Interested to see how this experiment goes.
It fails me how even now, it’s acceptable for companies to have poor service on support. There’s just no excuse.
4 Likes
Starling replied with a follow-up question, asking me if anyone was pressuring me for money, Given the context of my question, I passed to them, It was completely relevant and contextual aware follow questions to give, so I gave full marks, For speed and accuracy
Given my previous experience with Monzo chat, they will pass it on to a “specialist” And I will very likely have to wait a few days for a bot answer Disguised as a human, Otherwise, known as a copy and paste
Obviously this is far from a scientific test because there’s a data set of just one person.
However, it’s now been 20 minutes since I gave Monzo the exact same question that Starling answered within five minutes
I don’t know how many more customers Monzo have vs Starling though, so it could be just a little bit unfair
3 Likes
Have you ever tried actually raising your limits? You have to upload documentation to support the request.
2 Likes
you aren’t wrong, but its irrevant to the poor quality of service. Its like saying its ok an ambulance didn’t arrive to an emergency scene, because it wasn’t their fault there was an accident in the first place.
I’m 90% sure we’re being fobbed of on bots, that attempts to give standard answers, before it then “escalates to a specialist”. Which seems to take a long long time.
In short, its not cool. I dont trust Monzo at this stage. And I wouldn’t want them in my corner if there was actually a real emergency happening.
3 Likes
How are you generally feeling about the Starling experience? Are you happy with it? I’m looking for a new bank. I was considering going back to HSBC, used them before and they were ok, not great, but not total shite like my current bank.
1 Like
Yeah a few years back for my mortgage, so I’ve probably forgotten. I don’t remember though not being able to spend on the card that day though. Honestly don’t even remember having to provide documentation either, so maybe that’s a new thing.
2 Likes
I raised mine for a car purchase - worked flawlessly, think I requested 24450 or something, and they upped it to 25k.
Such a seamless experience and flawless.
2 Likes
Sure, when I bought my house, there wasn’t any issue, as I didn’t have to contact them about it. My gripe isn’t with the process. Its with the fact you cant communicate with your bank when you need to.
3 Likes
I use Starling as my main bank, everything but credit card as they don’t have one. No complaints, customer service is the best by far IMO.
4 Likes
The stalling app is a little bit less colourful than the Monzo app. However, it works fine you have all the functionality you would expect
They offer you an overdraft, loan, Customer service seems to be absolutely fantastic.
You got spaces which are basically pots, You can pay from the spaces as you can with Monzo. You get virtual cards, For free, I might add. Which you need a Monzo plus subscription to get.
The merchant is a bit naff, however, if you can get around that or don’t really care then it’s absolutely fine
3 Likes
Update from Monzo, I did get a reply, but I was asleep by then. It took them one hour and 20ish minutes, Which is not that bad, Not as bad as it has been
4 Likes
HSBC’s default limit is this so there’s never a need to raise it really. Then again, how often are people lucky enough to need the limit raising past £10k anyway?
I think this is the crux of the issue really. That some people can have a flawless experience, and many others do, but a number don’t. There’s little consistency in how well things happen and it really does boil down to who you get.
Sounds like you’de like HSBC (mentioned upthread). You can ring them whenever you want, or speak to them on actual live chat. Only a high street bank will get you that level of service. Maybe Chase, since they have actual humans who will speak to you.
FWIW - I’m with HSBC and can’t fault them really. Their live chat is actually live, it’s normally pretty good once you work out asking the bot Human will skip you to a person, and quite responsive. Plus, you can ring em if you need to.
Monzo, I’d love to see this side of things improve. Amazing how they keep buying winning these customer service awards
4 Likes
But this user’s problem isn’t with the increasing issue. It’s with the fact that the amount they need to increase to has changed.
So - in theory - they should just go through the increase flow again. 
When you get approved, it tells you what the limit is - so saying “Can I spend £2 more than the limit” is a pretty obvious no, hence the word “limit”.
The problem is Customer Support - fine, I accept that - but this whole problem would have been avoided if they just requested a new increased limit! 
3 Likes
sorry don’t take this the wrong way. You say you accept the problem is the customer support, but your reply shows you clearly don’t get it.
You say, this problem would have been avoided if “I just requested another limit increase”. The problem is I wanted to validate that this was the right way of approaching this.
I’ll try and break it down. The transaction was LARGE. Applying almost a double digit multiplier of the existing limit. I like to validate my assumptions before taking actions. And assuming that me doing to very large limit requests back to back, wouldn’t trigger any sort of fraud concerns is an assumption I didn’t want to make.
So, I attempted to talk to my bank. Simply to confirm what they wanted me to do, as opposed to try and guess what they want me to do, YOLO style.
And now we are back to the crux of the issue. They didn’t understand my question.
Also, you say
When you get approved, it tells you what the limit is - so saying “Can I spend £2 more than the limit” is a pretty obvious no, hence the word “limit”.
You are fixating on one part of message, re-read the original. You are ignoring the part before the “or”. More specifically.
do I need to apply to have my limit raised further, or since its only 2 pound more, will the transaction still go through?
3 Likes
I can’t believe whoever you were paying nearly £20k to, wanted to add £2!
5 Likes
Not really ignoring that part at all - you requested a limit, which was accepted, you were told that limit, the transaction won’t go through if it’s over that limit. Therefore if the limit isn’t enough, you request a new one.
As I said, sure, you want to talk to the bank - that’s a failing of customer services, I didn’t dispute that.
What I said was, you should have just requested a 2nd increase limit…
1 Like
And I was saying, I didn’t want to make any assumptions, and risk getting blocked on fraud concerns.
This is getting a bit circular
4 Likes
I’m not a native English speaker, and I got multiplier and multiple mixed up. So it’s actually even worse than that.
1 Like
I wouldn’t worry about that, I’m a native English speaker and I’m not sure of the difference!
Regardless of whether it would trip a fraud limit, or whether you should have just increased yourself, they should be able to answer and tell you.
It’s probably not super common, but absolutely no doubt it will happen when people buy big ticket items and get the amount wrong or add things on. That person may not have dealt with it before but they should be able to find the answer quickly and easily.
Support staff should have a guru/expert to ask, or a directory to look up for these sorts of things, if it’s not in there yet, then make sure it goes in after this question, ready for the next person. It shouldn’t require a queue. If the person doesn’t know and can’t check, “I’ll find out” and come back to you. Instead you get a sort of weird hybrid where the staff act like bots dealing with a hot potato that they seem to be rewarded for throwing away.
5 Likes
My guess is the focus on performance is having adverse effects. I used to work in a contact centre and when agents were on email, it was allll about cases per hour.
So if someone emailed in and asked a question that could’ve been answered (generally speaking) but there was any excuse to send it back for 'more info" they’de take it. Great for the report chart, not so great for customers.
I also think, and I’ve said it before, that there’s a clear lack of knowledge and empowerment at agent level. Nearly everything has to be sent to a ‘specialist’ to be sorted. That might just be the way they sack the customer off to another agent but if it isn’t, starting here would be a good bet!
6 Likes