Would a definitive list of things that Monzo doesn’t currently support be a good idea?
EDIT: I guess definitive is too broad, a list, that we can add to (there probably won’t be much)
Probably is a cheque. A long time ago i received a Tax Rebate from DWP and they sent me a cheque in the post
I feel like the ‘take it to another bank’ suggestion was more of an acknowledgement that in this specific situation, if you do need the money more urgently this is probably going to be the quickest way to get the issue sorted? Whilst it does appear to contradict the idea of being #fullmonzo if you need to do this, I would argue that they are just trying to be honest that they currently don’t have enough information to inform you and are being as helpful as they can?
Obviously, the uncertainty around it all isn’t great though, so can fully understand your frustration, and if you have fully switched over this isn’t a great experience… but hopefully once this has been fully investigated COps will know better how to handle queries about Payable Orders so the situation won’t be repeated!
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Makes sense they work on cheque clearing days but are there people around on the weekends with a limited experience/knowledge of this area? If I have an issue such as this on a weekend yet have to wait till a Monday for a specialist, means that support for that issue is really only Mon-Friday rather than the 24/7 for other areas?
Probably isn’t so much of an issue most the time but would make sense for someone to know about cheques and be around at a weekend in case of these issues
I’ve been out of the support team for a while but we train all of our support staff in the fundamentals of every payment scheme we support and they should be able to answer the vast majority of questions we receive fairly quickly. They can also then take further training into a specialism to handle more in-depth investigations.
On top of that, we have a (fairly!) comprehensive set of internal documentation that anybody in the company can read.
In increasingly rare cases, this does fall short though and our support staff do have to go directly to an engineering or operational team to find the answer to a question and get it added to the documentation. It sounds like this was the case here.
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Just to address this, it really comes down to numbers as obviously different COps have different specialities. Weekend support is the last “pain point” we have been struggling with over the last few months. Good news is that we have been aggressively hiring for new weekend staff and I believe there’s at least few dozen people in the application pipeline right now that will be getting interviewed etc over the next few weeks.
We are also working on systems to make it clearer internally what specialist skills each individual staff member has. The long term vision is of course having every base covered 24/7 and I think we already do a pretty decent job with this for a huge amount of specialist queries - in fact I regularly see staff jumping in to assist with very specific queries even when they aren’t working! But we still have a way to go in this regard, and particularly with weekends.
We are definitely making good progress here though!
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Would 100% agree that people have different specialties and that getting a balance of those people to work weekends is difficult.
Interestingly never saw any advertisements recently for weekend staff? Good to know it’s happening though!
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The advert was up for a few weeks! We took it down about 3/4 weeks back as we had quite the volume of applicants to get through and we are slowly working through them now!
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If I am honest I think this is a mountain out of a mole hill.
A question was asked, they were advised that at present an answer could not be given.
There are 3 possible outcomes…
- Customer Service could just lie and say yes or no without knowing.
- They could be advised that the question could be answered on Monday (for all the reasons given above)
- To prevent any delay the customer could be asked if they have another account they can pay it into.
Life is too short and some people need to chill a little
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To get the degree of feedback from both @Rika and @simonb, particularly that relating to the challenge of delivering an increasingly complex support service, is impressive indeed.
Not long ago, we’d not even have thought to ask the question. Banks certainly wouldn’t have thought to answer it. Thanks…
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Interestingly I’ve just got one of these too but all I’ve done is chuck it in a FREEPOST MONZO envelope so we’ll see how that turns out.
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Just sticking my two pence in here - I was a Community Banker at Barclays for quite a while and never came across a payable order.
Obviously the subjects on which COps are briefed will be based on demand rather than covering every possible query. Monzo are less likely to spend valuable training hours covering methods of payment that are rarely used and therefore will generate less queries.
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I really think this is getting out of hand. I never intended this to become a free for all in taking pot shots at Monzo, and their customer service team. You all work extremely hard, and I love the bank, its setup and the excellent features that come with it.
I was just a little frustrated and saddened at the experience I’d had, but I fully understand that mistakes happen, and that no organisation is truly perfect, and will never make any mistakes! .
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I’ve had decent support from Monzo (the very few times I’ve needed it).
I still think First Direct wins on the phone front though.
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Same; I had my card nicked recently - and a combo of the freeze button on the app, and messages through the chat resolved it super quickly.
When I’ve gone through similar things for traditional banks it’s always a lengthy process.
It would be interesting to see a traditional banks approach to the same question, asked on a Friday Afternoon.
I’ve found with Monzo I’m more likely to speak to them about a problem as/when it happens, as I can do so in a manner that’s more convenient to me, vs dealing with being on hold on the phone for an age.
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Completely agree - It always makes me chuckle when people mention how often they speak to Customer Service at Monzo.
With a traditional bank, hell would have to freeze over for me to call them - With Monzo, a quick “text message”, and life is good!
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Me, when I have a problem with my “traditional” bank account:
Hey Guys,
Just thought I’d share an update. The customer service team got back to me today, and Monzo will cash this for me 
, I just need to send it to either the FREEPOST Monzo or The address where you can track its delivery.
I apologise for the tone that the thread seemed to take towards the end, it was never my intention, to criticise the customer service team, or ridicule their work ethic. I am sorry for the tone it took, and it was never my intention for it to spiral out of control the way it did.
Thank You
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You don’t need to apologise. The Monzo community is quite a diverse place. Among others, there are those who believe Monzo can do no wrong and those who have a more pragmatic view and challenge them if they seem to slip up from their best. In the end, everyone wants Monzo to succeed!
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Nah, it didn’t spiral. If anything it took an interesting detour.
By the way, I bet a whole bunch of folk reading and posting last evening would have laid good money you would have not a jot of a problem with that darned payable order come today…
We’re all the wiser now, as well. 
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