Previously corrected merchants showing in the wrong location

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but as of a month or two ago, some merchants started showing up with incorrect location information. The strange thing is that these are places that I’d previously submitted the correct information for, and had been corrected by the Monzo team. In one case, the merchant appeared as a different one. So the first three entries in my feed as one merchant, “Gannet & Guga” with the correct location, and the two most recent entries appeared as “Gannet & Guga Ltd” with a “somewhere in the UK” location. This issue also happened with Söderberg where the transactions all appear as the one merchant, but the two most recent transactions have incorrect location info.

Does anyone know if something’s changed on Monzo’s backend so that new transactions no longer match up with previous merchant information? It’s very strange, and Gannet & Guga took a back-and-forth with in-app chat to have the location information corrected for the recent transactions, and to sort out the split merchant issue. I first tried submitting the correct details through “Improve the name or location”, but after a few weeks it wasn’t corrected (even when other merchants I’d submitted info on had been). For Söderberg, I’ve submitted the correct details for the two most recent transactions using “Improve the name or location”, but I wonder if they will be corrected, or if I’ll have to contact support again. On the one hand I feel bad about bothering the support team with an issue which is not the most important, but on the other hand I spend time submitting merchant data because it’s useful to have them grouped and located.

Edit: This is also where having feedback as to the status of submitted merchant data would be useful. (I know it’s been discussed before, but I can’t find the thread.) That would let us know whether a change is still waiting in the queue, or has been rejected.

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Until I just had a look, I didn’t know that there was actually a comment from the team on this idea but here’s the dedicated topic & that comment :slight_smile:

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I figured that if anyone could find the thread, it would be you, thanks!

I think the scenario missing from Hugo’s comment is, what happens when one’s merchant data has been reviewed but ‘rejected’. I get the impression that sometimes the data I submit is reviewed, but not acted in. I’m not sure why this happens, and maybe it’s in my imagination. But this is where feedback would be useful, as in some cases I would then go to chat and explain why I think they should reconsider the issue.

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Hey guys :wave:
Ella from COps here!

Whenever a Monzo card is used at a till for a payment, we get basic information from MasterCard which we then cross reference with other sets of data and then merge together in order to form merchant groups (e.g Sainsbury’s or Tesco).

A review task is created on our backend if a till has been visited more than a set number of times, to make sure there aren’t any duplicate merchants or weird names. (e.g Sainsbury’s Brick Lane instead of Sainsbury’s)

Most of the merchant data appearing in these tasks is correct, however there are sometimes a few odd ones which need tweaking in order to display the correct information.

We’ve experienced a huge number of new merchants coming through - too great for us to review every single one of their transactions. Instead we have been prioritising updates to missing or incorrect merchant data based on feedback from our customers. This explains why in your case, even after it was initially amended, the change wasn’t reflected in your subsequent spend at the same merchant. The payment terminals you used the second or third time belong to new merchant groups.

We are currently working on making the experience a lot better for Monzonauts, however for the time being we have had to put a hold on reviewing new merchant data at the source.
If you spot something and want to contribute to making our merchant data awesome, please reach out to us with the “Something Wrong?” button at the bottom of each of your transaction, and tell us what we can improve for you. :wink:

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Thanks, Ella, for a really informative post. It helps to understand what is going on on the other side. I know use of Monzo has grown rapidly, but it’s not always easy to know how that affects different aspects of the service.

However, I’m not sure this is what’s going on in my case (or I’m misunderstanding the situation).

The two merchants I’ve discussed above only have a single payment terminal each, and it hadn’t been changed or switched acquirers (I asked when this first happened). So it seems that the terminal had had its information corrected in the past, and then in May or June, new transactions stopped using the terminal’s corrected information. But past transactions from the same terminal continued to show the correct info.

Does this mean we shouldn’t use the “improve name or location” button on iOS for the while? Is that what you mean by reviewing information at source?

Sorry, not trying to be picky about this, just want to understand what to do so I’m not wasting my or anyone else’s time. If I need to hold off on submitting merchant data until current account launch, or COps are up to capacity, that’s fine too. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Oh right!
Could you submit some feedback via your app for these two merchants please? I should be able to revert it back to the correct data set for you :blush:
If the merchants haven’t changed their till or their acquiring bank, it sounds like it may have been updated on our end with the wrong information. Sorry about that :confused:

As for submitting feedback, yes this is the right way to do it! Apologies I should have been more specific.
To submit feedback on merchant data, you will have to select, in the transaction page “Something Wrong?” then “Improve name or location”, or “suggest a logo”.

I hope this makes sense!

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Thanks Ella, I’ve submitted a help request for the Söderberg transaction in the app. The Gannet & Guga data was sorted out through an in-app chat with Michael two weeks ago (he was very helpful :smile:). At the time I assumed it was a one-off, but then it happened with Söderberg which is why I thought that maybe there was some more general issue with previously corrected data being ‘forgotten’.

Also related to correcting merchant information, the last two times I’ve submitted location details using “Improve name or location”, the details have been updated, but the map still just shows the whole of the UK, and the text underneath says, “Somewhere in 33 Simpson Loan, Edinburgh, EH3 9GG”. It’s like the details have been updated, but the system still thinks its a non-specific address (e.g. “Somewhere in Edinburgh”). This happened both with a new merchant whose details I submitted, and with Söderberg after I submitted the location again yesterday for my two most recent transactions. For the new merchant, I raised this issue with Sam on in-app chat yesterday, and he kindly sorted it so the “Somewhere in” text was removed, and the map shows the actual location.

I’m not complaining, just trying to give detail in case it helps with tracking down a bug or something. Thanks for your help!

I have some mismatched merchants but I gave up with support trying to get them fixed…

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Not quite the same situations as those above but over the last 6/7 months i’ve reported wrong details for a specific place multiple times yet they haven’t been updated yet? Anyone know how long it takes for Monzo to update merchant details?

Had a couple of others which were updated fairly quickly but this has been months and the merchant still has the wrong details!

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I’ve had that before, too. I contacted in-app support and they sorted it. I’m not sure why some submissions seem to fall through the cracks.