There’s a lot of the language around these that could be changed, but in my opinion this is better than the alternative of not raising complaints.
Complaints mean issues get read by more eyes, including the teams responsible and in aggregate by the regulator.
As an example, throughout the last ~6–9 months of my work on Disputes, we used complaints data to target exactly what needed to be fixed as a priority. The financial payouts made it easier to justify putting in that work by putting a real cost on not fixing a bad user experience.
We used other data too (including community forum posts, data from the systems themselves, and user research), but the complaints were a fantastic tie breaker between projects and gave us a wide variety of cases where the current system had failed people. We could read not only the aggregate data but also complaint summaries and drill all the way down to find out exactly where things went wrong.
While I wouldn’t ask you to make more complaints, and the compensation payments are outside of my scope, the fact that complaints are raised and not hidden away is important to Monzo’s ability to improve over time as a bank.
So if I complain about Apple Pay still missing from Monzo.me, for example, in app, the functionality will return sooner, than if I keep bumping the posts for an update on here?
There should be a message sent letting the customer know that we’re passing the issue on to the customer advocacy team (which is the team who deal with complaints).
However as Rika suggests - perhaps the language could be clearer.
I think that’s the issue. Because for many people, the message you describe is the first that they hear that a complaint has been made. So for that to be an automated message that is describing action taken on their behalf that they did not want or expect, it makes people feel not listened to or misunderstood and that they have had their agency taken away. Explaining that it is a normal regulatory requirement would reassure and remove a lot of ill feeling.
I would MUCH rather that a bank deal with an issue seriously - regardless of whether I say I want to raise a complaint or not, than to shrug it off.
Ultimately, the OP had a complaint raised on their behalf (still not sure why this is something to be upset about) and hopefully we all benefit because Monzo fixes the thing that caused the unhappiness in the first place.
However, yes, a line that said “I need to process this as a complaint on our system, even if you don’t want to raise a formal dispute” could have avoided this forum post.
What’s kafkaeque is raising a complaint about a complaint being raised without you complaining because you didn’t want to waste time complaining
You find a lot of banks get pushed to escalate even the smallest bit of criticism to cover their back with the FCA, it’s neither decremental to you personally or financially I.E Credit score ETC. Not surprised if you get charged (Monzo) £500 for every ombudsmen escalation regardless If right or wrong. Pretty pointless debate if I’m honest.
I completely understand why the first complaint was logged. The one thing I’m still baffled by is why they wouldn’t log @lpoolrob’s complaint that he explicitly made afterwards? He could have had an answer quickly and easily instead of having to vent on a public forum
I wonder if it is because the second complaint did not pertain to a product or service?
A complaint relating to complaint handling would ordinarily be dealt with in relation to the original complaint, and so no new complaint would be raised, rather the information would be added to the original complaint file.
I wonder if there is no internal process to handle the type of complaint the OP describes.
Perhaps it’s just me, but I would consider complaints handling to be a service provided by Monzo, and would expect to be treated the same way as any other formal complaint about a Monzo product or service.
In law there’s a concept of ‘vexatious litigation’, and judges can throw such cases out or refuse to hear them on those grounds. I wonder If a similar concept applies for complaints?
Or it may be as another poster has just suggested that it can’t be filed as a complaint because it doesn’t fit in to any of the correct categories.
It does kind of open up possible weird loops, though. “I wish to register a complaint because you didn’t register my complaint that you registered a complaint when I didn’t wish to register a complaint.”
