Just had a bad experience through Monzo chat and would like to provide feedback in order to hopefully improve the process for others.
I had a 3rd party cash ISA through Monzo.
I contacted support because I wasn’t seeing the Monzo offered cash ISA option (as a premium user, the rate is much more attractive) and was told the reason I wasn’t seeing their option was because they only allow one cash ISA per person.
So I closed the old ISA, and after (money settled) still not seeing the Monzo cash ISA, contacted support again.
This time I was told that I should be seeing it, and perhaps we just needed to wait another 24h, for the options to refresh in my account.
Well, 24h passed and I contacted support again.
What I was told now was that actually, if you have closed a cash ISA during a tax year, you won’t be able to open a new one in that tax year.
“Sorry for the inconvenience”, and that was it.
So now I don’t have an ISA through Monzo nor can I get one for the rest of the tax year.
What’s shocking me the most here is a few things:
That rules makes absolutely no sense from a tax perspective
So if I had a cash ISA and decided to move to a more lucrative one, I wouldn’t be able to do it (since Monzo doesn’t support ISA transfers)
You could have just given me the full set of rules, rather than one rule at a time and watch me make mistakes that were irreversible
This left me incredibly frustrated because I still get flooded with Monzo emails about the new shiny cash ISA and the new ISA rules for this tax year.
I guess Monzo are probably allowed to set whatever rules they want, but there is no longer any need for them to take this restrictive approach (which was probably designed with old rules in mind). From the current tax year onwards new ISA rules allow us to subscribe to as many cash ISAs as we want in the same tax year.
Exactly the same thing happened to be (I am on a paid tier too) and will just (hopefully?) wait until the end of the week, otherwise I’ll move my funds elsewhere to a different provider.
It’s all made worse by the fact that I waited until the new tax year to see if the first party cash ISA would appear, then when it didn’t asked support and they said I would need to close the third party one I had and it would then appear…
The Government rules for ISA’s changed from this tax year (6th April) and you can now open as many Cash ISAs in a single tax year - previously you were limited to one, unless you transferred an existing one in.
So technically it is now possible.
I wondered if Monzo had made any changes to their rules, but they really should now, especially as they don’t currently allow you to transfer in another cash ISA.