Starling Feedback

Financial Chat Fintech Chat
82

I’ve had the app for about a week now and here’s my thoughts:

Onboarding went great and felt very slick. The ability to set my card’s PIN before it arrived was a nice touch. The card arrived Thursday after signing up late on Monday evening.

I opted to do a partial account switch where I was given the option to select which payments and Direct Debits I could move over. The flexibility was nice and was all completed within 2-3 days.

The app itself if very basic - I appreciate it’s still in beta but it feels half-baked. The chart on the home screen on shows a summary of today’s spending - not that useful if you’ve not spent anything that day. The payees list shows a list of people you’ve set up details for. I have a couple of accounts in my name and there’s no easy way to differentiate between them without going in to them to see the account details.

My first payment was contactless, which is nice to do as most banks insist your first transaction use your PIN. And that’s where the disappointment started. I was hoping to get a notification telling me how much I’ve just spent, or at least my balance… But nothing. I went in to the app to see if the transaction hadn’t gone through, but it had. Not a great start.

On pay day I transferred my salary from my old bank account to starling to cover the Direct Debits. My old bank (First Direct) processed the faster payment and said it had been successful. Again, no Starling notification - no biggee I thought. So I went in to the app and nothing… Panic set in and I double checked all the account numbers and sort codes, and they were fine. First Direct said it’d had gone through and could take up to 2 hours. I’ve never had a delay before but I sat it out… 4 hours later and a with a couple of thousand pounds missing I sent a chat message to Starling. They replied within a minute which was good, asking if I’d contacted my bank. I didn’t get any notification to say they’d replied so it was missed for over an hour. I replied and explained and gave them the details of the payment and they said they would investigate. Another couple of hours later I checked the app just before bed and the money was in my account. Again, no notification and no update from customer service.

Not impressed with this so far. But I know it’s still very early days and they’ve not had the amount of testers and feedback Monzo has. I’ll be sticking with it until Monzo launches their accounts and decide which one to keep, then.

3 Likes
84

Ouch! That doesn’t sound good. I have only used my card once (got it yesterday) and I did get a notification though. I have transfered a secondary account with a few DD on it, so far gone smooth, but the transfer is due for completion tomorrow. Will see how it pans out.

I have to say though their app is REALLY basic, is a FAR cry from what I would expect from a ‘mobile’ bank.

85

I had issues transferring money through faster payments from FD too. I did a test transfer to make sure the details were correct which arrived in seconds. An hour later I tried a more substantial transfer and 3 hours later it still hasn’t arrived.

Contacted in app chat and they responded quickly, but no sign of the money yet.

I’ll keep you updated…

First edit: talked to FD - held up for ‘fraud’ checks. Suspicious that two of us have had held up payments to Starling from FD. Perhaps the old banks are feeling the pressure from the challengers?

86

Every corner shop in London charges a card fee also, which can be quite frustrating. Equates to almost a 10% convenience tax for any purchase on card.

Edit: Clarity.

1 Like
87

Mine shows in the app but as I haven’t received the card yet who knows?

It did not show up in the weekly message from FD that shows my balance and recent transactions. Last entry in there is a transfer to :monzo: on 24th.

1 Like
88

I had transfers through Apple Pay to both Monzo and Starling flagged as fraud by LBG.

89

Well couple of transactions so far (both contactless) and not received a real time notification for either of them, which is disappointing. Takes a while for the relevant company logo to show against the transaction too and no map either.

Unsure of the benefit of the pulse pie chart thing either. It just shows that days transactions with, as far as I can see, no way of using it to do any kind of historical analysis, to show what I’m spending and where over a period of time. I don’t tend to go on big spending sprees with lots of different transactions in one day. Find the pulse graph on Monzo much more useful.

Faster payments do seem to be faster than my legacy bank however and have set up a few DD to see how it deals with that.

Appreciate it’s in the very early stages, particularly when compared to Monzo, but another gripe of mine is the lack of any kind of beta feedback forum or even process. Will keep with it to see if it, hopefully, improves.

2 Likes
90

An update on my experience with Starling…

Faster payments to Starling from HSBC/FD are anything but fast. It really looks like HSBC have decided to flag all payments to Starling for further review.

In the other direction it is instant. The payment gets to FD in the time it takes to switch apps.

1 Like
91

Now having used this for two weeks my review is similar to others

1 great signup process very quick and simple
2 card looks professional but very similar to a NatWest card
3 app is clean and quick
4 app positives over my old school bank is really only the real time transaction visibility
5 app missing all the extras which monzo deliver like budgeting and transaction category alignment
6 current account functionality a benefit over monzo
7 overdraft a benefit to some

4 Likes
92

Don’t forget the 0.5% interest!

2 Likes
93

lol c’mon Dave, you keep mentioning that & I get that it’s relatively high but -

2 Likes
94

I’ll do a quick update too:

What’s to like:

  • super fast sign up process
  • money got transferred from natwest very quickly
  • spend reflected on balance immediately

Mehs

  • merchant names are still too haphazard (some are all caps, some are not, some are a bit gibberish)
  • no map
  • very sparse on merchant logos - basically the spend feed looks a bit meh
  • notifications stopped happening - customer support said it was a bug and needed to reinstall
  • refunds to the account from paypal take much longer than to legacy banks
  • no targets
  • no labels/budgeting

Overall, the only reason I’m using it is because payments get reflected on the balance immediately. Hopefully Monzo will have their current account up and running soon because there’s little reason so far to use Starling vs Monzo or vs a legacy bank.

3 Likes
95

And that’s only if you have an average balance of £1,000 over the whole year (in your current account).

1 Like
96

I’m a bit ‘meh’ about Starling sign up process (edit: after finishing post it’s a lot more than MEH). This is random train of thoughts.

Date selector for my DOB was bad UX, opened on some December 1987 date and I had to click more times to get to my date than it would take me to type in 2+2+4 digits. If there was an easier way to type this in - I didn’t notice. Name details and address was ok, ish, postcode lookup makes everything easy. :wink:

Then it asked me to setup a password, apparently it will be asked when I make payments in the app. I set up awful password like aj7058B8ag1cTOIHu98P (that’s an example, don’t freak out). I had to retype it twice. At that moment in time, after I finished, I had a random idea that this password might be a bad idea. Will I really need to retype it every time I’ll make a payment? I probably shouldn’t have done that. :scream:

Then photo + video. Video recording was a bit off, had to take it three times to adjust because preview was not the same as video recorded, lower part of my face was out of frame. I made it though. :triumph:

Then it asked for my app pin, which I did successfully (pin is not as hard as aj7058B8ag1cTOIHu98P, it’s still same example, don’t freak out). BUT app just closed without any info. Hurray? :tada: :tada:

I reopened an app, all is there. I casually browsed through all options…

There’s no email address in my details. I think I didn’t provide it when I signed up for the queue, so how could it be there, and app didn’t ask for it during sign up process. Soooo, app is not sending any emails whatsoever that’s why it’s not required? I’m gonna leave it empty and see what happens.

I wanted to go and change that aj7058B8ag1cTOIHu98P password. It’s doable and easy, but I decided to keep aj7058B8ag1cTOIHu98P for now though. I’ll see how annoyed I will be because of strong password. I should have picked !"£$% chars too, make it aX%74D$@JopHbn1QlB06, that would make it a lot more fun to type in each time. Really, is it going to be each time? :scream: :disappointed_relieved:

I went further, ‘Manage devices’ tab, yeah, let’s see. And it asked me for aj7058B8ag1cTOIHu98P password. I was like, OH NO, I’m not typing this in just to see what’s on that tab. So I don’t know how Manage devices looks like…

Card tab allows me to Lock card, even though it was not dispatched yet… I clicked it, got loading circle for a bit, then Lock card toggle went back to disabled. What a purposefulness, right?! :unamused:

I didn’t find a logout button, so I uninstalled the app. I installed the app again. I got this screen:

I guess… “I don’t have my old phone” is the way to go. It kinda is that old phone, but Starling didn’t think someone can reinstall app?

App asked for phone number, got a text, verified. Now it’s asking me again to set up app password. The screen is reused from initial process (below), so initially I typed in completely new password (aj7058B8ag1cTOIHu98P FTW), but it told me it was wrong!

I facepalmed, guessed that I should have used my old password. I mistyped once, so actually had to go through it twice.

Then it asked me to set up app passcode again, I was, hell yeah. I put app code twice, but in order to finish setting this up it asked me for the bloody password again (I CURSE YOU, aj7058B8ag1cTOIHu98P!). I mistyped again once, but succeeded on second try.

Then it asked me for app code?! Didn’t I just set this up literally 35 seconds ago - it took me 30s to type in aj7058B8ag1cTOIHu98P, I’m getting better at this. I provided app code and I’m back in.

Oh my.

4 Likes
97

While the initial Starling cards feature the account number new cards in future will feature sortcode and account number

98

*Monzo - long day eh? :sunglasses:

99

A few things that are starting to bubble under with Starling:

1: Salary Payments dont show till 9 am ish on the day… This is supposedly being fixed…
2. Lack of Maps although i think this is a USP of Monzo
3. In order to get real time notifcations, if they stop you have to completely uninstall the app and reinstall it.
4. No MasterCard SecureCode

I have had awesome responses to the feedback and support ive needed via In-App and Twitter, on par with Monzo
I like the minimalist interface, as it can be too cluttered abielt its a bit too minimal…
Faster Payments are indeed fast, and easy to setup on the app.

1 Like
100

You did not read my post properly.

The original poster I quoted was talking about his Starling card and I advised how they plan to change what is shown on their card. What I typed is therefore correct.

101

My bad, I was thinking you were referring to the a/c & sort code on the Monzo debit card as the Starling one already has valid account number without sort code on it.
Long day for me then :sweat_smile:

2 Likes
102

I plan to test out Starling for a couple more months, but already prefer Monzo. I think the best ‘base’ unit to show spending analysis is a month, which Monzo shows with the graph. This depicts my pay-in at the start of the month and then decreasing balance as I spend, unevenly across the month, and even predicts into the future a best guess of when my balance will reach zero.

Starling’s base unit is a day and I’m already frustrated to open the app in the morning to be shown I haven’t yet spent anything, something which is usually blindingly obvious. So, although it must be fun for Starlings developers to see how many times they’ve visited Benugo for coffee in a day, for me it’s just not analytical enough.

This will worsen when I begin to have direct debits coming out irregularly throughout the month, whereas it already seems Monzo will cache this in a ‘committed’ spending target.

Finally, Monzo’s spend notifications are super fast, quicker than the receipt printing on the card machine usually. Starling’s are, erm, uneven.

I like Starling’s colour palette though :no_mouth:

1 Like