Conscious a lot of responses so far, let me aim to add some organic ones.
This exact scenario happened to me back in 2013 when TSB had its 'moment" - unless you have lived this you can’t possibly understand how emotionally destroying this is. I had to borrow off parents, family members for the basic things using my back up account. All while I was moving house and had things such as rent deposits to worry about. Truly horrible.
Occasionally you’ll get a business banking COP to deal with a non business request.
Again with TSB they blocked the whole thing for one transfer. Everything, card payments, direct debits the whole lot. It’s rare, but it does happen.
I can only add that this re-affirms to me why I don’t bank with Monzo and where Monzo really really need to do better. It’s not acceptable to have only “chat” to deal with something as serious as this. Just not at all.
Regarding other points, absolutely raise a compaint, let them issue a final response letter and then take them to the FOS if you believe you have a case.
Banks do refer to this clause frequently in these events, and if information is provided as to why it’s relevant to do so to relevant parties, it is held up.
While I won’t comment on the specifics of the case, I do think that there can be better processes for handling these sorts of things.
Clearly the issue here is the lack of timely response from Monzo to your correspondence, and the unhelpfulness of canned responses which seem frustrating.
Agree with some of the previous users that it’s unhelpful to quote contractual terms and conditions as the reality is that modern finance rests on the services which banks offer. There should be a heavier duty on banks to ensure they’re getting the balance right, as the consequences are far greater than that between two contractual parties in any other relationship.
Oh absolutely, if the clause says something like “if we reasonably think it might be fraud we will freeze”, and they they can demonstrate that it could reasonably have been fraud, I guess it will be upheld.
My comment was more to the point that if someone could demonstrate that even so, if someone (perhaps a sympathetic judge?) deems the clause is unfair or creates excessive hardship, they would be within their power to nullify the clause and award something to the person who signed that contract; i.e. signing a contract does not mean that each and every one of its clauses is now infallible and unassailable law.
I’m a little surprised at how dismissive some fellow community members have been to this case. No, we don’t know the full story and there are often elements left out in these tales posted online - but based on the details presented it does seem that the customer has been treated in an unreasonable way and I’m inclined to believe the story.
Wow that’s dreadful. Reading through that thread is infuriating.
Bank’s need to have a system in place for this. A drastic action like freezing someone’s account should require several staff to immediately investigate, a personal phone call for reassurance, and a decision to be made within a couple of hours.
Just to be completely clear, they all do, even Monzo.
That’s just never going to be a thing. I imagine like most banks Monzo would pass this onto a specialist fraud team. Because it will need proper investigation, even if it’s a totally innocent matter.
Now, where Monzo are not quite the same is that in most cases, the fraud team would then ring and deal, but Monzo don’t do this.
As to the decision, it can take time. If it’s really un-complex normally it’s automated. For whatever reason, this one needed more investigation but as I’ve said before only having live chat is not acceptable for this sort of thing.
Over reaction for 2 days. This could happen to any customer of any bank. Regardless of what bank you’re with it’s sensible to have a credit card at least with another provider
It can, but what bank is going to put in such expensive efforts to help people who are committing fraud? Because those are generally the people who face these actions.
How many fraud freezing investigations turn out to be over-zealous freezing of someones bank account?
Obviously I’d rather my bank have a good degree of caution over fraud, but I’d also expect my bank to be readily contactable when said freezing has happened.
How do you differentiate between the person committing fraud and those whose accounts have had fraud done to them?
Just strikes me as odd that you get stuck in the same nonsense canned response queue for such severe account actions.
From anecdotal data, I would say very few. There have definitely been a couple of “Ooops, that was a bit OTT. Soz” types over the years but they seem to have been instant reversals.
Again, anecdotal data of the people that join here and have been victims of fraud, I’ve never seen one person say they’ve had their account blocked completely.
I had a fraud claim (sort of, long story) and had my card cancelled and replaced, that was it.
This is what sucks. The waiting, the over-friendly but almost passive-aggressive nature of the messages that have absolutely zero substance to them.
If this happened to me with Lloyds, I’d have been in the branch to talk to a person. But if you choose an app based bank, this is the risk you take. I’ve fortunately never had a CS interaction with Monzo that was this bad or would be enough to drive me elsewhere, but many people do and over a lot less serious things than this.
But this isn’t the full story here, so it’s hard to judge the facts and Monzo certainly won’t reply to correct it and post their version, so this is all we get.
Sure, an app only bank means you can’t pop into a branch, but it does not mean that we’ve all signed up to receive crap customer service. (And judging by those screenshots, the customer service has been pretty terrible.)
From my point of view, I could get by with just my credit cards for a couple of days, but it shouldn’t come to this, and not everyone has a credit card. I have a couple of other current accounts, but they don’t have any significant amount of money in (perhaps I could raid by first direct overdraft facility but I’m not sure if I still have it).
I really would expect that, when a bank freezes an account, they act to resolve the issue quickly.
Anarchist
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Actually, I couldn’t care less. If they end up going under because of an over cautious approach, or because of a laissez faire approach to fraud, I can always choose another bank. They don’t have to answer to me, they have to answer to the FCA.
Probably not as often as you’d think, systems are in place for a reason and while Monzo have been criticised in the past, as have many banks, the system is designed in this way for a reason.
It’s very easy to give sympathy to someone shouting loud on the web with one side of the story who chose to waste ample time sending essay after essay after already been told they need to wait, that’s on them.
Monzo can do better in terms of staffing for sure, they are always recruiting and will never effectively manage the queues they have properly. It’s a very “not my job” culture in most banks (first hand experience), and when everything is thrown to the priority queue, that queue then becomes as lengthy as the original queue. There’s no winning.
There’s also no telephony support as fraud aren’t customer facing at Monzo which is even more frustrating for the customer. Other banks have telephony service to resolve things much quicker.
People join Monzo and people leave fairly quick, especially if from another bigger bank, reward is low and benefits are menial and basic thus it’s a problem they will always face until this improves, but I digress.
Frustrating for OP - yes, 2 days isn’t much when my place for example is at most 10 working days if a review is in place.
At least they understand now not to have everything in one place.