The overdraft limit is £1000. Your total balance (including pots) cannot go below -£1000.
How a person slices that up is up to them. If they want to have a negative ‘main’ balance and then pretend they still have the money for that holiday in a pot then that is fine - but they shouldn’t be charged for it until they actually enter an overdraft.
You are just trying to play down my brilliant money-making business idea so they don’t use it - then in a few years you can propose it yourself and take the credit.
I’m on to you, Feathers.
It’s a hypothetical, I wasn’t going to pounce afterwards. All options are within the £1k true negative, but are presented to you differently and differ on how debt is collected. Assume they go Starling and don’t charge for using your money.
Starling does option 1
Personally, I’d like option 2 if it could be fixed to a single pot.
Some people may want to spend it all with option 3 (which would be justifiably 50p a day).
Can’t believe people are still going round in circles over this debate
It is what it is until Monzo comment or it changes otherwise
That’s right. Monzo is wrong.
Maybe so but people going round circles not adding to the debate
Quite. The logic is very simple, despite the endless scenarios posted.
Folk must simply be enjoying the chat, as it’s long past being of any practical value.
The money is yours → negative shouldnt be charged if overall positive → yet still limited by overdraft limit, not goal total. Simple…
(Yes, I like to debate, even if wrong)
That is a thing… I had it happen once. There’s even a technical term for it the bank used but I’ve forgotten it.
I had an account that every time my balance went <£200 I was charged overdraft fees. Took ages (and a lot of fees) to sort out, and the bank never admitted there was an error… just business as usual for them.
Pots are just the modern incarnation of that 
I probably would have closed the account
Still say Starling are encouraging people to go into debt.
Monzo can, and should, improve their wording but at least they try and keep you in control.
With the added benefit of making themselves some more money.
I note Monzo never did reply to my post here asking whether they would be willing to donate any revenues from this policy to charity…I’m sure a charity like StepChange would be grateful, and then the money would actually go towards trying to help those in debt.
Of course, I don’t expect that such a promise will ever be made which I think speaks volumes about the motivations behind these unjust fees…
Happy to be proven wrong though, @anon91821566.
Pots to me are a feature placeholder for interest bearing savings accounts.
So maybe the development to get pot funds to be considered by main balance is more technical, backwards intuitive or too short sighted??!
I’m going to sound crazy, and say it’s just to break even…
Either way, it’s not as if Monzo are allergic to charity so direct charitable donations from the company (opposed to fundraising) in the future isn’t unthinkable.
Yes that’s the crux of the matter.
Some time ago I did post my doubts that Monzo would be able to fully maintain their ethical stance in the quest for profit - @Simonb made a robust rebuttal to that but I am sadly not seeing it being borne out here.
Did you contact Monzo through the app or by email and pose your question?
I fear that there are none that has grumbled about this matter and actually gone out of their way to get an answer by official means.
Has anybody actually sought any actual clarification by in app, email or in person?
There’s a difference between profit, breaking even and ethics is altogether separate remember.
Amazon is famous for its low profit margin, cut-throat practices, and questionable ethics
Apart from this thing (I’m curious why this was raised so much later than when pots and overdraft first arrived), is anything indicating that Monzo are evil?
How? To both your points?
Well, I disagree with that first point - the goal is always profit and you need to break even to get there. Often, when push comes to shove, ethical policies, which tend to be costly, are some of the first to go if profitability is proving to be a struggle.
So far we have seen two attempts by Monzo at raising revenue, and I have issues with both from an ethical standpoint.
First, Overdrafts, and it is obviously this that is my concern with these and I am also not a fan of a flat 50p a day charge which to me feels excessive when it looks like Monzo are only offering relatively low limits at the moment (going by what I have seen on the forum) - though I do recognise that customers are able to freely choose whether to apply for an overdraft with a flat fee and there are alternatives out there. So my concern here is mostly charging those with a positive balance.
Secondly, the marketplace - this isn’t so bad yet as obviously it is still on limited rollout, however, if we look at the energy provider section Monzo are only listing suppliers that will pay them commission. Most (all?) other energy price comparison websites show both commission paying providers and non-commission paying providers. If this is an indicator of the direction Monzo are going with the marketplace then it will certainly not be a place that a customer will necessarily be seeing the best deal for them.
I’m not suggesting that Monzo are evil, or are approaching anywhere near Amazon levels of unethicalness - but Monzo do make quite a big deal about their ethical ethos so I think it is right that we expect more from them in terms of looking after their customers.
Of course, Monzo do need to turn a profit to survive but I’d hate to see any sort of slide into the ‘darkness’ in their pursuit of that which is what I think I’m beginning to see here.