I think they were, I remember someone saying something. Maybe not quite as transparent as Monzo when things don’t work.
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Starling, if they post problems at all, ‘delete’ their statuses once everything is working fine. This means their history appears to say all has been fine recently. They should really keep them showing in the history and change the badge to ‘resolved’.
Naughty.
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In fairness, when the big banks have an outage it becomes national news.
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Got to say, this is one thing where Monzo outshines Starling: their transparency when issues arise.
Outages over the last three days and full details there on the prepaid status page for all to see, warts ‘n’ all. When you look at the Starling status page you’d be forgiven for thinking everything was completely fine, other than a minor blip today. It gives a completely fake impression of stability.
Also, how come Starling say today’s issue is resolved, yet Monzo say otherwise??
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also when Starling say it ‘only’ affected 20% or whatever percentage of people - does that mean that only 20% of Starling customers were using their cards at the time and 100% of those were declined - or - that the other 80% of people that were using their cards had their transactions go through - why are there 20% that are unlucky that their cards don’t work in the outage period ?
As far as Im aware all of Monzos pre paid customers would have been affected by the outage- however I think the notification from Monzo says “card payments “may” fail”
They’ve had issues (with GPS) for three days now. They removed information about this from their status page for reasons known only to them.
From a customer point of view, I don’t this this is as transparent as they could be.
That’s usually because:
- It’s a rare occurrence
- It affects a large number of people
With Starling:
- It’s a frequent occurrence
- they’re a ”tiny challenger bank”
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After hearing about Starling Bank via Monzo and with people saying one is better than the other I thought I would just sign up and take a look for myself. Side note: Its amazing that you can be signed up to either bank within minutes.
Starling initial impressions:
Setup is great. Its truly amazing that you can sign up and be out spending with Apple Pay within minutes while your physical card is being sent. This feels like the future.
App: The app has more features than Monzo (But I am not on the CA yet). However, for me personally I prefer the Monzo app. I find the layout and design better and Starling takes a few moment to find everything (but that could also be months of Monzo use). It will be interesting to see how Monzo deals with complexity as it gets more features added.
Customer service: In both times so far Starling have answered within minutes and were helpful. Their chat styles seem a bit more “formal” and less chatty like Monzo. But response times are far faster than Monzo’s.
Twitter support: Monzo in my limited trial are far more responsive and friendly. Starling are helpful but you can be waiting many hours for a response. (Side note: I asked them a question the other day and they never they replied at time of post. A simple “We don’t know/ we will get back to you” would have been ok rather than nothing).
Community: Monzo is very active and engaging the Starling community is obviously much less so. But no doubt will grow as they get more customers.
Transparency: One thing Monzo have got it right is when something goes wrong they’re quick to announce it and even explain what is happening. Its not just hidden away on a status page somewhere. Although I think recently Starling have taken to their forums on one of the outages.
I can see a world where both banks do exist. I don’t think they need to rival one another. They are both very modern banks but the initial impressions they engage with their customers in slightly different ways.
If you want your bank to be more like a traditional bank but with modern technology then Starling might be for you (I don’t say this as a negative). However, if you want a bank that feels less like a bank and filled with more emoji and gifs then Monzo could be the one. Some people may not want a bank to send them gifs when they are dealing with money, and that is ok. Other people like the emoji and gifs.
TL;DR: Both banks have pros and cons. Starling at present is ahead in features and Monzo support feels more personal.
This is only my initial impressions though 
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I think that is a very fair summary.
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I quite like how Starling ask for feedback on how they interacted with you when you “chat” with Customer support - just got an email from Starling maybe a couple of hours after I asked a question to them, asking if I was satisfied or unsatisfied with the service
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Yes I noticed that too. I wonder if its something Monzo will add. Or perhaps go one step further and integrate it actually into the chat window at the end of the support question (if its possible).
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Having now switched to Starling and very recently acquired my Monzo Card I can simply state that I’m very pleased with both apps
Unfortunately the recent outages have been somewhat concerning but as they where resolved quite quickly I was somewhat content
I can only imagine that both apps/banks will grow in size and expertise and with that more resilience
Waiting now for the Monzo conversion to CA
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It’s so true. I see people getting very hot under the collar arguing ‘their’ bank is best. I’ve both and find very similar, differing features and they will as they grow.
I like you find Monzo a bit more relaxed, but maybe the colour of the cards leads you towards that (hit coral more easy going, purple slightly more corporate) but both great.
I look forward to features being added. Cashback, Savings potsc save the change are all features which are gathering pace.
I do find that Monzo staff more being a bit more open when features are suggested. They come in the forum and actually say we’ll try that, or we’re running that now. Starling staff do appear, but appear to me to be slightly more guarded and reserved.
Both are coming on so quickly, give it 6 months and it’ll be totally different.
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Personally I found that annoying - I signed up for Starling quite a few months ago and it used to be that they would ask for feedback every single time. Given that it was a beta and I had quite a bit of questions and some bugs to report to them my mailbox was pretty much flooded with those feedback emails the next day.
An in-app feedback feature would be a lot better than email 
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I think at the end of a support chat there should be a quick thumbs up or thumbs down rating system or stars with an optional comment box. Something that takes seconds
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I’m never that keen on the ‘rate your service’ questions… several companies do that, and I’m always reluctant to reply unless I get patel from customer services into trouble, or affect his wages. Not his fault if the company can’t solve my problem… ultimately I rate by continuing to be a customer or not.
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I always think this too, unless it’s a really bad experience I usually give them a perfect rating. Sort of like Uber. I don’t want to affect their wages or anything. Does getting a good rating motivate them to be more helpful? Is that how it’s supposed to work? I don’t think it’s going to be a vastly different experience from person to person.
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On the other hand the issue with always giving them a good rating is that feedback becomes meaningless (and anything short of 5 stars is considered terrible and unacceptable). I remember doing some work on freelancing sites like Upwork/freelancer.com and everyone had 5 star - in fact being 5 star was the requirement for getting any kind of work and bribing the client to give you those 5 stars was commonplace.
Glad I don’t have to work there anymore. 
I think that’s how it’s like on Uber. For something like a movie review, you wouldn’t normally rate it 100%. But anything below 4-4.2 is probably fatal for drivers. Putting it on a scale of 1-10 would be more forgiving imo.
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It’s a worthless review system if everything below a perfect score is a fail. One of the reasons Uber deserves to be consigned to history.
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To be fair, it’s not really Uber’s fault - I see this behaviour all the time in lots of apps.