Yep, I’d probably dump them too in that case! I remember applying for a First Direct account a while back and I didn’t hear anything from them for like a month. I emailed them and asked what was going on, and they said there’d been a technical issue with my application and I’d need to call up and have a conversation with them to sort things out because ‘it’s a secure communication channel’ lol. I know FD make you set up telephone banking pins and the like over the phone when your account opens, and I was anticipating having to go through that, but the unexpected addition of this hassle just made me pull the plug and tell them to withdraw my application.
Telephone calls bug me just because I don’t see how asking me security questions over the phone is any more secure than asking the same questions over a live chat.
Amex are generally good at this though every now and then they say that a specific question can only be answered by calling them. I almost never bother.
Does Monzo have a team that deal with customers with a disability/require additional support? It’s quite nice that Starling have this, but maybe it’s a perfectly normal thing that I’ve just never come across.
To be honest, I’ve never really had any issues with their support. It’s 24/7 cough cough, friendly yet without the need for bloody emojis everywhere, and response times have been acceptable (recently around 5-10mins, although there was a period a few months ago when I noticed wait times had grown longer). My NatWest and HSBC accounts’ live chat tends to connect me to an advisor more quickly, but with Starling it’s always a UK based team, which I do like because there’s no language barrier or miscommunication issues.
What was your negative experience with them in a time of emergency, if I might ask? I’m genuinely curious, because horror stories of fintechs normally scare me back into using a traditional bank for a while
When I’ve had to deal with a specialist team in the past to resolve more complex issues, I’ve never waited more than a few hours to get through - in my case I’d submitted a bunch of supporting evidence for an issue with a merchant via email, and the specialist advisor emailed me back in the early hours of the following morning to say that he had resolved everything as I had requested.
I wouldn’t say they do, not for the level of wealth that would need to balance it out. For every person putting in £100 a month to use Starling as a pocket money account, dormant accounts, people on lower salaries, that’s a huge swing to make £30k the average.
Ahh interesting. The report covers upto 31st March, and the stat you linked upto end of June, so I suspect average deposits have risen over the past few months.
& 
accounts 
