Monzo giving two months’ notice of account closures

Same here. A common one amongst my family is they keep using lend when they mean to say borrow! Makes me want to implode!

7 Likes

@Dan5 I noticed you were recently active. Do you reckon we’ll ever find out the truth?

I’ll grab a screenshot

There is a complaint to Monzo on the financial ombudsman website because Monzo gave someone a 2 month notice to close. It has a few comments around customer being unsustainable. I linked the PDF if you want to have a read.

6 Likes

More specifically

Mr B had very significant amounts of contact with Monzo’s customer services team and that not all of those conversations went well. I can see that Monzo decided that its relationship with Mr B had become unsustainable as a result.

It was the relationship with the customer which was unsustainable, not the profitability of the account. Just in case someone jumps to a different conclusion.

15 Likes

“Very significant amounts” sounds like even the investigator was surprised :sweat_smile:

7 Likes

:eyes::eyes::eyes:

The suspense!

2 Likes

Remember when (I think it was) @Rika said that someone was ordering a new card every day?!

3 Likes

in a way that is impressive :joy:

people are fantastic

That’s one way of describing them I suppose :sweat_smile:

When I used to work in customer services the biggest thing I found is how rude and entitled most people are.

7 Likes

I can definitely relate

1 Like

"Monzo said that it hadn’t acted unfairly when it had taken the decision to close his account.
Mr B said he was unhappy with Monzo’s response, so we looked into his complaint.
Our investigator thought that Monzo had acted unfairly and said that it should keep his
account open as Mr B would also find it very difficult – given his credit file and banking
history – to open up an account elsewhere. They recommended that Monzo pay Mr B £400
in compensation too.

Monzo didn’t agree with our investigator’s recommendations. So I was
asked to consider this complaint.

I contacted both parties about this complaint and, having done so, I said that I didn’t think
Monzo had acted unfairly when it decided to close Mr B’s account. I told both parties that I
would issue a decision with reasons and that’s what I’m doing now."

When you read it the first time it sounds like retaliation from Monzo. I never knew the FOS could tell a bank not to close someone’s account :exploding_head:.

Am I right in saying this wasn’t the original complaint and this was Monzo disputing a decision?

1 Like

Yes.

When a decision is made, both parties have to agree to it, and either party can dispute it with the ombudsman if they don’t. In this case, it sounds like the investigator didn’t do a very full investigation!

5 Likes

You only get one shot at this though if I remember correctly :thinking: You say your bit and then whatever the investigator says next is final.

2 Likes

There’s an initial assessment. If the case can’t be resolved, either party can ask for a formal ombudsman review. The ombudsman then issues a final decision, which is binding on the business and binding on the customer if they accept it (they can reject it and go to court). It’s the final decisions that get published.

1 Like

How the FOS makes its decisions isn’t really the point. What really advances the topic here is the reason given. The thing about account activity totally unrelated to the financial aspects.

Being a drain on the banks’ resources really hasn’t been explored here.

I’ll bet a whole shed-load of account closures are related to this - those customers who somehow have determined Monzo should be at their beck and call, presumably for spurious reasons.

A very different picture, indeed…

7 Likes

Which sounds to me a lot like a “Fair Use” policy, which I think was mentioned further up in the thread.

If it is for being a resource drain, then what’s the measure? I personally don’t think it’s appropriate to close an account down because they contact the bank a lot, or even disagree with the bank / support staff. In the FOS pdf above, it even says something to the effect of “Monzo thought the consumer was getting around the gambling block” - does that become an account-closable activity?

I can understand if “disagreeing with the bank a lot” turns into “abusing the bank staff” - but that is a given reason to close the account immediately.

They’ve captured the “order a new card every day” extreme with minimum requirements around free card replacements, so it’s not like they cannot introduce fair use policies.

If this little spate of account closures is because of high resource use of Chat/COps time, I think that would be super interesting give the trend of activity around making Cops harder to access, and all the things around that.

Edit: I will add though I do agree with the conceptual difference of “just using my account normally” and “being an edge case on resource use”, but not sure where I draw the line on account closing on that continuum

6 Likes

Quite

Now THAT’s an interesting point. Has Monzo contributed to the very problem it describes in its reasoning?

Let the chat commence…:relieved:

4 Likes

I wonder if he used PayPal to top up to avoid the gambling. But to me, that’s something Monzo should try and help further with. Not kick him off.

4 Likes

Possibly because there’s no evidence that it’s true.

Monzo are quite happy to alter their fee structure to punish unprofitable behaviour, so there isn’t really any need to close accounts on that basis.

2 Likes