Over the last couple of days I’ve switched around 20 direct debits to my Monzo account. It was fairly painless for the most part. As a side note, it’s truly astonishing how many companies just outright don’t provide the facility to change such things online, and how many phone calls I had to make just to get the job done.
The only outstanding problems I have are that the DVLA never accept your call because their queues are too busy (how they can be too busy to accept calls when they don’t accept calls is beyond me…) and E.ON just outright won’t accept the sort code.
The answer I got on the phone yesterday was “we don’t accept that bank” and I knew that was incorrect as I have seen reports in various threads that eventually they will, but the woman wouldn’t do anything to help me other than suggest cancelling the direct debit and trying to create a fresh one (I’m really unsure what difference that would make…). She said wait until my new bill was generated and try again online, alas:
I guess I’ll have to call them again, but I’m not looking forward to it.I was on the phone for 45 minutes yesterday, only to change my direct debit details and I somehow came away with a smart meter installation appointment and a 50% increase in my current direct debit.
Is there anything that Monzo are able to do to save other customers having this same problem? Is there a formal process they can go through to tell E.ON “Hey, we are actually a real bank…”?
Thankfully they’ve done it for me now too, and it wasn’t too painful.
I can understand having to call up (to a certain extent) if their online system is out of date, but I still don’t really understand the “cancel old one, set up new one” process, but hey ho, who am I to argue?
All done now. Just need DVLA to answer the phone now…
It’s exactly this sort of hassle that’s currently preventing me from Switching to either Monzo or Starling for my main account. I don’t know why companies just can’t accept what you’re telling them.
I processed Direct Debits for BT 20 years ago and we used a book that had random “unknown” banks in them to cross check sort codes…anything that wasn’t there we just used an override. If anything was wrong it was ultimately the customers fault for duff information.
There is way too much “computer says no” crap these days
You fared better than I did. I tried to change to Monzo a few times over a period of months and eventually raised a complaint with e-on. I attached a printout from the payments database showing the complete profile of Monzo, which includes their ability to do direct debits, faster pay etc.
I got emails and later conversations with their call centre where they still tried to insist I had got the sort code wrong. They treated me like an idiot. I pointed out that I had switched all my other direct debits to Monzo including broadband with First Utility, a competitor. They elevated my complaint and sent me a 6 week letter but I still haven’t had a response.
First Utility also do energy so that would appear to be my next move. Perhaps e-on have a tie-in with old dinosaur banks and are deliberately trying to stunt the growth of challengers? That don’t impress me much - and I shall continue to be disruptive!
Certainly wouldn’t knock anyone for considering moving energy supplier. I wasn’t too far off that myself, but I realised today there was a better tariff so I decided not to rock the boat right now - especially now they’ve actually managed to set up the direct debit now.
If you wanted to give it another go, I wouldn’t bother waiting for a letter.
They tried to tell me the same thing yesterday, though more so from the perspective that they can’t accept Monzo rather than me getting a 6 digit number wrong…
The decision was made in the first instance to cancel the existing direct debit, and once my new bill was generated (which they triggered yesterday), to try and set up the direct debit again.
It failed online, but I was on the phone for no more than 5 minutes and the new direct debit with the new Monzo account details was accepted.
The problem, I understand, with E.ON and many other big companies like that (though especially E.ON are notorious for it) is the service is incredibly inconsistent. If you don’t currently want to go through the hassle of changing supplier, it might be worth another couple of tries speaking to different people until they ask you to follow the same process I did, which seems to work.
If you speak to someone who is emphatic about the sort code being wrong, then just tell them you’ll call back and speak to someone else, and so on.
It’s also worth making the point to them (as I did yesterday) that they currently have customer accounts who use 040004 as a sort code so they most certainly do accept that sort code, it is valid, and there must be a way to bypass the absolutely ridiculous system bug they haven’t fixed yet.
Naji showed me this thread, so I thought I would step in to give a quick update on what we are doing on our end to tackle these issues.
We have had problems with merchants failing to recognise our sort code since the start of the current account. Whilst the majority of these issues have been resolved, we still receive a few reports each week.
In 90% of cases, the fix is a simple one. The merchant updates their systems and can see that our sort code is set up to receive Direct Debit instructions.
However, for E.on, the problem is not so simple. The majority of our customers who are with E.on have no trouble setting up their Direct Debits, but for some reason there are a handful who struggle.
In fact, we have noticed a similar pattern with EE and Thames Water.
We have been trying to get to the bottom of this with all three of these merchants, but progress is very slow despite constant chasing.
My current hypotheses is that all three use the same account validation tool. Unfortunately, none of them will disclose the tool they use, or who their validation partners are.
I can appreciate this has been going on for a while, and that it is a terrible experience for those who are affected. Thanks for bearing with us, I really hope I can announce that this has been fixed soon and provide a proper explanation!
I’ve had a helluva day trying to get Thames Water to accept my current account. I read through the forums and someone mentioned DM them on Twitter but that was a dead end as they directed me back their billing department.
Firstly I tried online, no dice. I then spoke with a level 1 and level 2 agent by phone, neither could get the account+sort to work. I tried the automated phone service, no luck with the robot.
Hope they update their database before the end of the millennia.
I had terrible trouble with E.ON, I ended up switching suppliers out of principle to Bulb who then paid my Exit Fees (there’s quite a few out their who will pay your exit fees to take you on as a customer).
To top it off, after making a compliant via the complaints procedure and threatening to take it all the way to the energy ombudsman for an easy win, they agreed to pay my exit fee as well as £50 compensation.
The best bit of it all, Bulb already paid my £60 exit fees, so £110 free money from Eon
That was back in August 2017, if EON are still that shit, I’d say do the exact same to them. Swap suppliers, then complain via the Complaints Process (not the usual Customer Service route) you had to as they wouldn’t take your valid Direct Debit and demand a dead lock letter straight away so it can go to the energy ombudsman who they know they would lose against (hence pay you off).
