Just realised I never updated this. I had a reply from BACS in January saying ‘we have had confirmation from Better Gyms sponsor bank advising that Better Gyms have now updated their system so they will now be able to accept the new Monzo Bank Sort code.’
‘Great!’, I thought. So a few weeks later I went into my gym and tried to change it again, only to have exactly the same problem as before. The man behind the desk very politely and patiently explained to me ‘you see, this is a Monzo card, so it’s not a bank account, you can only do Direct Debits from a bank account’. I rolled my eyes and said ‘no, this is a bank account’ and he just sort of shrugged and said that he didn’t know then.
Must admit I just haven’t bothered to try again since I’ve lost all patience with it, but if anyone else can bear to chase this up then please let me know how you get on!
Pleased to say that I have now completed an entire month after CASS, and everything has worked perfectly - even car payments, which I know can be notorious.
BACS doesn’t want to be too annoying as they still make money off companies using Direct Debit - BACS would rather close their eyes about not updating sort code DBs than annoy the companies and risk them stopping using Direct Debit altogether. It’s a basic conflict of interest, just like mobile carriers don’t do anything against spam calls/texts because they’re being paid to carry those.
It’s up to us to vote with our wallets by giving those merchants the middle finger and stop paying until they accept Monzo sort codes.
Have you had any luck with Better Gyms? I complained to BACS again and they contacted me asking for some more details (which I’ve just given them) but I can’t quite believe this still isn’t resolved! I was going to try it with CASS but if that doesn’t work then I don’t want them to cancel my gym membership
After my membership was cancelled for the third time due to lack of payment the people at the gym were so sick of me I had to go to another Better gym to set it up.
I was going to tell you that it does work but I just checked my scheduled payments in Monzo and I have two direct debits for Better Gym and neither have had any money taken from them so I’d guess probably not. I’ve been away for a while (plus being lazy) so I haven’t done a gym trip for a week or so. I’ll try and go in after work and see what they have on my account.
I’m getting pretty sick of it not working to be honest. I’m a customer of Better and Monzo but both want me to do the legwork.
Actually did work for me – after failing the first time, I discussed with one of their staff (who was not too confident about it working but agreed to try!) and has been working for the last couple of months.
That’s good news. I guess I’ll try my gym yet again! I just hope I don’t get the same patronising explanation about how I need a bank account to create a DD, and Monzo is not a bank account…
It took me a very long time to explain that the fact that it’s mastercard doesn’t mean it’s not a debit card even after showing the hologram on the back that says “debit”
Is there (or should there be) a list of merchants / companies who still don’t like or accept Monzo? It would be a useful thing to collate in my opinion… I’m keen to switch my account wholly in the next few weeks, but have no idea what will happen if, during the CASS, one of my DD mandates is refused due to “not being a bank”.
It would be useful to validate first.
[Edited out provider details given list available on Wiki, I’d rather not share all of my payees!]
I’ve just tried using CASS to switch it over and all seems to have worked (the DD is now listed in Monzo, and the one with my old bank seems to have cancelled) but I guess I won’t know until the 1st of next month whether they actually manage to take the payment! Fingers crossed.
(the acceptance team are keeping an eye on it too, by the way)
