Switched from Monzo to a legacy bank (Barclays) 💫

[Dan_R (Dan)]

@HughWells

@SC95 I’m really sorry you’ve had this experience and I’d like to thank you for writing such comprehensive feedback. I’m going to pass this on so someone can reach out to you over chat.

@HughWells Instead of reaching out to one person… why not be TRANSPARENT like you said you always would and publish when we might expect new things to start coming?

Nothing set in stone just an update to say “Hey guys, we’ve been working on X, Y and Z… it’s going great and we expect it to come in the next few weeks…”

We have nothing to be excited about… it’s all " it’s coming", “soon”, “we’re working on it”…

Just some updates wouldn’t go amiss?

Also been waiting 7hours now for an initial message back in the chat

[HughWells]

@DanRoizer

Instead of reaching out to one person… why not be TRANSPARENT like you said you always would and publish when we might expect new things to start coming?

The reason I’m reaching out to Sufi individually here is so we can discuss some of the specifics on their account.
I know we’ve been a bit quiet over the last few weeks but that’s been because projects like the Current Account have been coming to a close and many people have been on annual leave. There will be more news and blog posts soon but I’m afraid the reason we’ve been saying “we’re working on it” is because, well, we are!

If you have any specific questions I’d be happy to answer them?

[anon81274823]

@jd0n

I currently have a Nationwide current account. At the moment, it sits with a £10 balance and does nothing. However, it’s there if I need to pay in any cash, or do anything else I can’t currently do within Monzo.

I want to be here to whitness the whole revolution. I want to play a part in the future of banking. And being here from this early stage makes it possible.

I currently have a Monzo current account. At the moment, it sits with a £20 balance and does nothing. However, it’s there if I need to do anything else I can’t currently do within Coop.

I need a current account that works now. Monzo make it so simple to sign up that I have nothing to lose by keeping the account and seeing what develops

[Dan_R (Dan)]

I appreciate your reply please be assured this was not aimed at yourself, more aimed at Monzo.

I was so excited when I found Monzo, switched everything over… literally closed my old account with Lloyds…

But having now changed all my direct debits etc over… the app just… needs work… Direct Debits screen is messy and shows me no information at all its ugly… Income doesn’t really sit correctly in categories, support is getting longer (still waiting 7 hours later)…

Just feel like it needs a polish and sections updating to make them AMAZING

[HughWells]

@DanRoizer

Just feel like it needs a polish and sections updating to make them AMAZING

Totally agree! It is something we are working on in the New Year - it isn’t the most glamorous of tasks hence why we haven’t written a blog post about it. I know we are working on things like CASS, and that should be appearing in a few months as well.

[Dan_R (Dan)]

Whoop, one last thing… Targets? Will we finally be able to select a “pay day” so it’s accurate… then I will love you even more?

[HughWells]

I think it is another of those things in the queue to be done We have to balance the demands on engineering time from doing big projects to filling smaller things like that (which actually might require a lot of changes behind the scenes).

[HoldenCarver (Nick)]

This is a good an interesting perspective to hear from.

Indeed, some of the things you mention are things that are stopping me from making greater use of Monzo - that direct debits fail once is a big concern, so I only have one small DD on Monzo myself and the rest are still on my legacy account.

Lack of web access also became an area of concern to me recently, as my phone broke and I had to borrow a relative’s phone to access my account in the period before I got a replacement!

(Though, depending on how web access is implemented, I could’ve still been stuck, I’ll grant).

Android app still lacks targets. That’s been a big thing for me. Targets were one of the selling points that had me sign up for Monzo, and to still not have them is a bit rough. I know there were development team issues, and my understanding is that targets are being re-worked for iOS and Android so they don’t want to port over the old (exisiting iOS) solution to Android, but at this point it’s still disappointing.

While not an immediate concern for me, that there are no joint accounts has worried me, though from more recent posts on the forum it does seem Monzo now have a better understanding of why they are important and will hopefully introduce them in due course.

It’s easy to look at progress over the last couple of months and feel a little disheartened about where things are going, but considering that November was a huge month in terms of converting people to the Current Account and December is never a good month for achieving productive results in anything, I’m hoping that that VISIBLE progress will start again before too long and my faith won’t be misplaced.

Edit: Forgot to mention, I’ve already signed up to be notified by N26 when they launch, so that may well be the litmus test for me.

[jrmurray86 (James Murray-Ferris)]

I completely get this our previous account was\is with Nationwide and they have just released Pending Payments as well and they are pretty instant.

This has taken some of the draw away! I do like that I can see my DDs and Standing orders but the novelty of mine and the other halfs finances being shared have worn off and it’s actually starting to annoy me they aren’t more manageable or in anyway enriched. The primary monzo page says:

Built for your smartphone, this is banking like never before. One that updates your balance instantly, sends intelligent notifications, and is actually easy to use.

yet I can’t help but feel that the notifications are no longer intelligent, I get spammed with Direct Debits on the 1st (when the majority of them goes out) and there is nothing intelligent about telling me all of them especially since they have just the none formatted company names etc. Why can’t I just have 1 that says your normal Direct Debits have gone out Total: £xxxx

And then there is the task of having to go through and categorise all the direct debits because even the simple things like remembering the category of bills for the transaction!

I have been underwhelmed and I honestly can say I don’t feel the app has really moved on since the BETA of the Current Accounts.

My only ray of hope is @tom at the December meetup said they were going to try and get back to a major feature a month. I’m concerned though that with major features rolling out that means the minor ones (like being able to edit a Standing order!) will simply be missed

[anon70107404]

I A bank that reaches out is going to grind my gears. It’s such a meaningless use of words. Just contact the customer.

Anyway, being a Mondo prepaid card user since June 2016, I could only sing its praises. Lots of friends and colleagues started to get them, too. Monzo.me was fantastic.

Really looked forward to the current account. Got one early on. Was underhwelmed. Seemed to be missing features that prepaid had. I understood the journey. Tried to keep faith.

In the end, Monzo appears to have stagnated. Starling announces lots of firsts and hasn’t delivered. At least Monzo is honest and says their in beta, unlike Starling that is being a little smoke and mirrors in this respect.

So I did proceed with switching my legacy bank account from First Direct… to B …because they bribed me with £250.

I’ll switch back to First Direct as soon as I can. Excellent customer service and a basic but half decent app once you’ve fathomed and understood their ballache security measures.

Monzo, it’s a beta product. I knew this. I’m not prepared to go all in, however. I don’t know whether those that do are brave or stupid?

Monzo, I’m interested in your product but not much is happening. I’ll be looking closely at N26 when that arrives. The Berlin talk between the Monzo guy (Tom), the N26 guy and the Revolut guy made for cringeworthy viewing.

N26 came across as knowing what they were doing, focussed, making progress, on track.

Monzo came across as trying to make an idea happen but having little to show for it. A bit hapless.

Revolut came across as arrogant and aloof. Not an organisation I’d want to do business with.

My personal opinions only. I’m a little impatient for progress. N26 looks promising and I’ll keep an eye on Monzo developments, but nothing I’ve seen excites me enough to switch banks fully to Monzo.

[Simoore2]

Never knew that nationwide had this. I’m in the process of switching my main current account from first direct to them so that will be another benefit.

I can see some of the legacy banks slowly catching up with Monzo, I really don’t think it will be that difficult for them to catch up. TSB shows shop logos in the app, nationwide showing pending payments, B automatically categorises transactions… and they all have the benefits of having profitable and stable businesses which gives them time and money to out their offerings.

[jd0n (Jack Donovan)]

Honestly, having worked in a legacy bank, you should see how far behind they are.

Mobile banking is talked about as if it’s this new futuristic tech. I haven’t worked there since 2016 and litteraly nothing in the app has changed.

I don’t think they ever will truly catch up, they will all think they don’t have to. That’s why I think companies like Monzo, Revolut, and Starling will finish on top.

[spicefox]

I keep quiet because everyone’s view is valid, my personal experience differs but that doesn’t negate anybody else’s experience.

[timmy (Tim)]

@caspararemi

That, and lack of Apple Pay, but I know everyone’s sick of that coming up by now…

Everyone is sick of it… but that’s because we want it and I’m getting equally sick of the ‘it’s coming, we’d love to offer it to you, hold tight’ responses from Monzo over this. I have heightened expectations now this is an actual current account, and Monzo aren’t meeting them and I’m starting to feel fobbed off whenever I ask for something which is a pretty basic requirement of a ‘bank of the future’.

(And whilst I love that my Android cousins have got something first - especially as it sounds like there’s stuff wrong with your app - it’s pretty galling that Android Pay is a thing while Apple Pay isn’t.)

Add to that that I need to transfer round amounts to my Pot, I can’t automate transfers to it and that I’m not being paid interest… i’m just a little underwhelmed by the leap from pre-paid card to current account.

[rhyshort (Rhys Short)]

Thinking a bit on this, literally the only thing keeping me using monzo, having my balance be the balance I can spend, without me looking the small details of Lloyds to figure out how much I have left. The notifications are nice, but I’ve found myself not really reading them, its more, “yup nothing unexpected here”, or “Yay i’ve been paid.”

The stagnation has really started to get to me, targets on iOS have been there for a while and they still seem like the MVP. Christmas really opened my eyes to it the problems with it, buying Christmas gifts and food etc blew my normal monthly targets out the window, without being able to remove them from the overall target it very much felt like the usefulness of helping my every day spending was completely killed by these one offs. Categories go hand in hand with this as well, the current set are limited, for example Pets At Home, when I go to get stuff for my dog or cat, should that really be general, rather than a pet category? Category changes have been promised for a while and nothing has arrived.

Cash handling is another thing, without being able to pay cash in, I couldn’t close my Lloyds account even if I wanted to. I get that without branches there needs to be an agreement with someone to use counter services, but it very much feels like a big omission.

Long story short, if Lloyds changed their app for Available balance to be the headline balance. I’d be moving my salary back to Lloyds along with the direct debits I moved.

[louay]

I’ve also experienced similar issues and decided not to use monzo (except when abroad)

For me the deal breakers were mostly around integration with other services:

• I always use my Amex card to pay for everything (with a Barclaycard backup) and there’s no way I’d replace that with a debit card, so Monzo’s categorisation & budgeting isn’t that useful
• On the other hand I get all the nice features like instant notifications from my CC, plus apple pay & insurance & loyalty offers & points
• Using aggregator apps like Yolt & Cleo I can get insights on my spending across multiple accounts, more accurate budgeting, etc… None of these apps currently support Monzo

Unless Monzo replaces these aggregator apps or my amex (I doubt they would do either) then for me it’s one or the other, and I decided to choose the other.

I’m sure I (or anyone with a premium CC) am probably not the target customer for Monzo, but I hope one day they will have better integration with other products & services so they can truly become the cutting-edge bank we hoped they were.

[henrydennis]

I’ll preface with this. I am using android and so I am missing the Targets altogether.

I started to move everything to monzo just before Christmas. During that stage, I had another look at what Starling was offering and was suprised by it’s Goals and integration with Yolt. I have now moved everything over to Starling except my salary (I’m giving it a couple more weeks before asking Finance to switch it again.)

I really want Monzo to succeed but the progress is just too slow for me at the moment.

[NamesKieran (Kieran McCann)]

@SC95

I found Monzo customer service extremely slow and also experienced that Chat is not always a quick way to get in touch.
Complaints handling is just like a legacy bank even the responses are very corporate.

It’s unfortunate that you’ve had this experience from Customer ops, I’ve always had a good experience anytime I’ve dealt with them.

[simonb]

Wow… a pretty brutal start to 2018, eh? But all opinions are valid and we are listening.

I think it’s worth remembering our account is less than 6 months old, and migrating customers from one infrastructure to another is an absolutely huge engineering challenge. Frankly it would be amazing if we could focus all of our engineering efforts on user-facing features! Sadly, that’s not how it works, and our unsung heroes really are all of our people working on infrastructure and back-end work that means very little to the average user of the app.

We tend to set very high goals for ourselves internally, and internally we’re very proud of all we achieved in the last quarter - yet judging by this thread, that perhaps doesn’t line up with the sentiment of some customers - likely down to the balance between the things you “see” in the app and the things you don’t see, yet which still require a huge amount of work.

I do perhaps think that expecting us to have the full feature set of a legacy bank at this stage is a little premature. Particularly since, without having launched CASS yet, it’s still quite an effort to switch, meaning that those who switched already would generally be the people who are committed to and believe in our vision of a completely modern and new way of banking, with the understanding that we are still building this out to where we want to be

I know it may be frustrating to have to wait for fixes and features. We’d love to build and ship faster, of course! Hiring is moving at a rapid pace at the moment, so we anticipate more hands on deck in all areas to deal with some of these things.

Tom (our CEO) has asked all teams to present their quarterly goals tomorrow, so there may be some more details I can share soon in terms of what we anticipate being able to ship and solve in the next couple of months. I really hope that you don’t feel we’re leaving you in the dark - we do work very hard to let you all know the state of play, but the last couple of weeks of December tend to slow everything down, as is to be expected

[NamesKieran (Kieran McCann)]

@timmy

Everyone is sick of it… but that’s because we want it and I’m getting equally sick of the ‘it’s coming, we’d love to offer it to you, hold tight’ responses from Monzo over this.

Unfortunately i believe Apple is the problem with this one, I’ve seen elsewhere that Apple doesn’t allow Monzo to talk about release dates for ApplePay for some reason so ‘‘it’s coming in the future’’ is really all they can say about it. (please feel free to correct me if im wrong)