We’re tweaking how locked pots work

In this example you could name the pot anything and say that. I personally like the psychological “locking” of the pot - I’d never need to withdraw it before the date deadline and so would never need to call CoOps.

Not sure that is a fair description of the customer base who use locked pots.

People who use the locked pot system as a psychological thing, won’t perhaps be affected (like yourself).

But those who use it as a genuine barrier to impulse spending will be massively affected.

Imagine Monzo all of a sudden saying that you could simply turn off the gambling block in app?

It’s the same thing for the people who suffer from impulse control.

Agree that it’s better to start with minimal friction and work up though - It’s just unfortunate that Monzo started with maximum friction and have stripped it right back.

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Oh no I 100% agree - I said earlier in the thread I feel the “friction pendulum” has swung the complete other way and isn’t really conducive as a “lock” imo - but for me my “psychological” thing remains intact.

I agree - I think these two scenarios provide fine margins between operating as a business and operating in the space of genuinely wanting to help its customers and put forward an ethos.

This is it, I think if we had started from this perspective and not the very hard barrier it would be a different conversation.

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So if you have locked a pot and have a £0 balance user can unlock pot. Example - As a pot unlocked and funds transferred to main account I have then gone back in to lock the pot and changed the original date to a day later but have now realised the scheduled payment out is now a day earlier.

If cash in a locked pot then they you have a “gambling” block so user waits 24hrs minimum

Puts £100 in locked pot

Goes on the lash spends all money

Unlocks £100 in pot

Buys more drinks

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I agree with you. I think we got this one wrong on the first iteration and we should have never built this feature around contacting customer support. We’re learning from it though and try and ensure we don’t make the same mistake again.

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The next question I suppose is when are we to expect the second iteration of this I assume would assume sooner rather than later(As I hope you would have already been iterating on it when you first realised there was a problem)

As soon as we roll out, get data and learn from this new update we’ll be able to answer to that.

Here we’re talking about different hypothesis but there’s a scenario in which this level of friction is enough (the same way that macOS doesn’t let you add more friction over what a locked file or folder means) so for now the priority is to see how much value do users see on the “soft” lock, and take it from there.

Why was this feature developed in the first place if youre going to remove the actual use case for it :see_no_evil:

Im going to be honest and say its harder and harder to defend these calls being made recently.

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Why would someone now lock their pot in this instance as opposed to keeping it in an unlocked pot? As a visual queue? Really?

Locked/Unlocked pots are now the same thing really.

I know personally im now going to move my locked pots back to marcus. At least that will mean some more friction

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Just remove the pot locking feature. No matter what you do, there will be someone to complain about it.

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This is really frustrating watching this unfold.

Everyone who locked their pots in the first place should’ve never misused them.

You only have yourself to blame by not being able to access your money quick enough. You agreed to the fact that there will be FRICTION.

Now the feature is ruined because of the complaints.

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Can you elaborate on this please?

Are you trying to say people are complaining because they cant unlock a pot they agreed to automatically become unlocked on a set date?

Because i dont think thats whats happening here.

The complaints are coming from people that were using a feature as expected and intended which was just removed.

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I have to say Im not a fan of this. The idea behind locking a pot is that you cant get access. Forcing the pot to close is a good measure to try encourage savers to keep the pot locked. This locked pot idea would probably work better on some sort of interest bearing feature where unlocking has some sort of interest loss penalty.

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There is no ideal way to do this.

One of the reasons I’ll never run my own bank is because I’d use a ‘locked means locked’ approach (to borrow a phrase) but I don’t imagine that would wear well with customers and maybe even regulators when I wouldn’t let people have their money back until the pot unlocked.

I think it’s more to do with the cost to ‘run’ this feature than any complaints.

“Ohh we’ve created something very successful that took off and now we are struggling to give our customers a good service with it so we need to look at changing it…” seems to be more of how we got here?

Anyway, add in the 24hr delay as a friction point and I think this still ‘works’ for the majority of use cases (80/20 and all that)?

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Exactly, it’s not about complaints. It’s about a large proportion of people deciding they need to unlock their pots before the established date (because they really need access to the money) and having to talk with customer support to get it done, which takes time regardless of how quickly our COps are.

As a general rule this is not a successful approach if we need human interaction in one out of five locked pots. That’s why we need to start again, and learn.

Yeah, that’s one the candidates. There are a few ideas along those lines.

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Maybe there can be an opt-in like the gambling block where you can have the option of really locking yourself in if you have problems with impulse buying or saving money in general.

Prsonally I would rather know that I can’t get to the money. I need to learn to have discipline with my money. Any half-hearted attempt will just allow me to factor in that I can have that money if I need it, instead of being more disciplined.

It’s a hard one because I don’t think you can please everyone, but if you lock something you shouldn’t just be able to unlock it.

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You have the data. The data is:

With this in mind the next iteration should be not be COp orientated what does that mean:
This means either a PIN idea or some sort of time lock and then rename the “locked” Pots to “Hands off”(I would prefer Terramundi but I assume they’ve copyrighted the name)
(Terramundi Money Pots | Personalised Gifts | Free UK Delivery)
and provide an explanation as to what their purpose is. It should be sign posted as to what it should be used for when you’re tempted but you’re saving up for something big or if you have issues with spending(then run a PR campaign about different types of spending and encourage #spendingBMI)

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Or, allow people to unlock with some additional friction that isn’t COP oriented? Like a 24hr delay? :wink:

I get the thinking, that ‘people’ can’t be trusted to use things the way they ‘should be’ but such is reality. With the best intentions in the world, people aren’t great at managing money. Pots are a good foundation for getting a level of control, and sure some people will just unlock them willy-nilly (technical term there!) but a lot more will find this change useful, given the data we’ve been presented at least.

This way needs no med/big additional cost or PR effort (also expensive).

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