raised, and again was met with several barriers that prevented me from speaking to an actual person, I had to use their new large payments flow! Hazaaa I thought, it looks like it’ll just ask for some information and be done instantly, she did a short video to identify herself, scanned her license and entered how much she needed and what for, great… Welp at the end of the flow I was greeted with “this can take up to 24 hours”…

Welp 20 something hours later, finally got my limit increase with anger, frustration and disappointment. This is the second time I’ve had issues with Monzo and I’m honestly so disappointed in them.

How has Monzo, my favourite bank, gone so budget to save money, I can’t even speak to someone on the phone, I can’t go into a branch because they don’t have any, my only option is to wait up to 24 hours to get my limit increase… I’m honestly shocked it’s gone from, a fixable solution to something where I can’t even reach anyone on the phone.

The new flow is fantastic but it hasn’t fixed the underlying problem of taking 24 bloody hours. Life isn’t all planned out, sometimes you need to pay bills unexpectedly and sometimes you just want to buy a car.

Honestly i’m just so disappointed.

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2

There’s a reason many people consider Monzo a pocket money account. Even Revolut allow up to 250k to be transferred in a day…

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3

Large (and atypical) payments still make me worry with Monzo. I’d probably still use another current account, which is a massive shame.

I’m not particularly fussed about the phone (and definitely not branches) but I want to know they’re there for me when I need them. I’m down for a properly signposted, fully digital flow that will be approved in minutes, not days.

That said, I remember the Mondo days where they’d call you back if you called then hung up. Excellent customer service is the missing component. It really needs to happen.

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4

It’s the main thing keeping me away from Monzo currently. I just can’t trust it, if I need it. With both HSBC or FD, nine times out of ten I don’t need help, but can get it there and then if I do. Which has over the last few months been the thing I’ve come to value the most.

I really do think Monzo need to have a better process here if people want to think of them as a “real bank”

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5

The limit is £10k a day, how much pocket money are you getting?

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6

This seems like a lot of work, but still sounds like there are ways and means of getting around the 24hr limit

From the help section…

Keep in mind this can take up to 24 hours to go through. If you need your limits increased within 24 hours, please select the “I can’t make a payment” button after you send your first message. (You won’t see this button if you already have a chat open with us).

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7

I won’t say this affects me much because the chances of me spontaneously spending £10k are for many reasons zero. I suspect most people are the same.

I do think the new limit increasing flow is a vast improvement - it’s a flow with a set timeframe and is clearly described in the app - just type ‘raise limits’ into the help and it says what you can do and how long it will take which is a big improvement in my view to ‘message us on the day and hopefully someone will get back to you’.

It’s true that it still doesn’t work if you want to do it completely spontaneously - it needs 24 hours and I would say if you are one of the few people likely to go and spend that amount on a whim, an account with higher overall limits would be better for you.

I must also say after your previous experience I’m surprised you didn’t at least search the app for the new process before you got to the checkout.

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8

Most won’t even have that, never mind attempting to transfer it.

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9

Pretty much the same for me.

That said, where I’m worried about it hitting is in savings. Monzo is my nominated amount for savings providers who need such things, and I don’t really want Monzo holding it hostage for a few days if I want to move providers.

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And some will, I’m sure they wouldn’t want to have to message about raising from 10k - hence they probably aren’t likely to bank with Monzo. Customers with large balances make banks a lot of money!

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11

Well, it’s one day or less but I see the issue.

I do remember the nightmare of trying to increase limits with Barclays tbh so I don’t know what’s better other than again just an account with higher limits (but not Revolut - I wouldn’t send my savings to a non-regulated bank even for a very brief period).

Whenever you send 10k out of the blue though, there’s a chance of it being ‘held for checks’ etc.

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12

The options aren’t actually great. RBS force you to a branch for paid for CHAPS for anything more than 15k. I used the Coop to send 50k plus or so over the phone and didn’t have to pay a chaps fee.

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13

Is the title of the thread reasonable?

It sounds better, albeit still not good enough.

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14

This is very concerning and yet another case for threaded conversations.

Not to take it off topic but I was raising a complaint from which I was also put in touch with the “how can we help customers with extra needs” team (what are they called?) but the chat kept bouncing between one team and the other, and it wasn’t clear whether the information I wanted recorded on my profile actually reached the team and if it was recorded…

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15

It wasn’t on a whim, I’ve been looking at cars for a while because we’ve been hoping they would come down, Saturday just happened to be the day I found one I wanted and decided I’d buy it.

I dont have a huge amount of cash on the side, we’ve been saving for two years to buy a car so it’s not like our use case is far from the majority of the general person.

As for the new process, I honestly didn’t have a clue, I like some fool believed I could just call and get it raised like most of my previous banks but sadly not.

Secondly I had no idea there was a new process. And even if I had, I dont consider making a call to get your limit raised being far fetched, particularly for a bank without physical branches.

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16

I can change it if people would prefer but IMO limiting comms to 1 way of communicating is definitely a step backwards

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17

Whilst I don’t want to call you a fool I’m struggling to disagree with the term after you previously experienced a significant delay on the same issue with the same bank, raised a successful complaint about it and also started a 90 post thread on this forum about it :sweat_smile:. But I suppose if that’s how it is, that’s how it is.

I still think for me the process is better. Much clearer with a set process and timeline.

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18

We’ve never been able to approve limit increases on the phone because we’ve always required a selfie in the chat (or in the case of the new workflow a video) to verify your identity. There’s no exception for this, so even on the phone you’d need to have sent us something through chat, if somebody did this without getting a selfie then they didn’t follow the process.

The new solution is much better than the older one, but it’s not perfect. Most of the time it takes less than 24 hours but, without going into too much detail about how sausages are made, one of the teams (fraud) that deals with limit increases have been slammed with work recently and that’s had a knock on impact.

The scenario you describe is from my experience of working limit increases very, very rare. The vast majority of people request an increase in the future (& you can now increase your limits up to 30 days in advance).

Personally I’ve also never bought a car and taken it off the forecourt the same day, even though I always buy with cash. I’ve always paid a deposit, got the limit increase sorted and gone back the following day or a few days later to collect the car. That was especially the case last June went I went to look at what was available and hadn’t planned on buying one! I just saw one I liked but it took me a few days to get everything together including all the paperwork etc.

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19

Hi Dan,

I think you might have even replied on the old thread but they definitely did it over the phone, they sent me a link over live chat I believe to upload documents but it was done on the phone when I called within 20 minutes.

The copy on the website is wrong, it says it can take a “few hours” but “up to 24 hours” is hardly a few :sweat_smile::sweat_smile:

Also you mention your use-case and well that may be the case for you when buying a car, just because something isn’t common, it doesn’t - at least to me - seem like a great excuse for not fixing a very obvious flaw, especially when multiple other banks manage to do it

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20

I think Monzo’s solution is actually better than the current market and I’ll explain why.

Any bank can freeze a bank transfer for any amount, could even be for £20 to a new payee for instance requiring you to call up answer a bunch of invasive and typically not relevant questions (unless you’re being scammed in which case they are) just to have to go back again and re-attempt the payment. Now consider the example where you’ve sent the money, get the confirmation but the other party hasn’t received it say 24 hours later. In that instance your bank has also frozen the payment but not bothered to inform you about it or call you about it! Heck even worse they could freeze your whole account. Not to mention other banks also have similarly imposed limits (10k, 15k,25k, etc) which still requires some form of manual intervention (ie phone call, trip to branch etc).

At least with Monzo it’s simple and secure. Work through the flow provide the details and sit back and wait a maximum of 24 hours then knowing you can confidently make the payment without any further troubles. I’d have more confidence in that then chancing a 20k transfer with another bank for example.

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