This is the full exchange between me and Monzo on this:
Thatâs spot on Chris and think a fair exchange on twitter.
I imagine this is similar to ticking off âcustom pay periodsâ from the Big ListâŚ
I donât understand whatâs happening with Monzo in regards to the big list. During PP if they were running behind theyâd just come out and tell us but ever since itâs become a CA it feels like they are often being less transparent, trying to claim things are finished when they really arenât and then coming along and saying itâs V1 we will iterate. V1 really isnât finished, itâs just started Payee Management is definitely not finished and shouldnât be ticked as so.
I think the lack of response from Monzo says something and the âfinishingâ of tasks which arenât finished does make me wary of believing them.
They need to clarify what they mean by the feature being finished as their definitions are clearly different to most of their users
I can understand the V1 an iterate approach, and while we might complain some of these things are incomplete functionality, they did do what they said they would and improved things.
In the case of payee management they have not actually made any change here whatsoever, and have instead spun a tale about the existing functionality rather than admit theyâre not going to update the functionality during the big list. They would have been better saying itâs too complicated, weâll update it at another point and remove it from the big list⌠simply saying they have added functionality is misleading at best.
Whoever agreed the approach for today needs to have another think about what Monzo is about. It was a bad decision.
I think itâs completely fair that Monzo have ticked Better Payee Management off The Big List because they have done both things they said they would when they released the list.
Since they were working on so much other stuff, I think they only put things on the list which they felt were achievable. This looks like another problem with the Big List section headings making people think Monzo have finished improving that area (see iOS-Android parity).
Payee Management definitely needs to improve though - hopefully an overhaul is coming in the next month or so.
The issue is, both of those things were in the app before the big list was published on May 22. Thatâs where our issue isâŚ
I donât think Android had either when the Big List was published (I could have missed them though).
Android definately had at least the references. Found it in a thread earlier but canât find it now.
Retaining references for payees <- That post and then the next few down.
Maybe it only just got released for non-Beta users?
Just realised references donât seem to be stored for P2P payments which is disappointing.
Canât see it being the case, but maybe. Either way, it just doesnât feel very âMonzoâ the way theyâve gone about this one. Such a shame. Personally, Iâd rather they just said they wonât meet the deadline so they are going to remove it from the list and/or look at it at a later date.
But the only things they said theyâd do payee management-wise for The Big List were:
- Ability to Delete previous payees.
- Store previous references with payees (P2P payment references aside).
âImproved Payee Managementâ was the title of the section not a promise of more improvements than those listed in the section. So theyâre not missing any public deadlines for payee management.
But. This. Was. Already. There. Before. The. Big. List. Was. Announced.
If it was released to everyone before The Big List was published then it shouldnât have been on the list in the first place (and definitely shouldnât have taken this long to be ticked off). Doesnât change the fact that no public deadlines were missed though.
I give up. Iâm out. Iâve tried.
Please see this blog post from Feb⌠It was a function released in Feb on Android and not long afterwards to iOS (unless it never made it there - I donât have iOS, but that would fall under the iOS <> Android category).
I donât think anyone is disputing that - however you canât set a deadline for something AFTER it already existed and pass that off as an achievement.
Fair enough.
I was more trying to address the people complaining that payee management shouldnât have been ticket off the list:
(Iâm also pretty disappointed with the lack of further improvements to Payee Management)
Yes, it shouldnât have been ticked off - but if this was all that was going to be achieved then it shouldnât have been on there at all.
There were a couple of big list tickets ticked off already at the launch where they felt the minimum standard had already been reached, perhaps this should have been another of those. Minimum standard was all that was on offer this time around.
So to clarify⌠the issue here is the fact that this was already in place before the big list was announced? And thus people expected more?
I think itâs important to remember that the big list was designed to bring some lacking features into Monzo youâd normally find with legacy banks. It wasnât designed to be a list of enhancing existing features that much.
I do agree though improve payee management is the wrong title regardless, sounds like something big.