This was suggested, not told like “Yeah we can’t help you, go get some free food instead” - context is key
Would Halifax have suggested this? Or would the extent of their customer service been: “we will investigate it and get back to you in a week”
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If you are not doing any money laundering and they block you all the money you have available that answer is still not good enough to me.
They need to look on how to speed up this process and make it more precise to avoid blocking the wrong people. Who’s money laundering will still complain but nothing can be done about it.
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I’m interested know the resolution stats for those accounts frozen. If a large percentage is reopened without another resolution then the initial flag is too sensitive. @anon91821566 ?
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I guess the question comes down to, what’s worse?
a) “We can’t help you.”
b) “We can’t help you with this issue while the investigation is ongoing. In the meantime, here are some options you have for getting advice and support during this time.”
In some ways, it would be a real shame if Monzo end up curtailing their vulnerable customers team and going with option a just because the perception of b appears so badly when presented in isolation and out-of-context.
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Whilst this coverage is very damaging to the brand, I think it’s partly unfair. I didn’t catch the programme - I’ll watch it on iPlayer ASAP but I can almost guarantee that they didn’t mention the fact that monzo halted plus accounts and refunded all customers monies with interest on top?
Just because it’s on TV doesn’t mean it’s an accurate picture of the brand. I work in the media and journalists will latch on to the smallest of things to get the biggest reactions… the oldest form of click bait.
Hope Monzo can recover from this damaging coverage 
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We certainly need a thorough response from Monzo here. This isn’t a case of any publicity is good publicity
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I think the food bank / shelter line is that dangerous point in their ‘natural chatty and helpful’ communication bit.
Sure, in theory, giving a consumer advice like that doesn’t look terrible on the face of it.
“We’ll we can’t give you your account access back, so what can we do instead”.
When put with the collective lens of Watchdog and wider issues it just looks out of touch.
If it were a legacy bank, it would just be the repeated line about fraud (which I’m sure would be equally copy and paste).
If anything this will see Monzo become less helpful in future scenarios.
This is the problem Monzo will always suffer, in that new players are always treated with a suspicion that incumbents are not.
When I last looked it up there’s about 100,000 bank accounts frozen each year in the UK, only a small proportion by Monzo, and there’s been news articles for years about other banks freezing people out, but with other banks they talk about them needing to improve, etc whilst with Monzo a scam is insinuated.
Additionally Monzo are presumably disproportionately hit by this problem because Monzo is a bank where it’s a lot easier to get an account, even if you seem shifty. Monzo accept a lot of people for accounts that other banks simply wouldn’t.
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I just watched it back and it was designed to pull on the old emotional heart strings - Family birthday, rent arrears, clients paying money now missing - very heavy focus on those stories.
That said though, I don’t think the Plus sage would have been a good one to showcase either…!
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I think a statement from Monzo/Tom clarifying some objective stats (accounts frozen per 1000, compared to others etc), a response to how they’ll reduce false positives, and a commitment to improving customer service / frozen account resolution time is required in this situation.
People moving all of their money out seems a little OTT at this stage. From my own personal experience as a customer of both Starling and Monzo, Starling have a big false positive issue too and a equally terrible way of resolving it (close your account and no comms at all) - but because of their number of customers, the issue is relatively a lot smaller.
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At the end of the day, when we look at legacy banks and their process for freezing accounts, the fraudulent activity (or similar suspicious activity) has already been committed and the damage done.
In my opinion, because of how intuitive and advanced Monzo’s systems are, they’re probably predicting said activity much sooner rather than later.
Like someone said early on in the thread, Monzo spotted fraudulent activity when it came to Ticketmaster before Ticketmaster knew about it themselves.
Unfortunately it does mean some genuine accounts will fall in this bracket, but many accounts are genuine until it’s found to have suspicious activity on it.
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Of course they will focus on the hardship and damaged caused. What is troubling is that there seem to be many people affected, many for no obvious reason.
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Sadly that’s the game scammers play though. I cannot pay the rent, wedding, I cannot go home, etc.
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Exactly, again, Monzo should have appeared on Watchdog to explain that.
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There could be a valid reason why they didn’t appear, we’re all speculating at the moment, but hopefully they’ll issue a statement tomorrow confirming their position on it 
There’s nothing Monzo can do here (legally). Monzo have to ask the National Crime Agency to look into the person and they have to reply within 7 days, although they’ll often say on the 7th day they they require 28 more days. Monzo are not legally allowed to inform the customer what’s happening just that their account is suspended.
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I hope Monzo take a different view to you, I really can’t see that going down well as an excuse / reason
If that’s the law, and policy of the National Crime Agency, it’s out of Monzo’s hands and breaking that law/policy wouldn’t be worth the backlash just for the sake of being “transparent”
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There is a valid reason. They didn’t want to get ambushed.
Above who thinks Watchdog would’ve let them appear and say the stats and all the sensible explanations doesn’t understand how TV works. Watchdog would frame the argument, but then off, and repeatedly press them about the specific upset customers they featured in their report.
It’s a lose-lose situation, essentially.
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No one is ever given a chance to explain anything on Watchdog, usually they bring on the chief of Hotpoint or similar and ask why his washing machines all suck and why he wants kids to get bullied at school because they smell because their clothes are dirty and as soon as they try to answer they’ll get a load of actresses pretending to be house wives to wheel on their pretend broken washing machines with comical soap bubbles coming out of them and then the presenter will start just making puns about the brand’s name and the brand’s representative’s name and then they cut them off
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