The problem is not to do with the frequency of updates but to do with the lack of engagement of the Plus team.
They may well be reading every comment but they don’t respond to any in the thread itself.
Their subsequent updates also tend not to address any issues that were raised in previous comments.
The team also make statements about things like Paywalls without explaining their thinking - leading to further confusion and requests for clarity.
We were also told the team were 80% of the way there in terms of knowing what sort of packages they are thinking about. This doesn’t need to be a firm commitment or revealing the name of any partners but why not say our current thinking isn
Account x could have travel insurance and a metal card
Account Y will have free cash deposits and access to some exclusive softwares features (tbc)
However, as has been said earlier, it would be good if other parts of Monzo engaged on what they thought the long term strategy for the evolution of the brand is.
For instance, if you paywall things, you are committing to support them going forward (which means more polished products than an MVP) and what happens if someone else then offers that feature for free?
Also, why ask us pointless stuff like names if you’re. nowhere close to deciding what it is?
This feels like a bit of a false choice. We’ve gone from:
And promising both
and
All the way down to:
The choice you have provided is:
Fortnightly updates, but only in name. No radical transparency. In fact, quite the opposite.
Essentially the same thing, but without the filler fluff (and rather than filler, we could have an actual open dialogue)
No updates at all
As has been said before in many of the (now closed) weekly update threads, not taking feedback from the community was a large part of how we ended up with the aborted mess of the previous versions of Plus. Can’t we go back to Tom’s original fresh start post and have that? After all, addressing those issues is precisely what he was talking about there. That’s the option that I vote for.
I think V1 and V2 of Plus showed that the MVP approach for a paid account in general didn’t work well. (“You can add new features whenever you want”, “new deals all the time”).
The same will be true of actual software functions.
I’ve said before I don’t mind so much if a solid, fully functioning budgeting feature (cough, YNAB) is added - But critically it has to be fully functioning. No weird scenarios that don’t quite play well. Has to work from Day 1!
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Anarchist
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26
I’m not sure it is. I mean, in theory it sounds great, but in practice I think we’d end up losing Bruno calibre interaction, rather than getting to that level for everything…
But as this would be the Monzo Plus team updating us I think it’s unreasonable to cover them to build a new product and have a chat to the other teams, just for something to say
I think it’s this statement that is at the heart of this whole issue.
The community is a focussed group of (largely) FinTech motivated individuals and, because of that, I’d argue that we are just about the worst source of advice for what Plus should be.
Plus needs mass-market appeal and we do not represent the mass-market in any way shape or form.
I’d go further and suggest that it was in part because of the attempts to cater for the perceived interests of the Forum community rather than the customer community that Plus1 caused/had so many issues. That applies less to Plus2 but with the limited visibility of the market that we have I don’t think any one of us is in a real position to say what actually went wrong there.
I stand by my personal opinion that in an ideal world, a paid offering is not ‘Monzo’. If you have to build it, however, please don’t build it to a template provided by this forum!
Nobody is saying they should build what community members want and nothing else. But at least take our opinions onboard. We told them WHY it would fail and then it DID fail. We are not dumb people, we are mostly either Monzo fans or business orientated.
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Anarchist
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34
Not necessarily. There could be a fortnightly update on everything that’s being worked on, but that doesn’t have to preclude individuals providing more context and interaction.
I think it’s universally agreed that “Plus” has not gone well so far.
But… There was previous dialogue between the Plus Team and the community, and there was a perception of some “involvement” from the community in the shaping of the product. Now, whether that was genuine, or just a smokescreen to appease us, I don’t know, and it really doesn’t matter.
Personally speaking, I don’t think getting the input from the 100 or so frequent posters here will achieve anything - Most of us spread our finances through different apps, banks and services, and we are all savvy enough to know a good deal from a bad one.
From what it seems (based on what has been said), Monzo are not going to be able to compete on price, there will almost certainly be better value propositions elsewhere, and the core contributors on this forum are unlikely to end up being the target market for whatever Plus ends up as.
I think Monzo should do much more research into what would be appealing to their customer base (and potential customers), and not try and please everyone (especially the community in this instance).
I’d love a running commentary on what is happening, but the updates we have had so far, have simply stoked a very negative response due to the lack of content and potential for things like paywalling.
Whether Monzo get it right, or wrong, I still think they should just double down on what they want to do with it - The customers will either like it and stay, or dislike it and leave - It’s Monzo’s job to make it the former!
I will repeat something I said about the v2 launch - it was along the lines of ‘this is no innovation, you are just copying legacy banks’.
With that in mind, I can only hope that the length of time that NewPlus is now taking (a couple of months ago they said the packages were 80% done, but now are only 40% through the entire task) that there is going to be a killer feature that they have not talked about (hence the no-content updates). You never know, they might surprise us and innovate something which no bank has done before
And a new killer feature could be paywalled. Just not existing features. If they are taking 6+ months to relaunch packaged accounts (which they already launched once!)… there is something seriously wrong.
I’m certainly not disagreeing with what you’ve said, but I will say this… When they launched “Interest paying pots”, it seemed to be a success (based on what Monzo said, and the feedback here).
In reality, it was a re-skinned savings account, with a worse interest rate and much worse withdrawal times than existing legacy banks…
So perhaps they don’t need to innovate massively in this area - Perhaps simply making it easy for people is all it will take to make it a success?
It certainly wouldn’t interest me, but I doubt I’m the target market for whatever Plus ends up as.
How about one thread that is locked and used for updates when they are relevant. And at a certain cadence if there is nothing to share just respond with that. Then have a separate open thread for the discussion side. Then link between them?
