I’ve never posted here, but trying every possible way to get in touch with Monzo.
I’m supposed to be exchanging on a flat purchase tomorrow morning. I contacted Monzo beforehand and they said let them know on the day you need to send the money. Ideally, I would have sent it earlier, but my solicitor has only just sent a completion statement, and Monzo had confirmed it would be OK.
This morning I sent a message on chat (about 4 hours ago), and I’ve yet to hear anything. I tried call their phone line but was cut off after 20 minutes.
Getting very nervous and stressed, as the vendor already thinks I’m messing them around, and supposedly has a cash buyer waiting. I fear this will be the last straw if we have to push back exchange. How long does Monzo usually take to respond? I assumed it was almost instant from my last contact with them.
Is there any way to get in touch with Monzo urgently?! I’ve sent multiple messages on the chat hoping that their system would pick up on the urgency etc and that it would be escalated.
If you haven’t already, send another message with you holding your ID, what you need the limit raising to, what it is for etc. Give them as little reason as possible to come back to you with questions instead of just raising it.
I can fully understand the stress that’s causing you, they really should have an option you can press that gets through to them pretty much straight away when it comes to time critical purchases.
Luckily my conveyancer takes card payments so I already sent what I needed to them 2 weeks ago even before they’ve asked for the amount to be sent over.
you might also want to look at your card limits , I have had a couple of times where Ive requested higher limits and they have been raised in app in the limits section prior to being informed by notification that they have been raised …
Oh no. Was hoping there might be a way around this. That sudden realisation that while Monzo is great, it’s pretty terrifying when it comes to doing the most important transactions.
I sent the selfie with the ID at the same time as I sent the original request this morning. The payment limits haven’t been increased yet when I check on the account section unfortunately.
I’m amazed there isn’t some way of escalating this type of request.
Unfortunately all you can do is wait - make sure you’ve provided everything they need to make the transfer (selfie, money in the main balance, details of what the transaction is for).
In theory for your transfer for Exchange you only need the deposit going to the solicitors - the “Completion Statement” should be the final outstanding costs to complete, usually 2 weeks later (unless you are completing + exchanging on the same day). So at least for Completion you’ll be ahead of the curve.
I would phone back occasionally if you can - if you get through that will be the fastest way (as i think messages go unread in chat while in the queue)
This process absolutely needs improving - I went through it recently and it took Monzo while 10pm to increase my limits - so long after the point where it was needed.
It might not make a difference but I would try hammering their social media channels… you might get a kind-hearted soul that can escalate your issue to the correct department.
It’s really poor service and I wouldn’t recommend that anyone rely on Monzo when it comes to large, important transactions.
Sorry to hear that this hasn’t went smoothly Ben and having your perception of us tarnished isn’t what we want.
We absolutely take feedback like this on board and if there’s room for improvement then we’ll endeavour to get to where our customers expectations are.
If you’ve taken some of the feedback given by other users and reached out to us on social channels then I’d hope you would’ve had a response through there.
Unfortunately, we’re not able to access account specific info over the Community but as I said I’ll make sure the feedback (from everyone) is passed on.
I’m afraid this is a pretty consistent experience when it comes to using Monzo for large and urgent payments, and it’s very surprising that they haven’t taken steps to automate or schedule the lifting of limits, especially when the support wait times are as long as they are at the moment. Unfortunately it seems like there is little to no desire to improve things in this area, which is made worse by the lack of accurate wait time estimates in the in-app chat.
This comes up time and time again, one person gets it sorted in what would be considered a normal time frame and then the next person struggles. Sometimes they let you sort it in advance and sometimes they don’t. It really needs fixing.
I won’t be risking using Monzo when I do move again.
Some good news. I finally got a response, and the payment limit was lifted. Thanks for your help everyone.
That said, I’m still fairly frustrated with how this has progressed. It’s the largest transaction I’ve ever made in my life, after 7 years of saving. Not being able to speak to anyone is incredibly stressful. For example, what if I had sent the request later in the day, or the selfie ID hadn’t been acceptable, or there was simply no operator available due to a particularly high number of people needing support? I think all these scenarios could easily have resulted in problems.
For this kind of transaction, I would have expected to be able to pre-book a date, or at least have a guaranteed way of speaking to someone almost immmediately. Instead, I was left with the feeling that Monzo (which has always felt very human to me), seemed like an in-moveable distant conglomerate.
I really hope this feedback will be taken on board by @AlanDoe and the rest of the team at Monzo. Unless a solution is found, this really isn’t ‘making money work for everyone’.
And I really hope that the folk at Monzo take this on board. It’s a frequent complaint, even if it’s one that folk will only ever come across rarely. It’s absolutely critical to it get right, though.
I’m hopefully going to be in a similar situation in the next month or two, never ending conveyancing notwithstanding🤞
This thread is very timely - I’m a massive advocate of Monzo, I use it as my ‘main’ account, but I just can’t bring myself to close my Barclays current account and go all in for reasons exactly like this. I like the safety net.
The process for lifting limits all seems very last minute to me and out of my control, which I find really unsettling. I made the decision a few weeks ago to route savings and deposits through my Barclays account to save the stress when the time comes for exchange / completion.
For the occasional issue with this (like the OP’s) that gets surfaced here, it makes me wonder how many other people have already pro-actively chosen to avoid Monzo for big transactions like this
I would concur that if you have a non-Monzo account with actual phone support, you are far better to go to them.
In my situation, we made one payment out of a Santander account, and one out of Monzo. (One for Exchange / deposit, the second for the remaining mortgage deposit)
The Santander one, while having to sit on hold for maybe 25 minutes, was sorted and approved by the end of the call - and meant we could progress with exchange in a timely manner.
The Monzo version, I requested the day before with all the info - and it still took while 10pm on the day to get approved. I had less time pressure and I wanted to use Monzo to see what the experience is like… And I likely wouldn’t use again in a more time bound scenario.
I suppose it depends where things are with staffing levels and general support contact - but as you say transactions like these are likely some of the biggest people will make, and your chat request “going to the void” is not appropriate.
