Monzo Plus - Bi-Weekly Update 28th November 2019

I was so jealous. I grew up in a bungalow. I enjoyed trips to see my Aunty Doris and Uncle Jack who lived in a tower block so I could pretend to be Mary taking the lift :grin:

@tomdavies

Thank you for replying to my questions - genuinely appreciate you taking the time.

All things said, I think it’s really interesting to see “40% complete” as a metric.

My impression from previous updates was much much closer to completion. If nothing else, hearing a rough timeline adds so much more context than before - so thanks for that.

Unfortunately I can’t say that the paywalling discussion fills me with joy right now, but I suppose I ought to wait until more is clear there.

Here’s hoping you get the balance right. :crossed_fingers:t2:

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@tomdavies thank you for the update. I completely understand you can’t comment on everything and that you have a lot of other commitments too. I think we can all sympathise with this - I take time out of my day to read and post on this forum too.

The 40% is really interesting. Almost all of the updates so far read as if you are closer to 80/90% complete. It is reassuring that there is a long way to go and still time for you and the team to develop your thinking further.

I have become more and more frustrated with Monzo, and Monzo Plus in particular, because of the worrying direction I feel you are moving in - focusing on short term gains and profitability at the expense of user satisfaction and the Monzo mission.

I too would back the approach of reducing the updates even further or removing them entirely. None of the community feedback so far (regarding paywalling in particular) seem to have been incorporated - please correct me if I am wrong. So halt the updates for now and come back when there is something concrete to share and you’re in a position to receive and act on the feedback.

I’ve made my opinion clear on this many times before, and I will say it again. Monzo is wrong to even considering paywalling features of the app and to openly state you are considering which of the current features should be paywalled is shocking to me. I don’t want to move banks again so please don’t push me away with a paywall.

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Thanks for the update - seems like a long way to go which is good to hear however just want to pick up one point

I’m pleased to hear you’re reading every comment @tomdavies

So please think really carefully before paywalling existing features

IMHO it would be a big mistake

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Guessing this one includes loads of retailer offers that are feck all use to anyone outside London

Then why bother asking for names - other banks/companies don’t do this and get on just well.

Stick to giving updates and less of the “we are all one team, let’s work together”.

Note - focus groups aren’t the same as a customer forum, unless that’s how forum members are seen.

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No, I don’t like this at all. :sweat:

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Couldn’t disagree more; what is the purpose of the this community if not to provide ideas and a feedback loop? Other banks don’t claim to be customer-centric so reaching out to the community and focus groups (which they do a lot more than I think people realise) makes absolute sense.

The reason that I was so delighted with the NewNav team and their engagement on their thread was actually because it wasn’t expected.

The Plus team committed to fortnightly updates and were clear that there wouldn’t always be loads of details to share. In those circumstances personally I’d prefer for them to skip the updates and be super engaged on a less frequent basis. Instead they’ve answered some concerns, told us what they’re working on until the next update and asked for some feedback; can’t reasonably ask for more than that in a progress update.

People are frustrated that they don’t get responses to scaremongering and petulance but there’s really no good way for someone to answer most of those questions. As Tom highlighted in his second post in this thread the team don’t want to backtrack on product offering later down the line (and can’t talk about some of the commercials).

Radio silence - knowing the team are reading - is no worse than repeated “can’t comment” replies.

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This is enormously worrying, and way worse than what I was expecting (paywalling new features).

The fact that you’re even open to the idea of moving existing features behind a paywall is mental, and flies in the face of everything Monzo is about.

You are not listening to the community, at all. You mentioned the prospect of paywalling, and if you read every comment on here you’d see how overwhelmingly negative the reaction was, and yet you’re still open to paywalling current features?! That’s mental. And with the greatest respect, you’d have thought after failed attempts at Plus, Monzo would be paying more attention to what their community is saying.

If you do this you’ll paint a huge target on your back from other Fintechs who won’t be paywalling features (after you do it they would be stupid to). There would be a outcry from your users and you’d lose all the goodwill you’ve painstakingly built over the past four years.

For clarity, you asked us previously to be “nice”, when people were delivering negative, but constructive feedback. Please see this as such.

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I wonder if Monzo ever wish they hadn’t bothered with Plus at all.

What’s wrong with having a standard monzo account and a Monzo Metal account. With, as the name would suggest, a metal card, higher limits on transactions, throw away card number for online purchases, exclusive savings rates - all “in house” perks.

Every time I have come to renew house, life, car insurance etc it has always worked out cheaper to get a standalone product, one which I can often customise far more than any bundled product.

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I agree. They’re over-complicating it and tripping over themselves.

Where I differ, is I’d happily pay a premium for products that were offered through the app owing to convenience. I still don’t know why it’s so hard to offer this HSBC kind of approach - lots of people on this forum seem to want it.

Seeing as we’re still quite early on, shall we at least wait to see what it is Monzo will offer?

I really wouldn’t be surprised if many of the members on here will end up biting their tongue at what Monzo eventually put to us all as a release.

Surely we should give Monzo the benefit of the doubt… 3rd time lucky and all that?

Not when I fundamentally disagree with some of their ideas.

That’s the thing, a lot of people have already given them the benefit of the doubt two times over. They’ve asked for feedback so we should feel free to provide it.

I want monzo and plus to succeed but I feel some of these ideas will change monzo itself into something with different core values and offerings to what I signed up for. Sure if people don’t like it they can move away but that would be a terrible shame when it could be so easily avoided.

In my opinion it’s best to raise concerns early to help shape the final product rather than wait and leave if I don’t like what’s released.

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Agree with this completely, As much as I look forward to reading about new products and features, I think it would be much more beneficial to everybody to have updates more sparingly but perhaps more conclusive.

All the updates seem to do at the moment is drive negativity. I find the last post from @tomdavies to be refreshing because of the honesty. Yet people are still jumping on him for telling it how it is. Yes he said they haven’t ruled out moving features from the free account, but he also has not said that it is happening. If they read the comments on here like he said they do then it probably won’t happen, however, at least their cards are on the table. Like Tom said, we’re a long way from the release, a lot can change between then and now.

I understand all the concerns about paywalling, but, we don’t know all the facts yet.

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Emphasis mine.

That’s the problem.

Internally things like this should be rejected immediately once suggested, sure its okay to have meetings to discuss any and all ideas but that doesn’t mean that all of them deserve equal consideration.

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I agree but the company is bigger than it once was, that decision is the sort that i’d of thought would have to go pretty high up the chain for final sign off. Which ‘sign off’ in itself is probably a lot harder to achieve than it used to be.

Not only that, but in their thinking, they may think that new extensions to existing features may fall under this category. Let’s say they add custom categories finally and add it to a premium tier and the normal categories for free account. That’s not something i’d object to but it is an extension of an “Existing” feature.

*** I know a lot of people would object to this being a paid feature but i think the split would probably be 50/50 between us all.

Oh I have no doubt that would be the case, but some ideas shouldn’t even make it that far up in the chain to begin with.

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I agree with you entirely, but at what point does it become a bit of a witch hunt seeing as every single thread about Plus has had a number of comments about the fact people aren’t happy about the paywalling etc. Me being one of them.

We’ve made our points repetitively clear over certain Plus ideas, so I’m just saying that maybe we should give Monzo a chance to make things right on this 3rd (and likely the last if it’s not right) occasion knowing they’ve acknowledged what concerns we’ve already raised time and time again over the same things.

After all, we ultimately have the power so if they don’t get it right then we will go elsewhere, as much as a shame it might be like you say, it’s unfortunately the way the cookie crumbles in these situations :man_shrugging:

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I believe from talks and posts here that packaged accounts were one of the main reasons cited in market research for not going full Monzo.

Look forward to when the new Monzo plus launches :rocket:

Also like the fact that you read every single comment must take a good while but shows the dedication right there! Thanks Monzo :innocent:

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