For anyone that was as confused as to why some got refunds and some didn’t for the same thing. Guess this is somewhat of an answer. Told that it was a case by case choice and not for all. Not that I’m sure how any of us can really vary from one another in the situation of legacy plus but I’m not going to argue it. Still at least inconsistencies have been somewhat admitted
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I’m more confused about the support. I contacted support about cancelling Monzo plus and got told promptly that there was a dedicated support for this. Sadly no timeframe was given, I get that it’s a weekend and I don’t mind a long timeframe but to be left hanging, waiting, not good.
under the FCA regulations - they should be treating all customers fairly and its showing a clear sign here that isn’t the case.
The Financial Conduct Authority’s handbook lists 11 principles of business by which the watchdog expects all regulated companies to abide:
1: Integrity
A firm must conduct its business with integrity.
2: Skill, care and diligence
A firm must conduct its business with due skill, care and diligence.
3: Management and control
A firm must take reasonable care to organise and control its affairs responsibly and effectively.
4: Financial prudence
ADVERTISING
A firm must maintain adequate financial resources.
5: Market conduct
A firm must observe proper standards of market conduct.
6: Customers’ interests
A firm must pay due regard to the interests of its customers and treat them fairly.
7: Communications with clients
A firm must pay due regard to the information needs of its clients, and communicate information to them in a way which is clear, fair and accurate.
8: Conflicts of interest
A firm must manage conflicts of interest fairly, both between itself and its customers and between a customer and another client.
9: Customers: relationships of trust
A firm must take reasonable care to ensure the suitability of its advice and discretionary
decisions for any customer who is entitled to rely upon its judgment.
10: Clients’ assets
A firm must arrange adequate protection for clients’ assets when it is responsible for them.
11: Relations with regulators
A firm must deal with its regulators in an open and cooperative way, and must disclose to the
regulator appropriately anything relating to the firm of which that regulator would reasonably expect notice.
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I have sent my case to the FCA to investigate - and if I’m wrong, I’m wrong however, I have been extremely patient with Monzo and polite with the reasons why I believe I was mis-sold. All I received was a card and some interest. The £3 early bird offer was advertised to entice customers to join plus and not because features were not entirely rolled out. I was expecting customisable offers which did not come to fruition.
There is being sorry and then there is doing the right thing. I know it’s a few pound, but it is the principle.
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Whilst I agree with you that Monzo should be refunding everyone and just admitting fault. The way they’re acting is well within the terms of the account which is all the FCA cares about. Whilst from a service point of view it’s really not good, Monzo aren’t doing anything wrong other than offering a crappy service which I highly doubt anyone will get involved with.
Keep the forum updated, I’m interested to hear the outcome and their reasons.
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So they are yet again behaving like their competition.
I don’t feel this is an issue for the FCA, it’s just not been handled and supported well.
I’m a big advocate for Monzo, it’s now my main bank account but this whole thing and the poor communication and weak support hasn’t been great.
While I do check on the forums, I found out about this from a news paper article popping up on my phone. It didn’t paint a good picture.
Let’s hope the bank can learn from this and improve their Comms and improve their support.
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I don’t think this is the case at all. Larger banks can afford and often do make refunds to people where service is bad even when they’ve not actually done anything wrong.
If you had a packaged account and it’d been the same mess that Monzo have created I think refunds would be given to all who asked. They’d rather take the hit than let people be annoyed.
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how you found out is exactly the type of scenario I had been concerned about. Really not a good look, MVP or not.
whether within rules or not trust has been affected here and when that happens you need to go the extra mile to restore it
So that’s even worse - Monzo is choosing not to do the “right thing”, either through lack of money/resource/interest in resolving cleanly.
Meanwhile they are attempting a third relaunch of Plus.
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I see it that way too. And the new relaunch, to me, seems to be going the same way.
Instead of finding innovative products / services to bundle, or at the very least good deals on services, their first question was how much can we get out of you for it
While this may or may not be a case for the FCA, the T&C are not all they care about.
As I have posted before, they are also very hot in enforcing their Treating Customers Fairly principles which they treat as the cornerstone of their approach towards the way firms should behave towards their customers.
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Whilst I don’t have Monzo Plus or any issues. I don’t think the problems are malicious. If anything I think they’re caused by the lack of a unified organised front of what to do in terms of compensation and problem solving. Which is symptomatic of a poorly organised start up as it scales.
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Quite plausible. It’s been a rapid rise to three millions customers. They’ve taken huge investments and must be under pressure to show how they can turn an interesting take on banking into something that makes money.
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They’ve said that the product didn’t work out as intended, that falls under the consumer rights act 2015, if the bank isn’t keeping to any law you can go to the ombudsman.
I think the question everyone is asking is “profitability”. which is now becoming a larger question every quarter. Looking at Monzo as it currently stands, it’s very hard to look at what to monetise( the app access or new features etc is very controversial and will have the same problems that WhatsApp had.Customers will resist heavily) (taking stuff that was originally free and then monetising it is a terrible idea(codeacademy did this and then I immediately stopped using them)
The other issue is that they just can’t get the best deals for insurance etc. As they’re small in comparison to legacy banks.
Logically the best way for Monzo to make a dent in the premium account market is to offer things that are different or targeting a different market for example (Wrisk as a supplier for home insurance might be a good shout due to Wrisk’s small market and the fact they’re a startup)
I would also like to see them partner with Spotify and headspace to offer an discount( I have a student discount atm)
To turn back to the issue at hand with legacy Monzo plus issues it would be good for them to organise a unified response and compensation strategy before they get a million and one FCA reports and criticisms
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I think this is pretty unacceptable. Particularly on the “metal card for all three bundles” thing, if you make an offer and then decide not to honour it, this is obviously not TCF.
Simply refunding in full is not sufficient to conclude there is no longer a problem.
Have messaged support asking for greater redress than just a refund as I feel this is pretty clearly misselling - the offer was made just days before they scrapped it all.
TCF means you have to treat all your customer fairly and in a even handed manner. It doesn’t stop them from withdrawing a product and refunding it in all full plus interest.
I’m not sure you can expect a greater redress than having your money back + interest. What exactly do you expect them to do?
Profitability, which was mentioned earlier is what concerns me. This is part of what the plus accounts were meant to help with. While I suspect it’s not an immediate problem given the level of prior investment, you can’t rely on that forever.
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I’m a Monzo Plus user, I signed up on day 1 and have been paying £3 per month.
I’m not a regular forum user, so until I saw this post I had no idea anything was happening.
Firstly, can anyone please fill me in with what has been going on with Monzo Plus and what is happening with it? It seems I’ve missed all the news.
Lastly, this is to Monzo themselves, why hasn’t anyone kept people like myself up to date with any ‘issues’? No messages or emails keeping us informed of the current state of Monzo Plus, just taking my money every month.
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Good to hear from you again, Spencer. 
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