It’s not that. It’s just easier to drop it completely (because it’s the only option Monzo give you with Premium) than it is to downgrade the plan and keep the stuff I already get with plus.
I like plus and I value what I get from it, so I don’t want to, nor plan to, downgrade. Just that if I was forced to downgrade back to the standard account, I’d lose the stuff I have and don’t value it enough to start a fresh.
if I upgrade to premium, I will ideally want to get rid of it after the minimum term, and I’d do that, ideally by downgrading back to plus. But that’s not currently an option. I’d have to cancel completely. And if I did that, and lost my virtual cards, I don’t see myself upgrading back to plus again, given how much Apple Pay adoption is growing on the web.
I hear you but it does seem crazy to me to pay for something you don’t need and wouldn’t miss.
To bring it back round to Monzo, the bank is going to have to work very hard to justify Plus and Premium soon, such is the massive impact on the cost of living everyone is facing.
I have been swithering (great Scots word) over getting Plus for months. I’m always interested in new features so my first instinct is to upgrade, but I guess ultimately I haven’t been convinced that the features are worth £60pa (for what I would use, anyway). I’ve been wanting custom categories for a while so that was the main thing that appealed, but equally felt a bit miffed that now they’d finally arrived, they came with a price tag. But you know, I appreciate that these things take development time so figured I would probably hit the button at some point.
Fast forward to now, and my boyfriend and I are about to move to a new house. Budgeting and analysis will be more important, so it feels like Plus will be more valuable. I go to upgrade and—for once!—read the terms and conditions. I see two things that make me hold off, again:
Plus isn’t available on joint accounts, which we’ve been planning to set up with Monzo. And of course that’s where I’d really want the trends analysis.
You can’t change the Plus payment date. Today is the 27th, but I get paid on the 28th each month. I know a fiver doesn’t seem like a lot, but I use pots a lot and my main balance can get pretty down to the wire. It’s my general policy to avoid setting up regular payments for the end of the month.
I’m guessing the reason for (2) is that although the subscriptions are monthly, they’re also instant. They start right away, and if you cancel, they take effect right away. But if a subscription service is set up in such a way that it puts users off purchasing when they want to (even in favour of coming back later, because that may not happen—this is now the second time I’ve swerved at the finish line), then to me that’s flawed.
Btw, (1), in addition to the discovery that there’s no easy way to move direct debits from my personal Monzo account to a joint Monzo account, is making us reconsider the whole joint account idea…
You can’t change the day on which plus fees are due but it is the date you sign up on, for example if you wait to 1st of month to sign up to plus it will always be due on 1st.
You can’t CASS a single person account to a joint account or vice versa. So if you want the direct debits on a joint account, you have to do it manually.
I’ve just done the same and most companies let you do it online yourself.
And while Plus isn’t available on a joint account, you do get Trends for your joint account. You get trends regardless of Plus, you get graphs if you’re Plus.
Absolutely; which is why I’ve set a reminder for myself to sign up on Tuesday But I did that before and ended up changing my mind… Anything that causes the user to hesitate at purchase should be carefully weighed up by the product team. I wonder, for instance, if it would be possible to choose your start date.
But if I’m in the minority finding this a stumbling point, then it may not be worth the time/effort/admin to implement!
Apologies; I wasn’t at all clear about the DD transfer—I did realise that’s universal and not just Monzo. I just meant that because it’s already a bit laboured, not being able to get Plus as well removes one of the key benefits we want in a joint account
That’s good to know about Trends, and that does flip the gauge back a bit, but it’s combining Trends with custom categories that I’m especially keen on.
Really appreciate the extra info though, thank you!
Whilst you can’t switch a joint account into a sole account, you can switch a sole account into a joint account which you co-hold.
You can switch an account in your sole name into a new account in your name. This can be a new solo account or one you will hold jointly with someone else.
I am generally a tech enthusiast and, as someone else said above, my instinct is to upgrade to see what the paid features are like and if I have much use for them. I did have a bit of time using Plus on a free trial but as it fell on a busy week I let it expire and admittedly didn’t get full use of it.
Thinking on whether an upgrade would be beneficial for me, I have come to the conclusion the only benefit of Plus for me would be essentially the software - I’d be paying for software features (which is fine, software is expensive so this is a good deal if you think about it). No other Plus features either appeal to me or are anything I can’t get somewhere else for free.
For example:
higher cash limit - a quick transfer to Starling and all cash in the UK and abroad is free.
1% on balance and pots up to £2k - well, I’d stil be out of pocket with the fee, plus I can have my money in the instant access savings that also offer 1% on the free account.
Debit card colour - don’t care, I use Samsung Pay (via Curve) pretty much exclusively nowadays.
Credit tracker - lots of free apps offer that, or e.g. through Barclaycard.
1 free cash deposit - again, deposit at the post office to Starling and quickly transfer to Monzo.
So none of these added ‘life’ features are worth paying extra for, not to me at least. If I do go for Plus, it will be for the software features (trends, custom categories, Open Banking), but maybe also as an act of support towards a bank that seems to be going in the right direction in more ways than one.
As for Premium, we have a joint Nationwide FlexPlus account that, in my view, is unbeatable with travel insurance, mobile phone insurance, roadside assistance (the top level of AA, used it twice, works brilliantly) and free cash abroad for £13/month, sorry but no other bundled account even comes close.
Today I cancelled premium and then signed up for plus. One thing I was dreading was having to set up my virtual cards again until this screen popped up…
That’s good to know! If I get my card then I’m contemplating dropping down to plus as well. I don’t need the phone insurance anymore (applecare + now) or travel insurance (as I would buy more comprehensive cover at the time of travel).
Ahh wish that was an advertised feature! I’ve been avoiding the ‘downgrade’ for so long because I didn’t want to deal with re setting up different card numbers.
Now I’ve fully cancelled plus and reverted most things that used a v card back to the main card….
This is kinda true - the strings first turned up back in version 4.26.0:
<string name="vc_unarchive_button_primary">Unarchive</string>
<string name="vc_unarchive_header">Select the virtual cards you’d like to use again now you’re back.</string>
<string name="vc_unarchive_title">Unarchive virtual cards</string>
Then were renamed in 4.34.0 to::
<string name="vc_unarchive_button_primary">Get virtual cards back</string>
<string name="vc_unarchive_header">Select the virtual cards you’d like to start using again. After this point, you can’t get old virtual cards back.</string>
<string name="vc_unarchive_title">Get virtual cards back</string>
Then activated in 4.35.0 (or more accurately, the feature flag was changed somewhere between the release of 4.34.0 and the release of 4.35.0):
Is this live on iOS. I might go from free to plus (I used to have premium and plus before) and would like my virtual cards back and bin off Revolut just for convenience?
This I’ve not experienced personally, so I can’t answer. My current use case is considerably different, Android, Premium, VC’s in use but never cancelled from Premium… etc.
But the fact that any VC’s seem to be available (if not active) may be a clue that you can later retrieve (‘unarchive’) previously used VC’s on a paid-tier, once you rejoin a paid-tier?
But I did that before and ended up changing my mind… Anything that causes the user to hesitate at purchase should be carefully weighed up by the product team. I wonder, for instance, if it would be possible to choose your start date.
card then I’m contemplating dropping down to plus as well. I don’t need the phone insurance anymore (applecare + now) or travel insurance (as I would buy more comprehensive cover at the time of travel).
Pretty happy with the feature.