Inconsistent direct debit names / logos

Help Bug Reports
41

I don’t think these things are mutually exclusive. I think they do care. Providing good support to a customer base as large as Monzo’s and keeping costs low, if not continuing to reduce them just don’t go well together. I’m not trying to excuse it, because I very much agree with your point of view and share in your frustrations, but to add some balance, I think they’re doing the best they can with the resources they’ve been allocated, though I agree it’s not good enough.

I don’t know if losing paying customers will motivate them to improve it. I think it sends the wrong message, because you’re staying a customer. Monzo’s paid-for offers make no extra obligation to provide customer service, so why would one downgrade on that basis? I think people would have to start leaving Monzo entirely en masse and citing poor support as the reason. Or push on through and raise it as a complaint every time without ever letting up. if they’re having to pay out compensation for poor service, that’s a good motivator to fix their issues.

dwindling survey results may knock their confidence down a peg, because they love to boast those, but I don’t see that having much of an impact. They’re leading the pack in banking, but I wouldn’t say satisfaction is exactly as aspiring as they gloat it to be. I think they’d find away to spin results as a good thing if the numbers fall.

I remember watching Ecotricity do the same, until, eventually, their radical transparency on that front just disappeared. They continued to call their service good, but they no longer showed any awards, evidence, or statistics to back it up, and my experience no longer was so I left for Bulb. None of it motivated them to improve.

I think we’d need to see actual real backlash on a large scale that’s too big to ignore and damage their brand image. That’s often how you get companies to do the right thing by their users. And this isn’t the sort of angry Facebook group they can shove under the regulatory rug of we can’t say anything excuse either. large scale backlash on social media, increases in account closures, mainstream media reports. All in relation to poor customer service. Those are the sorts of things that invoke change. Because they harm the brand image. The issue is, outside of us on these fintech forums, no one really seems to care just yet.

Customer service quality just doesn’t scale. And very few companies manage to keep it decent enough as they grow. I don’t see Monzo being an outlier to this rule, because no one in their position of the tech space (app only service) has managed to do it. I think that’s just how these things go. I hope it gets better, but I don’t think it’ll ever get back to the point it was at before they hit 1 million customers.

1 Like
42

Let me be clear what I meant, particularly if there are any Monzonauts reading this and bruised by my words.

I believe that good service is part of the company’s ethos and everyone is trying to do the right thing.

I also believe that executives have made the decision (the “they” in my post) to limit cost of support. So they are trying to move as much as possible to self service (which I support), make it more difficult to contact support (which I do not). Indeed, I remember Tom noting that some investors thought they were over spending on support.

My recent interactions have actually been saved by excellent Monzonauts on this community. Firstly, when I was given factually incorrect information as part of a complaint and recently when @nexusmaniac picked up this issue. I know they are deeply committed to excellent customer service and must feel the pain when these things go wrong.

But go wrong they have and to such an extent I’m questioning whether the excellent features that Monzo provides outweigh the sheer pain I go through to deal with issues with support.

I don’t know what the solution is - or whether anything would happen due to customer satisfaction surveys, changes in subscription numbers or, indeed, this message. But I write this, as ever, not because I’m trying to knock anyone. But because I want Monzo to succeed and sometimes I think they need a bit of tough love. :hot_coral_heart:

12 Likes
43

I think this might be resolved? Looks like merchant data has updated back to how it was previously. Can’t confirm until I’m back home

5 Likes
44

Yup, mine are back how they were.

1 Like
45

This is an interesting point. I think the Monzo app is still leading the pack. It’s so far out in front, despite not changing radically for a while.

But customer service has fallen off a cliff.

To me, it’s the exact opposite of First Direct - if I valued service over features, I’d go Full First Direct again. But it’s not, and I’ll hazard a guess to say that enough (?) other customers feel the same (despite a few angry posts on here from me and others, when things go frustratingly and maddeningly wrong).

Until other banks’ apps catch up, Monzo probably hasn’t got a lot to worry about.

2 Likes
46

Confirmed! :tada:

Thanks so much @nexusmaniac and colleagues. :bowing_man:

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47

I can only agree with this. Such a shame.

1 Like
48

My dvla still shows this with registration number shame not updated.

49

I think this is an unrelated issue down to the way that the DVLA now processes direct debits.

That said, it wouldn’t be impossible for Monzo to fix, but would require some code, so I imagine they won’t.

(Which reminds me, a few years ago Curve transactions moved from being online to having the address of Curve’s office. Which seems like a backwards step.)

50

Yep mine are fixed now too :slightly_smiling_face:

51

Yeah, somethings reverted…

I submitted three DD logos this month and tagged the transaction notes with #logo

The logos are back to how they were last month (which means that 2 have logos, 1 doesn’t) but my notes/tags have been removed from all three transactions.

1 Like
52

Oh yeah, mine have too!

I presume they ran some form of script which reset things including notes?

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53

:100:

The Direct Debit ‘merchant enrichment’ was re-run which reset the notes on any Direct Debits affected by this incident :sweat_smile: but everything should be fixed now :hot_coral_heart: And if you leave notes on things now, they’ll stick around :innocent:

9 Likes
54

@nexusmaniac will there be a little update on here with what happened? Always interesting to know the details behind things like this :blush:

1 Like
55

You’re the best, Marcus! :hot_coral_heart:

56

I’m just the messenger :yum:

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57

You da best messenger :relaxed:

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58

That’s right - each DD is processed using the reg number of the car. This is a tricky one to resolve too - because lots of people who have multiple cars value being able to see the reg.

If you put some sort of regex in place to automatically change it to the DVLA only there’s gonna be a 50/50 split between those who want that, and those that don’t.

4 Likes
59

You could create a regex which whacks the registration in the notes, I suppose.

But again different people would have different wants, so someone always loses. :pensive:

1 Like
60

I quite like seeing ‘Dvla-P155off’ in my feed. Has a certain warmth about it.

2 Likes