Scam Specialists - how long should it take?

Today while purchasing a car (well trying to) the payment was flagged as needing to be checked by Scan Specialists to make sure its not fraudulent

As I’m in the dealershop waiting to pay so I can drive the car home I called to chase the verification and was advised on what documents I needed to upload - great

Did that and waited the advised 10-15 mins for them to be checked

Over 2 hours after I tried to make the payment my account is still on hold, the payment is not approved and I had to leave the dealership so the staff could go home! (They’d already stayed way over their finish time while I tried to sort it out)

CS on the second call were useless, couldnt talk to scam specialists, he couldn’t/wouldn’t (not sure which) contact them to find out how long it would take and despite me explaining I’m literally sitting in the chair waiting to pay, and can’t “give it a little longer” with no idea on timeframe, he couldnt help

Does anyone know how long this process should take? We’re coming up on 3 hours so far

Nobody can tell you, but hopefully by now you’re sorted.

1 Like

I wish I was but unfortunately my account is still locked and the payment has not been approved

As above, hopefully you’ve got this resolved by now. I’ve never had this issue but can imagine how frustrating it must be.

Edit: only just caught your reply, sorry.

Monzo telephony service can’t just call other departments, it doesn’t exist,

Everything goes through a communication channel on Slack (think social media for business), or escalated through BizOps (customer account system). I doubt there’s been any drastic changes to that in 2 years since I left.

So the colleague was right in saying they can’t speak to anyone directly in that manner.

1 Like

Eggs, baskets. Never rely on Monzo to make timely large payments

2 Likes

Good to get some context on how the systems work. I use Slack for work too and said when I got home (woth no car) that if that had been my work we’d have been messaging on slack internally to try and get it sorted

The most frustrating part was that, it had been flagged and I called to find out how to speed up the process but once I’d uploaded my docs there didn’t seem to be anyone waiting to review them, especially considering I was on the phone while uploading them

Definitely seemed like the internal review and escalation process could be so much better, particularly when people are calling to speed things up - having someone on standby or dealing with more time sensitive ones

1 Like

The worst part is they don’t even tell you what the estimate is before someone even starts to look at your account, other banks have inbound call centres where you can speak to the bank if they’re worried your being scammed. Monzo is very poor in this area

1 Like

Everyone thinks theirs is time sensitive so that would put you back in the same position, calling won’t speed it up.

Have you set up the new payment controls?

1 Like

Yes this was the thing, the first CS agent said someone will look at it now and then it should be unblocked in 10-15 mins

The second CS agent said it could be an hour or it xould be tomorrow

Not overly helpful when it was already 30 mins past closing for the dealership at this point

1 Like

Yes, that is true, it would definitely help if you could speak to someone to explain the situation and get a faster resolution for those ones that are urgent like this when youre sitting in the dealership after it closed waiting to pay.

I started the new security feature thing but havent finished it, would it have helped in this situation do you think?

Update: we are coming up on 13 hours since the account and payment were blocked and still so resolution

Gone are the days when you can make large payments without letting the banks know beforehand.

I’ve was told (no idea if this is true), that bigger banks have a list of allowable and approved merchants for large payments (such as car retailers), but I doubt a bank transfer is treated the same way.

Depends on the bank. I wanted to make a transfer larger than the £25,000 daily limit from my HSBC Premier. Phone answered immediately and approved straight away.

2 Likes

It’s about risk and trust. Day one payments probably got held up but over time its score is appropriate to allow payments to be made with no concern.

It also goes down to the behaviour from the customer and the process leading up to the transfer being sent ie funds in from another bank and immediately moved out, Pots all cleared down before moving it all out, alsorts.

I suspect you’re one of the first whose payment falls under the new regulations which came into effect yesterday. Monzo can hold this payment for up to 4 days.

Bank transfers could be delayed for four days to investigate fraud - BBC News

A bit disappointing IMO. Monzo talked a big innovative game, and their approach to tackling APP fraud ought to have prevented the need for this sort of overzealous reaction.

Monzo are a notoriously slow bank when it comes to these things, and whilst all banks are going to do this to you, I suspect most will be faster to begin their drawn-out interrogation in order to approve the payment.

It’s a waiting game now I’m afraid. Not much you can do.

1 Like

The TL;DR from this thread is don’t use Monzo for large payments. The experience is so hit and miss (some people have been fine, others not) it’s probably an area they are not great at.

Granted new powers and all, but as with @mikez (and to be fair I think this is a HSBC thing not a Premier thing) If I needed an uplift on payments or to authorise a payment I’ve just made, I could call them in advance, or on the spot, and it’d be fine.

The issue isn’t with the delay to check things, it’s evidently Monzo don’t have a clear process for handling this.

Honesty, still can’t get how Monzo wins so many customer service awards. They must pay for them, It was never good and seems to have got even worse for the most part. Would be really interested in a separate thread of good news CS stories.

3 Likes

They’ve told us! They only ask and incentivise the right sort of customer who they are confident will review them favourably.

2 Likes

Finally got it sorted at 8.45am this morning, the problem is more how ling rhese things take, with no expextion given of “this could take upto 6 hours” etc

Being told to “wait a bit longer” or “theyll reach out when they are done” was not helpful, I’ve given all this feedback to Monzo so hopefully it doesn’t fall on deaf ears

2 Likes

The vast majority of people are not needing support. A large % of those that do, get to support because they are lazy/cannot read. So it’s easy for support to solve “I’ve lost my card” or “I want to change my name” and it’s a success story.

Then there’s the outliers like OP who needed support and had a bad experience. Tiny tiny %.

Maybe Monzo self select and don’t email people to vote for them if they have complained (I’m an example that this doesn’t happen) but otherwise they post on here, all socials etc, so they aren’t self selecting completely.

People will always complain about bad service. People rarely feel the need to praise good service.

This is only going to get worse with more and more restrictions put in place to stop people being scammed.

2 Likes

I was going to hold off on my comment, but as you’ve mentioned it, I’m going to post it.

(as context, I joined Monzo earlier this year, so I never knew what support was like pre-2020)

(also all times are in 24 hour format, and neither of these were classified as an emergency or anything like that)

First time I contacted Monzo support: Send my initial message at 11:59. 12:11 had an agent join the chat, and I everything was sorted out by 12:19.

Second time: Sent my initial message at 08:04. Agent joined the chat at 08:26, and everything was sorted by 09:01. (This did have some small pauses, but I’m ok with waiting, as I know it’s only a chat and not live.)

On the other hand, I find NatWest’s support really iritiable. First I have to tell cora that I want to talk to a human. She then makes me categorise my request (which tbf is fine, but still a tad annoying). Then, I get told “It’ll be up to two hours until we get your message”. Agent responds. I respond. “We’ll respond to you within the hour”. And that process repeats until my query is solved. And also NatWest doesn’t do push notifications to tell you that you’ve recieved a respone, they do it be text instead. (rant over)

So in my (albeit limited) experience, I would rank Monzo very highly when compared to my high-street bank.

3 Likes