I think what happened today crossed a line. It was not only unprofessional, it was downright inappropriate in my eyes. Sure, on forums, we’re all a bit unprofessional at times. I sincerely apologise to a few people who feel I’ve not came across the best. Quickly typed, to the point messages posted from my phone on break or whatever don’t always best reflect the tone I intend. That’s a potential price of rapid response engagement, and we all hopefully move on together and grow as a community.
But this, this wasn’t some accidentally a bit poor-in-tone message. It was personal, seemed to reflect long-standing thoughts and just… snarky. I didn’t like it, at all. If she wasn’t the CEO, I’d flag the message… and that tells me something.
This thread has gone a bit bonkers. There is little point in one fintech start up (Monzo) trying to rubbish another (Starling). It does seem to be that way round…Monzo crowd much louder in anti-Starling noise than the other way round. Anne’s point ref Tom’s uncle is funny more than anything…Uncle supporting nephew, no brainer. To Anne’s point though, his starting team would be pretty clear from the word go (Monzo) and so yes he is naturally a little biased. Definitely a ‘declared interest’ in many places It’s nice to see though… but Anne’s point does stand . Still no need for this thread to pile in and make a villain out of her for a response with personality.
The focus should be on stopping legacy banks running away with all the new thinking from app only new entrants and then turning fire on to them etc.
I have a Starling and a Monzo account (no friends or family at either) and at present I score Staarling a 9/10 and Monzo a 6/10 with a Monzo goes full feature sooner than later. All this boohoo about the customer service with Starling is tiresome too, they are very effective and reply in seconds!! Play kind Shoreditch!
Anne’s response was unprofessional and too personal. I don’t think a CEO should be making personal attacks or trying to single someone out to discredit their opinion because of who they are? I don’t think it’s very nice “outing” him or constantly playing these cards to someone stating bare facts or simply trying to get an answer in CS. Fair enough if she was a random Starling fan, but she’s the person who’s representing the company. Sarah gave a very measured and professional response to all the dissent but Anne’s response was petty. Starling could have just said “some payments may fail” and left it at that? During past incidents the failure didn’t affect a huge amount of customers, but the lack of transparency upset loads. They took steps to rectify that but it’s just back to obfuscation again.
If we take away forums from all of this almost nothing happened. It is well documented about the lack of normal human contact that the internet (email, bulletin boards etc) causes. The lack of facial expression and voice intonation leave the reader with nothing but the written word. In such circumstances it is easy to be misunderstood and a ‘flaming’ war develops.
There was a project in 2007 that tested crowd funding and the wisdom of the crowds called My Football Club. It was long on promise and short on delivery. From a high of some 20,000 subscribers with voting and forum participation it pulled itself apart within 2 years. The experiment demonstrated that rage and controversy would always get higher post counts than sensible reasoned discussion. It also proved that the committee usually produces a slower and inferior product to a well managed group. See any similarities?
The question that I would want to resolve if I were the respective CEO’s is why people like Tom’s uncle and myself are dabbling with multiple Fintech accounts and how to turn that into some solid relationship that the majority of people have had with the existing banks for many years.
This thread is all about feedback. It’s about what Starling can change that will improve their product, based on customer feedback. Far too many people see this as “rubbishing”, I suspect the same have never worked in any sort of feedback culture before.
Have you even read what has happened?
That isn’t the case at all - as you can read directly above, Ian had legitimate feedback, as a Starling customer too. Where was his bias? His question was ignored by Starling CS. Then, somebody (not him) referenced the print screens of his chat log on the Starling forum. Anne decides to attack him personally after that.
Do you honestly think that is justified?
Happy banking I say. I’m sure you’re in safe hands.
I don’t think my intention was to be brutal, in fact, I just felt bit disappointed and do hope Monzo will convince me to come back in future. I must say I still believe Monzo team overall truly want to change banking for better. I have been a big fan and will wish Monzo well always.
I can’t say enough how useful all of this discussion is! Clearly laid out, articulate, well-reasoned posts that show what we’re doing wrong is exactly why we want to nurture this incredible community. The alternative is becoming blinkered, thinking we always know what’s best and ending up like one of the big banks in 5 years time. The same goes for positive threads too — both types get read internally by huge numbers of people (in fact, @anon91821566 actually talked about the Monzo > Barclays one briefly at our all-hands team meeting yesterday) and helps to give all of us outside perspectives.
tl;dr: Please keep feedback and thoughts coming, both positive and negative. We’re building something new and it won’t be perfect — I hope we’re always open about that and keen to improve!
I just can’t… How is it relevant that if @anon95680666 is “Tom’s uncle” and he is also using Starling that says that Starling is doing better?! I just joined Starling to try them out and really like some of their features (also the fact that their Android app seems to be ahead of Monzo’s android app). However, I’m really unimpressed by how they’ve handled the questions about the outage and the apparent lack of transparency… Also, that message by Anne is just mind-numbingly stupid and I’m really surprised the way their CEO has decided to respond to this…
@anon95680666 - This is precisely my biggest bugbear as well.
For me, as a customer of both Monzo and Starling, customer care and responding to questions is by far the biggest failing of Starling. It is not good at dealing with problems or responding to customer queries and complaints, either in its community, in chat or by any other contact mechanism. In that respect, it is just as bad (and in some cases worse) as all the traditional UK high street banks. It is an area that, in my personal experience, Monzo has been significantly better (although not perfect).
I’ve had significant issues using my Starling card abroad (such as in Turkey on holiday) where my Monzo card worked just fine. However I’ve had no issues in the UK, whereas Monzo has had multiple outages that have impacted my use.
That said, credit where it is due. To me, the Starling proposition feels so much more developed than Monzo at this point in time. It has Apple Pay/Apple Wallet support, and has done for a while. Meanwhile, other everyday aspects of the account proposition (transfers, savings pots, ATM support, limits, overdrafts etc.) just seem more polished and professional when compared with the Monzo current account at this moment in time.
But to be blunt - I feel valued as a customer by Monzo and feel that feedback and questions are welcomed. Despite the polished product, I don’t feel at all valued by Starling and don’t get the sense it values any of its customers or welcomes their feedback.
Today, if I could take the Starling account, and marry it with Monzo’s customer service and app interface, it would be a quite amazing personal banking experience.
It’s a shame because Starling could have a great product - their in-house tech is just as good as Monzo from what I’ve seen. What’s letting them down is a crappy third-party card processor (GPS) and relatively bad (compared to Monzo) customer service.
Got to admit, that forum topic about the outage on Starling escalated rather quickly
Wasn’t a fan of Anne’s reply and her post later on which was plain bizarre (https://community.starlingbank.com/t/gps-outage/2949/41). It wasn’t the most professional a CEO should do and was off topic too. Nice to know that @anon95680666 is @anon91821566’s uncle (hello Ian who’s Tom’s uncle ) but there was no need for that tbf and wasn’t entirely sure what was to gain apart from saying a relative of another fintech ceo is using a competitor’s product, it’s like saying the ceo of Santander banks with HSBC and appearing as breaking news on BBC News 24
In all fairness I had to use their support service once, and got a response pretty much immediately. It felt neither too formal nor too informal and the issue got resolved, so I was actually pretty happy with it.
But then I guess everyone has different experience, and I think I saw someone complaining about Monzo’s CS so, yeah, I guess it is tough to satisfy everyone and every need.
That said I am also of opinion that removing references to outages and then having such childish response from Anne does not leave you with good impression and it is something they must work on.
Maybe they have? Sarah’s response on their forum implies they have measures in place to reduce the impact when GPS goes down:
we were not affected in the same way as Monzo or Revolut and so we reported only a degraded service accordingly.
There has been an assumption made that Starling would be affected in the same way as Revolut and Monzo Prepaid, but none of us know that. I think these things are probably more complex. (I’m going to stay out of the conversation on Starling’s communications around the issue as that is a can of worms!)
. Still no need for this thread to pile in and make a villain out of her for a response with personality.
Monzo goes full feature sooner than later. All this boohoo about the customer service with Starling is tiresome too, they are very effective and reply in seconds!! Play kind Shoreditch! 
) but there was no need for that tbf and wasn’t entirely sure what was to gain apart from saying a relative of another fintech ceo is using a competitor’s product, it’s like saying the ceo of Santander banks with HSBC and appearing as breaking news on BBC News 24