Potentially, because now I’m intrigued as to how people actually bank in the IoM!
From your own quote:
This is significant because looking through a number of banking websites it seems as though all/most UK banks consider IoM “international”, as they aren’t aligned with UK law when it comes to providing domestic banking services. This probably answers the question as to why the OP had to have ‘international’ delivery, as the third-party card manufacturers are already aligned with Isle of Man customers being considered ‘international customers’ and treat them as ‘international shipments’ regardless of whether you could just pop a Royal Mail stamp on it. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a regulatory element here of not using domestic postal services for international deliveries (but I’m reaching, I don’t actually know), as those third parties aren’t going to pay more than they need to in order to provide their service.
Monzo don’t officially support Isle of Man customers, as their banking license doesn’t cover them (again, because they don’t follow UK law, they aren’t required to be regulated by the FCA, and they don’t offer the FSCS protection, it seems) unless they can provide a UK address from which they can open their account, according to this post:
But anyway, I’ve created the IoM topic to discuss specific banking requirements within the IoM (and other Crown dependencies) here: Banking in Crown Dependencies
So, to keep this on topic, I still don’t see an issue here in terms of the need for a ‘specialist’ (or someone more knowledgeable), as a frontline staff member isn’t dealing with a cut-and-paste scenario, because it’s an international customer. I do admit that the visibility of all the different agents being assigned the case, wasn’t helpful (although it was transparent).
However, the OP equally could’ve given them a fighting chance in their follow-up (when starting a new conversation) by providing some context, because as a brand new COP entering the situation they were greeted with “So a card arrived today, do I have the correct card to activate” and they took a good stab at offering the exact advice needed about how to activate a card. I don’t think the support here was “horrific” - if I went back onto chat with EE following a conversation I had last week, I wouldn’t expect them to automatically know the context unless I pointed it out.