Hi
On 1st May, I went on live chat to ask monzo to put my gambling block on. I have an addiction. They replied instantly saying yes, what do you want your cool down period to be? I replied in the same day.
It took them 4 days (5th may) to actually put the block on. In them 4 days I lost 400 pound
I’ve put the complaint in but I’m just wondering what people think of this? Is this their fault? Will I get some back?
Did Monzo support have to do anything beyond the gambling block that you yourself can put in place via the app?
I am not sure what the chances of getting money back are, it will depend on whether Monzo will find that they acted reasonably and without delay to support you. That said if the block they put in place is the same that you could have via the app then that might reduce chances.
Hi and welcome 
I don’t know if you knew, but you can turn this on yourself, the article below shows you how.
In regards to your complaint, I wouldn’t want to tell you what the outcome will be, you will have to speak to in-app chat for that one.
There are a number of websites, which I am sure you are already aware of, to offer support including
Good luck.
It’s not Monzo’s fault you gambled, they don’t state they’ll add the block instantly and you could have done it yourself.
I hope you’re getting help from elsewhere for your addiction.
I hope you are getting the help you need for you addiction. I can understand how tough it might be to stop yourself.
As the others have mentioned, you can turn the gambling block on in the app yourself without speaking to chat, and this would be almost instant. You do need to speak to chat to turn the block off again, and that will take 48 hours minimum to disable.
To turn on the block: Go to your card, and the manage tab, scroll to the bottom and you will see “gambling block”. Then follow the prompts. You can also search for “Gambling block” in the help section, where you will find a few articles relating to gambling support and Monzo (including a direct link to the gambling block setting).
I don’t believe Monzo will reimburse you for the losses due to the mulitple routes available to do it yourself, but that would be for them to decide.
I know, I said this? But this shows how, thanks for the additional detail 
I definitely feel that Monzo could have handled a sensitive conversation with a vulnerable customer with a far greater degree of care and at a higher priority level. They could have just replied with a link to the gambling block page like community members here have done and you could have set it yourself.
I do think it’s worth raising this as a complaint, to make them more aware internally of the effect their delay had on you here.
I wouldn’t hold out for £400. You might get it, you may well not. If I were you I would see that money - like all money spent gambling - as lost. Still, it’s worth raising.
I wonder if there would have been a complaint about Monzo not putting in place the gambling block - that the OP can put in place themselves, if the OP had won ?
Possibly not but I don’t think that makes it any less worth escalating. Queries from vulnerable customers asking for specific action around a vulnerability should not take 4 days to respond to in my opinion. Someone internally should review that case and find out what went wrong so that it is less likely to happen again.
I’m not sure that asking for gambling block to be enabled will instantly flag the user as vulnerable - I would hope not anyway.
People may ask to have gambling switched off for a whole host of reasons that aren’t around being vulnerable. Without knowing the conversation etc, I don’t think we can say if the OP is vulnerable or not from Monzo’s perspective.
Depending on the times of reply, some of the delay is probably down to the weekend, but it’s still wildly wrong that it took so long to sort.
Unfortunately, I think this is a case where the the user didn’t use the help articles properly, instead of them jumping straight to chat. Potentially an example where the help articles are actually better, and I can understand why Monzo try to get people to use them.
I think if the OP was at risk of losing further money through gambling in the near future - which they obviously were - , despite also wanting to stop gambling while in a state of clarity, shows they were indeed vulnerable in this instance and not someone who, say, just wanted a gambling block for a bit of security or something.
Whether Monzo asked the right questions to establish whether there was an immediate risk of harm and flagged it appropriately is a different question.
This is the key thing - no one has mentioned them being vulnerable except you, even the OP didn’t. They just said they wanted the gambling block disabling.
Monzo should have directed them straight to the place where they could do it themselves, instead of asking them loads of questions etc - then the OP could have enabled it instantly.
Are there failings? Yea, absolutely. Is the OP going to get £400 back from Monzo for not enabling gambling block in time? Probably not.
This I agree with. As I said I don’t think the complaint will result in a £400 comp payment. I still think the failings are worth raising as a complaint.
If Monzo didn’t just daftly put a stupid search box and gone “get on with it” then I’d agree.
But all they’ve done is they’ve trained people to go to help and straightaway search “contact us”.
Instead a much better customer journey would involve going straight to chat, with a clever (but not insistent) chatbot or context aware suggestions.
Open chat:
Hi, how can we help?
I’d like to enable gambling block please.
Have a look at this help article! Did this solve your problem? Yes/No.
No.
Ok, I’ll ask someone to get back to you.
That’s all it would take. But support seems to still be stuck in the TomBlom era rut and seemingly none of the C-suite even know that support exists/is important.
There’s options when you do “contact us” rather than straight to a person but there’s nothing that guides you about gambling block.
As a community we don’t always know the ability of the customer, and their vulnerabilities, however, they did seem capable to know exactly what they needed and when passing through the help section to find chat, could’ve just searched gambling and done it themselves.
Having said that, and being the bad guy as usual, I’d guess OP knew monzo wouldn’t respond straight away and spent the money instead, now has some form of remorse and wants to blame monzo.
This scenario was all a little too common.
