Isn’t it ok to just be pleased with what you’re reading and say so?
After all, @hennie16 only arrived on the forum a couple of weeks ago.
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What are you on about? If I am unclear on what’s being said why should I be pleased with what I am reading and say so? Because it suits other people?
Him or her being here 2 years or 2 minutes have nothing to do with anything so why even mention it?
Even worse you are basically saying it’s ok to be incoherent (as far as I am concerned) as long as your new…Interesting.
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Sent feedback through the app but not sure if it is better suited here? Overall, I agree with most comments by others regarding the navigation. The back button shouldn’t bounce back to accounts unless you’re on the initial loading page.
Gas/Electric prices need to be tied to actual usage (form to enter annual/quarterly usage rates) to get accurate numbers, like MSE energy club does. I work from home so my usage tends to be higher than the average so I can’t estimate what my actual cost per month will be from the UK average.
Would like to see filtering/sorting for products as well. See by best price etc and filter by “100% renewable” or “no exit fees”. Customer satisfaction rates are important to me as well so (and this is a bit of a ‘like’ rather than need) it might be nice to see average customer satisfaction rates from something like MSE or trustpilot etc? Not hugely important as I can look them up separately but definitely part of my own decision making process when switching between services.
Thanks for letting me have a sneak peek at the marketplace, very excited to see it become part of the Monzo experience for everyone!
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I have just had my first taste of the market place Beta
- The idea is great and I realise that it is early days regarding the selection
- How will this link back into Monzo app onece I have signed up to one of the companies. It looks like all the signing and subsequent viewing takes place away from the Monzo site
- Please don’t just provide 100% renewable energy suppliers. I want the best most cost effective suppliers on the market to be made available.
- Credit cards
- Bank loans
- I would like to see the full-house on insurance ie car, house, travel, health and the important phone
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Hey, everyone! I’m Rich and I’m a Product Manager in the Partnerships Team. Thanks for all the feedback, we’re working through it all and planning our next iterations, which we’re excited to share. Please keep any more thoughts coming!
There’s been some great suggestions of different products you’d like to see next too, so many that I won’t call them all out below, but we’ve definitely taken them on board! If you haven’t submitted which categories you’d like to see next on the first screen of the Marketplace Beta then please do.
I’ll try work through some of the latest points (there were so many 
):
Thanks for the suggestions - the Financial Control Centre is certainly the vision @WillP79. In the short-term we’re working through the most requested categories, considering where we think there are great partners that can provide a smooth experience, and of course trying to build a sustainable business! We’ll continue to be super transparent about where we are (and aren’t, e.g. in the case of savings at the moment) receiving commission.
Interesting suggestion @Avishai, this feels like something we could look into once the Marketplace becomes more developed and we have enough users and data to provide a meaningful measure. At the moment we’re trying to use the most valuable measure per category - e.g. people tend to use Trustpilot scores to rank their Energy providers, but not for savings (interest rate seemed like the critical measure)!
I agree @ASKendrew, but when I did it I couldn’t think of a better way 
. Have you got any thoughts on how we could make it clearer / easier to compare / easier to distinguish?
Thanks @evangelskies, we’ve been looking into these kind of short-term / one-off offers. How would you like to surface these offers in the app?
The savings products won’t appear in app at the moment as we’re really very early stage as mentioned by Valerio! Are there any marketplace products you wouldn’t want to pop up as cards? For example - there could be a bills tab where insurance (like home and car) and energy live. And then the accounts tab could be reserved for investments and savings. This is something we’re considering - the question is how does it scale, can you pull in any of your accounts, or only ones that feature in the Monzo Marketplace?
I agree, there may be a challenge to striking partnerships if we’re cannibalising their existing products, but there may be insurers who don’t yet offer car insurance on credit that we can partner with, or insurers whose values align with Monzo’s and who would value a deep integration. Do you know of any car insurers whose values would align?
Are there any other measures you care about, or is purely the savings? Is Trustpilot score, or renewable energy a factor in your choice of provider? In terms of calculating savings, what information would you have to hand to help us calculate the saving?
This is something we’d really like to improve too! What would your table columns be for this @evangelskies? This is something we struggled over when designing the first iteration of the beta and something we’re hoping to refine. Someone suggested emojis to represent the different elements, e.g. 100% Renewable 
, Cheapest 
, Smart Meter 
but that might be a bit too much 
Being able to guarantee the ‘most environmentally friendly’ is surprisingly hard - some companies use 100% renewable electricity (when they can) and 10% green gas, some use 100% renewable electricity + carbon offsetting. I’d really like to bring some clarity to this stuff, perhaps in the first instance through an FAQ and some improved filtering.
This is a consistent piece of feedback, and you’re right that we’ll need to start asking you for more information to help us assess whether we can actually get you a better deal. The second iteration of the energy view will hopefully do this. One thing we’re testing is what information people have to hand - do you know what your KwH usage is per year off the top of your head? Would you be happy to switch based on an estimate if we narrowed it down using your house size, number of bedrooms and whether you think you’re a typical, low or high energy user?
Thanks for letting us know - we’re investigating!
A fix for this is in progress - it’s a quirk of us making it in a webview (and at speed), but admittedly very confusing!
This is interesting, thanks @mj84. Would you be happy to sign-up on mobile if we could guarantee (and label) that the partner site was mobile-optimised?
As Valerio mentioned further up this thread this is one option we’re strongly considering. The alternative is to simplify the process on the third party’s end, so still link you out but provide an API that pre-fills forms, initiates payments and does KYC. This would probably mean we can scale to many more partners, but admittedly not be as ‘deep’. Would you prefer the in-app flow but probably less choice of partners, or linking out with convenient APIs and a greater choice of partners?
These are interesting suggestions, and it feels easiest to track when people sign up for a service through the Monzo Marketplace (using their Monzo Card!) rather than asking people to manually find and enter all their subscription dates. A first step might be to ask people for their current usage / renewal dates when they’re using the Marketplace for a specific product category. Perhaps in Energy there could be an option like 'I’m not ready to switch right now, but please remind me when my contract’s up for renewal’ and the option to tell us that date, and perhaps some usage stats / current supplier. What do you think?
Good spot @Frankiejr - OVO lowered their tariff last Friday, and Bulb changed their slightly too. We’re updating the tariffs in the app as and the partners change prices on their websites, to make sure you see the same thing on Monzo as you do on their site!
Good suggestion, we’re thinking about the V2 interface for savings at the moment. Are there any other considerations you make when choosing where to save your money?
__
Thanks again for all the feedback, we’re taking it all on board and so please do keep sharing here!
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This sounds good. My comment came about because I don’t think I’d proactively use the marketplace after the initial novelty has worn off. There’s less friction and greater benefit to me going to, for example Money Supermarket.
Now, I don’t always remember to do that, so finding a helpful way of reminding when you might be able to help is key. (And I also worry that the causal user just won’t care).
So, whatever the solution, I think there has to be some level of value over and above comparison sites. For me, this could be a bit of up front effort, or some well judged nudges on direct debits - e.g. “you’re setting up a direct debit for British Gas. Would you like to answer some questions so we can help you find the best energy deals?” (This is a badly phrased example - we’d need something less annoying and better pitched to support the user, I think!)
I think the ‘Testing Marketplace’ is more likely at the Alpha testing stage.
A lot of the functionality that will be really useful to me as a customer has been discussed as future enhancements and so I am looking forward to those.
Clicking through to a Savings Account like OakNorth it takes me four clicks to get through to the sign up page. Then it says I have to fill in information and it will take me no longer than 10 minutes. Far too much friction and the ten minutes it would take me to sign up is probably not worth the marginally better savings rates I would get.
If I have £400 left at the end of the month, I want a pop up on the app to say this £400 could be transferred to OakNorth at ‘x%’ click here to sign up… job done. I am fundamentally lazy when it comes to things like this and am certainly not going to fill out arduous sign up forms on an iphone screen. I would also like it to be set up as a pot (like the sneak peak with Nutmeg we saw before).
Until then this just seems like a very limited comparison site within a banking app.
This isn’t me knocking it per se, as I am very excited where this leads. I just don’t think many customers will find this useful until a large proportion of the friction is taken out of the marketplace.
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No
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long term idea. If you introduce Euro accounts at some point, can we have similar marketplace options in Euro, for example life assurance in Euro to cover an overseas mortgage, home insurance in Euro for a holiday home, Euro savings to help cover expenses abroad, etc.
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I actually did know it… British Gas was charging me daily rate for night usage and night rate for daily usage. When they sent me corrected bill, I verified everything on my own. I wanted my yearly usage to calculate proper comparison with most interesting offers (there’s screenshot of my calcs here).
Yearly usage is probably a problem, unless you had to correct some bills, like I did.
What is easier, ask user for provide what is on the latest bill. Monzo should/could figure out that energy bill was just paid and prompt user to check&provide it with promise of doing the hard work for them? Some could find it too intrusive though, so prompt could only happen to people who opted in.
Usual bill has period it was calculated for. British Gas had terrible bills, they literally hurt my head, because they calculated some magical valued and corrected balance based on imaginary readings, between my real readings. Here’s an example of the terrible bill:
And this is an example of a more sane bill, where both earlier and current values were my actual reading:
Soooo, who likes first screenshot more? Everyone? 
it is quite clear that asking users to provide details from 2nd example seems more straightforward. Charge for day/night unit is clear, standing charge too. User has start/end values for meters, as well as dates. In my user case, user would need to provide 4 meter readings (day/night start/end), start and end date and night/day/standing charge, 9 values in total. Not too bad. Seems really worth the effort, if it would give me a good comparison. If it’s dilluted into 2 or 3 steps, making sure user is not overwhelmed, seems like something I would certainly fill out.
The first example, ugh… Whilst we need exactly same data and it is available, it does require some effort. If we take into consideration that each company has their own bill format, it’s not even easy to make instructions and requires a lot more engagement from Monzo user to go through with.
Anyway, once Monzo has 9 values following things could happen:
- Calculate what my last bill was
- Calculate what my last bill would be like on all other aggregated energy provides
- Display nice list, my bill vs real estimations of other energy providers
I would add some remarks about this being an estimation, not a quote or offer, so it’s really clear that Monzo only did the math for user.
No, I would not be happy with estimation based on bedrooms/house type. I live with flatmate who works from home. He works on multiple devices during the day, plus heating is on in the winter, so poor fella would not freeze (he is responsible for washing the dishes, it would be a huge loss). In the afternoon, we are running 2 monster gaming PCs and 2 or 3 monitors (ok, I have 2, but only because my desk is smaller, so I can’t fit three! 
). We cook a lot in the oven, baking is healthy and we are lazy, and what we don’t cook in the oven, we steam - I wouldn’t have a clue if our cooking is similar to other households. We are probably not doing as much laundry as family with a kid.
And that’s what I’m just aware of, that would make me question what sort energy usage happens in my household. To a point where I don’t know if I’m below or above average. I simply can’t tell. I know is that Southern Water says we use less water than average for a 2-people household, but with our one pot dishes usually oven’ed, we don’t really have a lot to wash, we don’t eat breakfast, soo maybe that’s why?
Bedroom thing/flat type. I lived in old Victorian building, 2 bedrooms. Windows were so bad that we kept them closed for 5 months and there was still plenty of fresh air going in (and heat going out). I live in a bit more modern apartment block now, still 2 bedroom, windows are so air-tights that sometimes I have more humid air inside than on the outside (and it’s 90% humid outside). But it keeps warmth inside really well. I had never seen a ‘switch questionnaire’ that investigates building type with enough to make a note/use of information like that.
I mean, all it’s based on is average and this average might be good for most people, because they land in this average. But even if I happened to be within this average and estimation was accurate, I wouldn’t know until I either dig into details or I switch based on good faith (brrr!) and learn what my new bill is. Apart from ‘how many bedrooms in your flat/house/else’, if I also had to provide low/avg/high energy user assumption, it would make me feel uncomfortable. I might make a mistake and it might screw up some fancy decision support system.
Only coincidentally related… I’m also that person who doesn’t trust ‘what phone is best for you’ popups on mobile providers’ websites, just because it’s based on arbitrary questionnaire… The right phone for me also happens to be always £1 under my budget 
Coincidence? I think not.
I’ll try do a mock-up this week! I have a few ideas 
@Avishai. While not really the point of your post.
You should save money if you change to bulb energy.
There are a bunch of ref links here in the forum.
Bulbs electricity is 11.994 and daily 24.558 for me anyway.
Most energy companies in the UK have postcode dependent tariffs so you have a different price depending what region your home is in. Therefore these quoted rates may not necessarily be applicable to all users.
Never understood what your location has to do with the price you pay
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Exactly! But apparently the energy wholesalers charge the energy suppliers different rates per region so they pass them on. Real legacy stuff.
I also think with petrol and diesel the national fuel companies like BP and Shell should have national prices instead of different in different towns and even different streets.
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@dww Oh, I did switch. My battle with understanding British Gas bill was the last one… I won.
Very true, but Monzo already has our postcode. An option to amend it if required would need to be included.
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I would like them in the marketplace too just so I know where everything is, perhaps under a tab listed as “one-use” or categorised like food, shopping, hotels, etc when more companies come on board. I see a similar offers tab in my legacy bank but for some reason I can’t access it properly on the app 
This would be pretty difficult to look at in a portrait format tbh. Perhaps an option to compare two products like versus. com does to avoid piling too many offers together. Usually when I look at offers my choice ends up being narrowed down to 2-3 anyway and I do not need a massive comparison table to look at all the products. or simply a sorting option like cheapest, trustworthiness, etc. that you can toggle between.
The app could autorotate between horizontal format and portrait format just like Handelsbanken UK do with their app.
I suppose the real question is will the market place remain simply a linking app to various out posts or will it turn into a Monzo specific version of Money Saving Expert type facility
All the advice to Monzo ie post code search, inputting KWH usage, etc etc steers towards a site that is not to dissimilar to the MSE ( money saving expert) site that I already use
I was hoping that applying for a credit card or loan or possibly a mortgage is done via the market place but with all my banking details already in a position to be transferred so that I don’t have to fill in forms or online applications
MSE by linking with Experian Club can now predict the probiblity of my application to a company using my existing credit history
That would be a useful tool to have as it would reduce the amount of wasted time looking around
So is this a linking app or is it going to be something that has all my details to hand thereby making applications simpler and more efficient
I find that I’m sceptical of most of the review sites now, they are too easily gamed.
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