Now I’m not sure if this is a bug, or intentional, but it’s been mildly annoying me.
Since co op started rolling out online deliveries, that’s how I’ve been shopping. Their process involves pre authorising your card for the order total + 10% in case of substitutions, which is fine.
The issue is, when this transaction settles following the delivery, the amount is different to that shown from the pending transaction (which I get a notification for). This just happens transparently in app, with no notification or warning from Monzo that the amount has changed. Sometimes this can be more depending on the substations, sometimes quite a bit less, and I have to seek out the transaction to make sure it’s correct a few days after delivery.
Is this normal behaviour? And if it is, could we perhaps get some kind of notification or in app prompt that demonstrates the amount has changed. In the earlier days, the depth and triggers for their notifications were the standout feature for me, and this no longer feels true.
It’s intentional I believe that they only send 1 notification for pending amount, and they don’t send one if the actual price ends up being less or more
It’s the same for other transactions e.g. if you use public transport, they take a pending transaction for 10p or £1, and then charge the extra price. But you only get the initial notification
Interesting. Thank you. It’s been a long time since I’ve lived somewhere and used the likes of Uber or Ocado.
I vaguely remember back then getting notifications for the correct amount. But that could have simply been down to how the merchant processed them, as they could have simply refunded the pending amount and submitted a new charge for the correct account. I can’t quite remember if I was using Monzo or N26 at the time either.
If this is an intentional design decision, then I suppose this could be considered a feature request now. I’d very much like some kind of prompt to alert me to changes like that.
He came back from holiday, and withdrew money. A month later Monzo was casing him to settle debt as his account was in negative balance as transactions settled for more money than he had.
He had no idea.
Imho Monzo should send notification whenever account balance changes, not just when new transactions are posted.
I guess we don’t want notifications for any transaction changes… I.e. if I go back and add a tag or something.
Other banks don’t tend to have instant notifications, so it wouldn’t really affect them. In your friend’s case, @xnox, if it hadn’t been Monzo it would still have happened the same way. But I take the point that expectations are higher because of the way that Monzo works. Although I think that, if your mate was going into an overdraft, he should have had warnings about that?
Personally, I’d quite like notifications when transactions change value. I can see that it might be irritating if you’re away for a few days and make loads of card transactions - then get back and every transaction changes by a few pence. But on balance, I usually like to be on top on my money so knowing what’s changing is essential.
I suspect part of this is due to the (unsatisfactory, imo) lack of distinction between pending and settled transactions in the app. Although I understand from Monzo that pending and settled transactions (and therefore holds) are treated equally for overdraft and interest purposes. While I don’t really like that, the need to have different approaches in the app does diminish, I suppose.
I wonder what happens if you don’t have an overdraft and the value changes? If it’s like transport, I’d assume it would still be taken and you’d end up overdrawn even if you don’t have an overdraft.
I’m also curious how these will effect roundups too. It’s probably annoying for those too, especially if you’re the person who sets them up to have an even balance ending in .00!
You’ll go into an unauthorised overdraft. No one off fees for that, but you’ll need (I think) to pay the standard overdraft rate and pay off ASAP.
I’m one of the people that keeps the balance at .00 - it’s actually useful because if it’s not .00 then I know that something has happened and I’ll go take a look.
I also use IFTTT and Google sheets to calculate if the balance is >x.00 and transfer the pennies into my coin jar if necessary.
If it were me, I would be very peeved about that, especially if @Peter_G is right in thinking you’ll be charged interest for it, when a real time notification of the change in transaction amounts would prevent that from happening.
I’d probably even be narked if the only notification I got was to say I had gone overdrawn too with no other context as to when/how/why.
For me, there’s just too much confusion as a result of this approach, and I would have thought limiting the confusion would be better than the inconvenience of a second notification to update the amount charged, which happens anyway when merchants go to cancel the auth and charge a second time approach.
It’s always been like that for as long as I can remember and with all the banks I’ve been with. That’s no reason for it not to change but notification or not you’re still going to get charged if you haven’t budgeted for it.
For me its with pay at the pump machines when I fill my car or bike with petrol. It only takes a couple of days to settle and I can remember to account for that if I’m going to make an unplanned purchase between those days. I started to get into the habit of having a fuel pot which took money from there when I filled up as well - but for some reason I stopped. I should really look at doing that again actually
They didn’t overspend. After coming back they still had positive balance in Monzo. Then a week later they withdrew money to be at zero. Then more things settled at slightly higher values.
In was in the end less than £5 overdrawn.
At that point he was annoying and thought his account / card details were stolen as if it’s not him spending the money. And closed off the account.
Not sure about overdraft notices.
What I wonder now if I ever submitted work expenses with unsettled amounts and ended up out of pocket after business trips ending on the weekend.
That’s the overspend Ordog would be referring to. And his point still stands, your mate’s account would’ve still gone negative anyway, given the transactions settled afterwards.
In any case, wouldn’t the app have given him a notification anyway? When my account goes overdrawn I get an alert from Nonzo reminding me to add more money before the end of the day if I don’t want to be charged. Or does it work differently for unauthorised overdrafts?
I’ve definitely had notifications on my Starling account to tell me when my TfL £0.10 initial debit changes to account for my full day’s travel. I’m also using the Co-op delivery service and never get notified when the final amount taken has changed.
I am surmising from this that it is an issue with the way the merchant takes the money, rather than Monzo or Starling not offering the feature.
Thanks for sharing your experience! Nice to know someone else is having this issue with the same merchant too, I wouldn’t have expected too many people to be using co op’s delivery service just yet.
I’m no stranger to payment system that work in a similar way such as TFL as well. It’s been a while as nothing like TFL or Uber exist up here. I used to shop with Ocado and would be notified of changes, so this experience with co op is completely alien to me and a little bit frustrating. I would have thought the modern banks would be a bit more on the game with these things.
Might be worth me querying one of these transactions in app then, because of TFL is notifying of changes, I don’t see why this shouldn’t be too.
Yep, this was always an issue with legacy banks too, and something I’d have expected to be one of the many legacy issues that real time notifications would fix, so I am surprised these transactions are being ignored.
At least with foreign currency transactions like my Saturo subscription, the fee is greyed out until it settles, and warns me the amount may change, so it sets expectations for those transactions. Even though I’d prefer to be notified, nothing unexpected is happening there, but this co op issue is just a little too invisible for my liking.
Co op do warn me the final amount may be different, but because I don’t see anything in app to indicate this, or to show the amount had changed, it’s very jarring, and a good job I archive my emails instead of deleting them so I can go back and double check everything is as it should be. But having to do this just makes me feel like I’m back with Barclays.
I know someone previously (in another topic) suggested being able to manually adjust the pending payment to input their own figure to what it would be when it settled. That would open a whole host of other issues though.
Incidentally, I had an issue a couple of months ago when placing a Co-op order. It randomly decided I needed to verify my card when I went to checkout. Went into the app to get the auth code, and then back to Safari to complete the order. The payment went through, but the website crashed and the order was lost. Ended up with a £40+ payment pending on my account, with nothing to show for it. The payment reversed after 30 days, as I was told it would, but rather annoying nevertheless.
This same thing actually happened to me! Was quite bizarre. The order still turned up though, just no email confirmation, the pending charge was eventually reversed and still to this day I’ve not been charged.
They’ve had a few other teething issues as well that have resulted in free orders. I do notify that I’ve not been charged, but there’s only so much I’m willing to chase a company to pay them.
It’s a bit worse than that - if you were to go into your overdraft during that period, you’d be charged interest for the hold amount. Likewise, if you’re a Plus or Premium customer you wouldn’t accrue interest on that £40 if you were in credit.
