Starling Feedback

[nickh]

Click on your profile photo, and then scroll to the bottom of that page?

[admdly]

That’s curious, if you click your profile icon and scroll to the bottom do you not have an ‘Overdraft’ option?

Edit: @nickh beat me.

[j06 (Jamie)]

I remember where it should be, but believe me, as far as my app is concerned, overdrafts are a fantasy:

It doesn’t really bother me, I have no need for one, but it makes me chuckle that I was instantly offered £2500 (at 12%) on the very first day Starling offered current accounts, and sometime in the intervening year, it disappeared.

[nickh]

How strange!

[j06 (Jamie)]

I actually don’t find it strange. I find it fits perfectly with their ethos of being absolutely–in–no–way–whatsoever–transparent–by–default.

[anon4562461]

I voiced my dislike of the Starling approach to overdrafts before.
I get they encouraged people to use them and were not very clear.

Delighted to see they’ve taken that sort of feedback on board and released a more confusing version that encourages people to go into their overdraft even more.

Don’t think it’s confusing? One of their own gurus got the setup wrong on the forums. Guru.

[neovo]

I also am unable to get Starling overdraft despite having a 1k Monzo overdraft and multiple credit cards

[j06 (Jamie)]

@nickh

I wonder if Monzo can keep the 50p per day OD fee, if they increase the OD limit to £5000 (for example).

Tom makes a good point about people being emotional about money, and Monzo’s flat per–day fee being more tangible than a % rate, but the model does mean that larger overdrafts don’t bring more money in.

Having said that, there’s an argument I made earlier which maybe implies that with smaller overdrafts, there’s a lower percentage of bad lending (where it’s just not paid back) and therefore a greater percentage of Monzo’s lending overall is profitable.

@j06

Because Monzo do not earn more in charges by lending you more, there is no financial incentive to keep lending, and it’s easier to work with customers to help them bring borrowing under control, using the complex and advanced budgeting features in the app, rather than just throwing more money at someone who is sinking. There may well be, as a result, less defaulting on borrowing and a higher proportion of lending at the bank is therefore profitable.

It is an interesting debate.

[anon15594239]

That happened to me too.

I had to ask customer service for an overdraft which they did after a soft credit check

[neovo]

Interesting

Last time I asked they said it’s an automatic thing and can’t check

[j06 (Jamie)]

To be fair to Starling customer services, they don’t really know what the fuck is going on most of the time.

[anon45450634]

They are the only bank that offers free business banking for new customers, so people might switch their business account for that reason, then move their personal account when they decide they like it.

[j06 (Jamie)]

People might, except that the way Starling have engineered their bank, if you open a business account first, you’re barred from opening a personal account afterwards.

[admdly]

At the moment you can’t open a personal account if you opened a business account first.

[anon45450634]

That’s not a realistic scenario for an overdraft though, because your salary will come in, reducing the balance, then you will pay all but about £200 of it on other stuff over the course of the month.

When you consider that, your overdraft interest on Starling will be cheaper. On Monzo, towards the end of the term, you will have days when you are in credit so not paying the 50p.

[j06 (Jamie)]

The point was generally made because there is a lot of derision on the Starling forum over what is seen as an unfair and expensive overdraft charge from Monzo.

I was making the point that encouraging people to convert part of their flexible overdraft (upon which, as you state, they may pay 15% on debt for half a month, or nothing if it is offset by savings) to a proper loan (upon which they will pay 11% on debt for the whole month with nothing offset) may be viewed as unfair and expensive.

[zombi]

My wife didn’t have the overdraft option(it seems in disappears after a while if not applied for after opening the account). She Asked in app, agreed to a credit check. It was granted about a day later and the overdraft option appeared in the app

[Anzo (Andy)]

I was the reverse. Got offered the maximum overdraft by Starling on day 1, meanwhile Monzo won’t let me have a penny.

[alexs (Alex Sherwood)]

Yes I think you’ve mentioned that before

[Peter_G]

Apologies if this has been spotted before, from Starling’s blog:

As a new challenger bank Starling has not yet reached the threshold for publishing customer satisfaction scores, but with a user base growing at a rate of 20 per cent a month, we soon will be.

If their user figures are ~200,000 then they’re adding around 40k customers a month. Monzo appears (for now) to be on a flat growth rate of around double that.