O2/Monzo Student Offer

Presumably it won’t last forever anyway as I believe tom said last night that the intention is to cease new prepaid card signups in the next 4-6 weeks(ish)

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For me what pisses me off is the precedent this sets. Monzo present themselves as a consumer-centric company but yet are happy to con their customers into signing up with a company with totally opposite morals and ethics.

Also I’d be curious how this would plan out if we had the marketplace and the ads in the feed. Let’s assume they’ve got a system that compares mobile plans and suggests better one similar to the recent Bulb (energy) offer. Would they still advise you to leave for a competing telco if you signed up through such an offer? :joy:

That is correct :slight_smile:

I don’t see how it has anything to do with existing monzo customers, they aren’t trying to sell you or con you into buying an o2 contract its totally one way traffic (o2 → monzo) not the other way round.

Not really conning monzo customers is it.

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True, I might have spoke too soon there, but still it worries me that Monzo will make more deals with such “legacy” (to be nice) companies in the future.

I think the issue is that in every sector pretty much every big player is legacy so they’ve gotta choose their battles.

For example, if you’re gonna purchase advertising then its no good going for the little player because they don’t own the massive billboards.

Having said that I do respect companies that have an ethical stance, maybe for example partnering with cooperatives or even employee-owned mutuals (john lewis is probably a bad example) would be better.

Would there be so much objection (for all of those that objected on here) if the company was giffgaff (still essentially o2 but with a lot more customer involvement)? Just gauging opinions

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Personally no, whether O2, Giffgaff, Three, etc - any company that has contracts inherently has something to hide and uses contracts to keep the customers once the lies are discovered. If they products were so good why would they need contracts in the first place?

Monzo doesn’t have any contracts and people are fighting (see the weeks-long queue) for it. Why can’t mobile plans be the same?

(@anon4562461: I did not link to any MSE pages)

In terms of the O2/Monzo promotion, I understand why they’d do this. Banks have traditionally targetted young people as once someone has a bank account, they’re unlikely to change banks for some time, if at all.

Anyone remember NatWest piggy banks? I think Midland Bank gave you a “back to school” pencil case etc.? Memory a bit hazy on that one.

I am on Three and use my card

I don’t think contracts are inherently bad – I’m reasonably happy to be on a 12 month contract for FTTC, because I’m aware that there’s a non-zero set-up cost on Openreach’s end.

Whether there’s a similar defense for mobile contracts, I am unsure.

FTTC is a bit different though. In the case of a SIM it takes seconds to provision one, there’s zero reason for a contract in this case.

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I tried getting a monthly recurring contract and it didn’t accept the card. But then again it didn’t accept my Santander account either :woman_shrugging:t2: I now use Pay as you go while I’m overseas, will switch back to giffgaff when I stop bouncing about countries.

If Monzo never partnered with any companies that had ever had issues with customer service then there wouldn’t be many potential partners left :smile:

Individuals’ opinions on different companies will vary wildly. For example, I’m sure some people here wouldn’t touch Virgin Media with a bargepole, but I’ve been a customer of theirs for years and have no desire to switch to BT or any the other broadband providers.

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The same, before I enter into a contract like that I calculate the final cost and alternative options i.e. recently got a new iPhone, essentially the same cost whether I bought the iphone outright then had a rolling 1 month contract but chose to spread the cost of the phone out over a 24 month contract because I didn’t feel like paying the upfront cost.

Ultimately this country has a lot of competition in communications sectors (far better than most), If you don’t like one pick another, it’s ultimately your right to sign up or not, nobody forces anyone.

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Have you tried to leave yet? :stuck_out_tongue: That’s when they tried to screw me, pretty reasonable service and price throughout my contract if you ignore the lack of IPv6 and poor upload speeds.

Anyway, this is somewhat off-topic at this point now, apologies @maxjwalker!

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Three is dreadful for that, unless you enjoy spending ages on the phone with a overseas call centre discussing what they can offer you to stay

its ok @adam.williams, I’m going off topic too

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I’m not a fan of O2’s customer service but I’ve not had a problem with giffgaff at all that needed me to call in, their forum is really active and the site is easy to navigate as well. I’d say I prefer giffgaff to O2.

I think it’s difficult to please everyone, I personally like amazon since it’s a breeze to shop on there + their customer service is always on point, but some people are staunchly against it. I’d love an Amazon integration, but others wouldn’t. Just looking at all the contentious topics for this week, they seem to revolve around the future marketplace/ads.

I think people are understandably anxious about ads being mixed with somewhere that handles financial services, but we’ll have to see how Monzo plans to introduce these things and their reasoning behind it. Some people were staunchly against the Bulb ad originally but after hearing the explanation and future CA layout they found it more favourable.

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You hit the nail on the head there :slight_smile:

Back to the topic at hand. My view is as long as monzo at least has a little consideration for who they work with i.e. not someone who has just lost a load of data, who is dumping oil etc then i’m for it.

Taking it further I’d strongly support an ethical policy like the co-op bank (http://www.co-operativebank.co.uk/assets/html/bank/ebooks/ethical-policy/files/assets/common/downloads/349464_CBG_MKT88916%20(2).pdf).

I know monzo has this Our social programme but I’d be very happy if it was formalised more especially as things like lending are now becoming real with the implimentation of overdrafts.

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I think it’s coz it is a pre paid card not a proper account card?

Something that has just struck me is the approach of Monzo vs Starling.

Starling appears to be working with other FinTech Start-Ups such as Tail, Flux and Moneybox (I think they’re all start ups?).

Monzo, on the other hand, is working with larger, established brands to promote the prepaid card as a gateway to the expected current account.

What will be interesting to see is how the conversion from a prepaid card to a full on current account will go, given that most people seem to perceive Monzo as just a cheap prepaid currency card?