Trustpilot Reviews

I don’t bother reading reviews as I’d rather find out for myself if a product is shiz or not.

Doesn’t cost me anything when it can be returned so who cares.

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Amazon reviews have served me well I must say. I’d pretty sure I’d have been worse off had I not followed my method of factoring in review scores and the review testimonies. It’s a “minefied” of useful info if you’re able to use discernment.

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There has been some crackdown on ‘fake’ reviews. :+1::+1:

Also saw that there are same few of people liking every negative review I think they are really not happy with Monzo or just… Trolling

Screenshot_20180610-124923

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A lot of the people who have problems with their accounts being blocked and then post on here seem to have the same characteristics.

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If your bank account was blocked, would you be happy?

Of course. I just meant that those who posted with ‘poor’ english were likely to experience AML holds and post here and/or on TrustPilot. It suggests that their English speaking and comprehension isn’t great and that they are the most likely to be transferring large amounts between family members, countries and so on that looks potentially suspicious to an automated system. I guess the reduced ability to say or understand what’s going on with COps and others leads to increased frustration.

^ That is of course a huge assumption and completely speculatory. And is partly why I made such a vague comment and I guess why Monzo don’t want AML speculation on the forums.

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It may be those who are sending money home to families in certain countries are also more likely to be connected with ‘politically exposed persons’ and trigger a flag for that reason.

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Or just for the reason that the country or name is considered suspicious…

My wife has certainly had problems at some banks, which I can only attribute to her Arabic name…

The point im trying to make is this: put yourself in their shoes.

You’ve just opened an account with this unknowns bank. You have heard lots of great things about monzo, but you are nervous. It’s a new unknown bank after all.

Your account gets closed. Support doesn’t respond because they can’t. But you don’t know that, because you don’t know UK banking regulations. You feel like you are stonewalled. Your messages aren’t replied to for days. When you post on the forum you get told “support will be happy to help” (which seems patently untrue to you, because support seems to ignore you) before your thread is closed and “de listed”. If you are unlucky you get some snarky comments before the thread is closed, too.

And if there is a lack of proficiency in English, then I can see misunderstandings aggravating the situation hugely.

I think, given the circumstances, the behaviour of those people is perfectly reasonable and expected.

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I think this is slightly inaccurate. My understanding is that Support do respond, but all they can say is something along the lines of “We have to pass this on to another team and they will be in touch with you soon.” Then the next team isn’t in touch soon enough for the customer’s liking, and that’s why they feel stonewalled.

Broadly though, the rest of what you write seems accurate.

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If your account is blocked do you go and do a trust pilot review or just google ‘blocked bank account’ which will tell you the reasons why this has happened and why the bank aren’t giving any information? :woman_shrugging:

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Well, there certainly have been reports on here of “no response for days”. Those may not have told the truth, of course…

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Probably they’ve received the “We’ve passed it on” reply but they don’t count it as a substantiative reply. Which from their point of view is perhaps fair enough.

I’ll probably leave it at that now, I think this particular hair has been split about as far as it can go!

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You’ve clearly never had your bank account suspended…

The dread and despair is immense. If its your only account you can’t pay rent, food, bills. You feel you can’t guarantee that you can feed your kids tomorrow. You’d do everything that you felt would give you the slightest chance of speeding this up.

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There must be a way for Monzo to remove the “not verified” reviews, no?
I have just reported all the 1 star reviews in the last 2 months, I guess if we all do that they might have to double check them and make sure they are not fake.

if we assume these are real and genuine people who aren’t engaged in money laundering then I absolutely empathise with this perspective.

It strikes me that - without veering too much into political territory - the government’s policy of asking banks (and landlords and employers) to police various areas (immigration, money laundering and so forth) means that there is a lack of understanding generally about who does what. People may have varying perspectives on the police, but folk know they are there to uphold the law. With banks, I don’t think it’s well known that they are part of the anti-crime / anti-illegal immigration system. Money’s still emotive and personal and I think many people would consider it none of anyone else’s business where it came from (or is going to). Personally, I don’t want to debate whether this policy is right or wrong - the point is, I think, that there’s a lack of understanding that it exists, meaning mismatched expectations and anger at perceived overreach by, in this case, banks.

(This is, of course, assuming that these people haven’t all been correctly identified by Monzo as engaged in dodgy dealings, with assets correctly frozen and accounts closed - and who are now lashing out publicly. This is equally possible, but we’ll never know).

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I’ve just opened an account with an unknown bank and the first thing I do is transfer in £thousands, and then go on a review site and tell everyone the unknown bank has stolen my money.

Could be genuine I suppose…

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Someone wrote on here the other day that their account was blocked but it looked like HSBC did it, clearly they thought it was Monzo hence posting here.

Bet it’s all the legacy banks blocking accounts now Monzo.

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“of course I do. I didn’t know you can have more than one current account. And Monzo wanted me to do a CASS”

Everything is so spectulative here. We as non Monzo staff forum commentators/contributors have pretty much zero visibility and cannot be sure which complaints are genuine, and in the cases of locked account, can’t know whether they have been frozen justifiably or not.

With Monzo gunning for a US launch, I am pretty certain good governance and compliance of the UK operation will be a consideration from the US regulators point of view. Unfortunately for customers, financial institutions can be subject eye watering fines and sanctions themselves for non compliance with AML rules and financial sanctions, and many will simply err on the side of extreme caution. Maybe don’t blame the bank, blame the legislator?

To address @nanos totally legitimate point, I think it’s pretty important Monzo (or any bank) explain clearly, as much as they are permitted to do so, what is happening to a particular account, to alleviate the stress genuine customers are likely to encounter.

@Peter_G, you’re bang on the money too, regarding the burden placed on FIs to provide a crime prevention function to regulators and law enforcement agencies. Question is, by making it so easy to open and deposit, then freezing assets that fall under suspicion can you be more effective in catching criminals rather than just making ultra difficult to open accounts in the first place?

To me, of far greater concern was the message Tom shared with what almost amounted to a threat by a social media marketing outfit to promote or trash competition, for the highest bidder. It felt like borderline blackmail!

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