I think both you and @anon23935806 have convinced me to give Starling a try, and completely agree with you
You’re right about the Revolut forums being a war zone and their CS is nowhere near Monzo as my friend has had some trouble recently when using their card and they took quite a while in resolving her issue, good thing I told her about getting Monzo before hand
FYI I’ve tweeted Starling about Foreign ATM fees and they said that they do not have any plans to charge foreign ATM fees as of yet
As for N26, they were due to come over last year but backed out circa November, however I think they’re going to launch again sooner rather than later as they are looking for a country manager here in the UK
So starling have caved and started sending spammy notifications in the app - just received one telling me to add my card to apple pay. This is exactly what I don’t want from notifications and I usually end up turning them off for apps that do it.
I want notifications for things that are important.
Why would I be joking? I give almost nothing the chance to wake my display up, I want important things only as it is distracting. So random ‘let’s keep everyone attached to our app’ type notifications are completely unwelcome. The science of this is insidious: http://www.timewellspent.io
Starling and Monzo have both frustrated me this past month
Monzo for refunding and then taking money again - similar to threads on southwest trains/TFL but with another company. When i queried it in the app, i was told it happens all the time with every other bank “you just dont know whats going on usually”. Thought it was a bit dismissive - and i’ve never had pay>refunded>pay again from any bank.
Starling for a fair bit, because they still haven’t fixed or updated on lots…
Touch id log in is completely hit and miss - sometimes it asks sometimes it doesn’t. The options are still switched off in any case - seriously why give us a choice to then ignore it and do what you want anyway?! (monzo wins with this hands down). The only difference i’ve noticed since i think it had an update is that it does ask more (but still randomly) and it’s now twice as irritating as it was.
The pulse fault where it doesn’t always update is still knocking around - so i get notifications i’ve spent but that then doesn’t always list in the app itself right away.
I’ve also had another transaction which failed to show for several days (the last one being a few weeks back). When I raised this time they say they did receive auth but just didnt show anything relating to it. Initially it was a card check but they didnt show anything about it. Though they did show a card check for someone else the following day, so it’s not clear how they pick and choose what to show. It feels unreliable. (tried monzo in all the places starling has had issues and it has worked with them all flawlessly). When it happens this also makes the pulse pointless because ‘spent today’ can be totally wrong.
It’s telling me I have the wrong password to view statements/payments/ to access areas of the site, but happily accepted the same one in another section of the site. Why not also use touch id - seems poorly thought out. Plus its now asking for touch ID more (despite being switched off) and then also wants a password for various functionality - example adding a picture to a payment needs a password. Its total overkill and cant see how it was tested because its beyond irritating.
Just found it really buggy this last month with little progress on the things that have been reported and some things which i think show lack of attention to detail.
They are really hit and miss - apple pay implementation was really good, the card locking options seem great, but then you get stuff like above and there’s other minor bits which just show lack of attention to detail.
To explain this further: Monzo (and Starling, I believe) show your transactions as soon as they get an authorisation request from the merchant. At that point it appears in the transaction list and affects your balance. But while it’s been committed, the money doesn’t actually transfer out of your account for another couple of days, which is when the transaction is ‘settled’. With a legacy bank, they only list the transaction once it is settled (though there is often an ‘available balance’ displayed which takes account of committed transactions).
In a few cases, a merchant (for whatever reason) will refund/void your transaction fairly soon, and then put through a new identical transaction some time later. I have no idea why they do this, but it apparently happens. With a legacy bank, you would only ever see the second transaction (once it settles), as the first transaction never settles. With Monzo, you see it immediately, then see the refund, then see the second transaction whenever the merchant decides to put it through.
I agree it’s not a satisfactory experience. I don’t know why merchants are allowed to be this sloppy, but apparently they are. Maybe in the future, by analysing the data they get from running all our accounts, Monzon will have some way of smoothing this out by predicting which transactions are likely to be re-presented.
@jzw95 What i dont like about it is that in the mix of all your transactions there’s potential for you not to notice and spend money you dont realise has gone, been put back and then comes out whenever again. There’s potential to go overdrawn or bounce other payments etc.
Incidentally who’s carrying the risk? Say i spend something, its refunded and i then withdraw it and theres no money left when they request again what happens? Ultimately yes i’m responsible but do monzo pay it and make you go over anyway, do they block it and the retailer comes to you?
It is really sloppy by merchants but from a customer POV its misleading because it means the account isn’t accurate until someone else does something beyond your control.
Longer term when monzo gets some scale i would hope it would push this thing as an issue or became hardline with merchants - process it first time or you loose it, because it essentially screws up what they are trying to achieve.
Monzo normally waits 7 days (used to be 5) for an authorisation to expire before “refunding” it, though it’s possible for the merchant to settle (take the money) the transaction much later than that. It’s also an issue with legacy banks - if you authorise you’ll see the available balance decrease but if you don’t settle the transaction in a few days it’ll expire just the same as Monzo (and your available balance will go back up).
Not really Monzo’s (or Starling’s) fault, it’s just shitty billing systems from some merchants that can’t make up their mind about whether they want your money or not.
I totally agree about Starling’s Touch ID implementation to be awful. If there’s a Touch ID option and it’s disabled I expect not to ever have to use Touch ID. Similarly if I do enable Touch ID I expect not to have to go back and forth to my password manager to copy paste a password. But worse, currently I get both - fingerprint AND password. This is what makes me prefer Monzo.
I saw that. It was one man, who is a Monzo crowd funding investor, who eventually got banned. So I think Starling and the community members did an excellent job. You would really give Starling a miss because of that!?!
Just to clarify, this isn’t Monzo specific.
The reason you have (probably) not known you have encountered this with your legacy bank is they will only display settled transactions on your statement - so, transactions that have been authorized, then presented and the money has transferred from you to the merchant.
Monzo displays authorizations in the app, and bases your balance on those (ie. what money you have available to spend, including all the transactions that will actually leave your account in a few days) which improves the customer experience - I want to know what money I actually have available to spend, right?
This falls down when merchants are lazy and don’t present their authorizations for timely presentment. because it’s just an authorization Monzo assumes that they don’t want the money after all, “cancels” the transaction and displays a refund in the feed. The merchant obviously wants their money and will eventually submit another presentment to get it, which will be displayed as a new feed item.
Monzo up for a refund.