We’re tweaking how locked pots work

Anyone else getting the odd glitch when you unlock a locked pot? The main card on the new accounts page seems to swipe up, behind other UI elements? (Android)

Because not all locked pots have goals on them.

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3 pot types.

  • Open
  • Date locked
  • Amount locked

I think that fits most peoples desires…

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I do wonder if what has been offered is a compromise based on cost/time to deliver. Maybe this is one of these pieces of functionality that needs revisited from the start, we don’t know if there are code limitations due to the way they were originally built?? #devilsadvocate

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Well, this is one where different people at different times need different things. For now what we’ve done is to treat is as the “picture protection” you get in photographic cameras to stop you from making a mistake and deleting a picture you didn’t want to delete. We’ve learnt that many people were using them in literally that way and having to contact customer support every time they wanted to make a change was a problem (both for the customers and for Monzo).

We’re exploring solutions with more friction (like nominating friends that then need to “accept” your unlock request or having you record a video saying why you want to keep that money lock and forcing you to watch it before unlocking… there are tons of ideas like that) but we’ll go one step at a time and always try to ensure that people can access their money if they need it (emergencies, etc.).

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Hmm thought the whole idea of locked pots was to add friction not just be easy to unlock.

I like the suggestions previously to add a 24hr timelock until you you get the money unless via cop.

Prehaps a double lock is needed! If you single lock then you can still get at it yourself like in the new uodate or double lock it and have to ask cop.

Also add a carrot of gaining interest if you leave your money in there until the set date, and a stick of losing the interest if you withdraw early.

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OooOOooo I hope this was based on my suggestion here:

:stuck_out_tongue:

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Hi @hugo,

I get why you’d need to change this (given the COps time being taken up by unlocking Pots), but I’m struggling to see the point of them now (with the new change).

Can you expand on this part?

Were people locking their pots in case they deleted them by accident?

Surely it’s quite hard to delete a pot by accident?

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Yeah, that’s something we’re totally looking into it and try to make it work with savings pots, but yeah, we’ll keep iterating on it.

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Not deleting them but using the money, the metaphor is the same.

For example, some people have five or six pots and they move money around them. The lock is a way of saying “don’t touch the money of this pot and use another one instead” so the withdraw button gets disabled (like the delete a picture in a camera from my example or locking files in macOS) but then there’s a day when you really need that money (or you make a mistake and add too much money to it) and it’s better to tinker a bit with the UI (until you find the lock tickbox) than having to talk with a person and wait for it to happen.

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  1. which numpty decided to lock their money away, then unlock it, and then complain about the effort it took to unlock it?!

  2. I don’t buy into the concept of locked pots. I don’t see how monzo can really lock these. It’s always seemed a bit silly to me, but I suppose their new solution is about as good as it can get.

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Thanks @hugo.

Would this be a case of “the few spoiling it for the many” though?

If the stats are correct, and 20% of locked pots are unlocked by COps, that means that 80% are kept locked (and you could argue, are therefore working as intended).

Appreciate the 20% do end up taking up a lot of time, but from a stats POV, it looks to be a backwards step for the majority of people?

Could there be 2 options when locking a pot?

Option 1 - A simple “accidental” lock which you can unlock at any point.

Option 2 - A hard lock which has a time limit or a need to contact CS.

Or are you trying to remove the need for CS completely?

I guess the question is, would those 80% don’t work with the new “soft” lock? We don’t have the answer to that, but we’ll know :soon:

It’s not a hard constraint but a “nice to have”. Ideally all our features should work without customer support intervention, otherwise they becomes unsustainable very quickly.

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I’m the wrong target for this feature, so I’m purely playing devils advocate based on the initial feedback when this was announced last year, and the limited feedback to the new change.

If it’s one of those things that looks useless on paper, but actually serves the same purpose - Everyone wins (appreciate that sounded harsh, but a lock which has no friction isn’t a lock).

Agree here - I think I said the same when it was first launched. If you could add some friction but keep it separate from CS, I think it’s a winner.

3 posts were split to a new topic: Removed Posts - 25/2/19

The camera analogy is a bad one as it’s designed to stop you accidentally deleting your picture. This lock is designed to stop you purposefully doing something for the wrong reason.
I’d like to see some sort of time delay, to prevent someone with a shopping addiction for example from spending money they can’t afford to

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It might be a play on a more “psychological” lock for the average consumer who uses a lock pot to really lock it away.

I have a lock pot but its more a reminder that I can’t use it than a definite “this is locked forever”.

Whilst I think for the overall goal more friction is probably better (but not as resource intensive as CoOps) this might be a way of gauging response.

Not necessarily, there are two clear use cases here. One is the one you’re mentioning.

The other one is this one…

I think we’re all on the same page acknowledging that we’ll need something at some point to cater for that “purposefully” unlocking, like we do with the gambling block. But we’ve decided that we’ll iterate towards it by adding more friction at a time and not the other way around. Hope it makes sense!

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In that situation you could just name the pot “Do Not Spend”
I agree having to use cops time to do this is an expensive business, it should never have been the case.
Hopefully a better unlock can be worked out soon for the people that switched to monzo to help curb they’re destructive spending patterns

Thanks for the dive into the reasoning Hugo - I like to see why Monzo are making the decisions they are and what they’re looking for from a customer perspective.

Looking forward to seeing what the iterations are (even if I’m not personally invested).

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