I agree @danbeddows - I worded it a little too literal for what I was meaning to say.
My point was that @anon23935806 is talking about the outages Starling experience, yet his first hand experience (in regards to outages) has been perfect, and other actual users of the product are saying it’s also fantastic - So it ends up seeming like more of a witch hunt, than a balanced view.
@anon23935806 I get your loyalty to Monzo, and I have zero issue with it. I disagree that “downplaying” resolved issues are a problem though. If the issue is resolved… by it’s definition, it’s over. There will be very few people who are interested in the exact programming issue which led to an outage - Especially when it’s resolved.
For those who do want an insight into exactly what happened, Monzo has them covered!
Being a committed Starling customer, I tend to swing by this particular thread with some trepidation. Having said that, the current chat here good to read with flexibility on both sides of the argument.
I feel the outage argument has less going for it now than it had 6 months ago, but it still raises a bit of heat.
It’s a bit disappointing that some folk knee-jerk into picking holes in the Starling promotional initiatives. They don’t deserve that, but then again, this isn’t Starling’s forum .
I’ve no doubt that once Monzo start rolling out features, thus far hampered (I suspect) by the move over to current account from pre-paid, there’ll be more important Monzo-centric issues to discuss.
I personally still prefer Starling to pretty much any legacy bank . I prefer the Monzo culture to Starling but I am actively using both accounts on a day to day basis. I tried using TSB instead of Starling (for interest) but very quickly had a negative experience, they paid me £15 by way of apology and then I moved this usage across to Starling
Contextually both Starling and Monzo are excellent products for me relative to the general landscape of personal banking in the UK
I disagree that a resolved outage is by definition “over”. Unless the root cause is investigated and fixed, the outage is not really over and will happen again and again. In this case it seems to be that GPS are unable to run a reliable card processing service, despite being given many second chances. The correct course of action is to jump ship and either build one from scratch (a la Monzo) or use a different one (Transferwise uses Carta for example).
Same. If I had to choose between legacy rubbish and Starling I would definitely choose Starling, even if it meant dealing with regular outages (which I could plan for).
My concern with their outages is that a lot of people new to fintech will get burned by them and will never trust fintech again. They do not know nor care about card processors, or even that there are different fintechs around with different processors. If the “fintech” card fails them, it will be very hard to get them to trust fintech again, not just Starling but any other fintech, and this is why I’m complaining so much, despite not being a Starling customer.
Yet people have said their Monzo card has failed them on more occasions than their Starling card?
As almost every other person has said… Both cards have failed in the past, and are likely to fail again at some point in the future. I can’t stop you slating Starling, nor would I try.
I just think you raise some excellent points in a lot of other threads (which I agree with), but I feel you have ulterior motives in this one
Either way, let’s hope Starling and Monzo continue the revolution!
I feel like Monzo is making progress after each outage to make sure it doesn’t happen again; for Starling I’m not so sure, given the lack of details and the constant attempts to downplay the outages and erase any traces of them (tampering with the status page - seriously?).
If Monzo was still using GPS and had no plans to move away I would have the same opinions about them and would jump ship to something more reliable (Transferwise Borderless or N26).
Got to say have used Monzo since June 2016 and signed up for Starling around the same time, though they went active much later. July last year (the 5th I think) there was a “bonanza” of outage to talk about affecting Starling, Monzo and Curve (also use them) which prompted me to sign up for the status updates. Since then I’ve had little if no Starling outage but quite a few Monzo ones, in fact had a brief one on Sunday but as I don’t carry the Monzo card anymore wasn’t worried, Starling worked fine. Thats my practical experience of the two. Competition is just that, competition, I have both and like both but they compete for my business by delivering, so far Starling is winning. I like Monzo, but this is business, not personal.
Starling is definitely further ahead in terms of features, but that circle for ‘spent today’ as the default screen is useless to me. If you have days of no spending it doesn’t help you with anything, its just a big circle taking up the screen.
Yep! Useless to me too and even when you do spend I’m not keen on the pie chart it creates, but then I don’t care. I do care about DD, SO Apple Pay, it actually working!
Far as I can figure, there’s a lot of similar sentiment on the Starling forum. Plenty of ideas about making it more useful. Down the road, though, I reckon…
One nice thing Starling currently does better than Monzo is Payees. A Payee can have multiple accounts under their name, each with its own description.
Another thing i like is that, on Android, Starling has a proper Material Design slide-out panel in which to store additional functionality instead of trying to stuff everything into the tabs along the bottom.
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. I prefer the Monzo culture to Starling but I am actively using both accounts on a day to day basis. I tried using TSB instead of Starling (for interest) but very quickly had a negative experience, they paid me £15 by way of apology and then I moved this usage across to Starling
