It would be frustrating to have your account frozen unexpectedly, I completely understand that.
But, as people have stated above, its the law, and Monzo complies just as any other bank would.
Threatening to go to the BBC about it on an forum made up of other users behind an anonymous account wont solve the problem. If you’re not happy with the way Monzo handled your issue, make a formal complaint. If you don’t feel that’s been dealt with appropriately, contact the ombudsman.
I don’t think they do. I can find a whole bunch of complaints on this forum alone that contradicts this.
I don’t see any difference in the number of complaints when comparing it to other banks. Have you seen Monzos Trustpilot now they show verified reviews? 
In summary. You don’t blame them for blocking your account but your issue is that it took a day to resolve so you want to go to the BBC?
I personally don’t think you have a strong enough case, especially since most of the things you’ve stated above are incorrect.
To me 1 day seems reasonable to do a thorough investigation which no doubt relies on third parties too.
The sorry for the inconvenience message is a bit poor, so I can agree with you on that. Perhaps send them a quick message and let them know how you feel?
It does seem a really impersonal process and a flippant message to end it with. Monzo should be able to do better than other banks, not be just as bad.
Perhaps Monzo should offer a small cash compensation for false positives. It would probably help concentrate attention at monzo on the false positive rate, and it would be a concrete gesture to say sorry for the inconvenience. It’d be nice if they published more numbers too (accounts frozen, and false positives rate), I imagine both are very low.
That’s not a bad idea. A false positive is a banking error which could have a financial implication for the customer, after all. Although trying too hard to reduce false positives could increase the likelihood of false negatives.
Not sure what wasn’t clear in my post, but this EXACT same scenario DID happen with another bank. The other bank resolved it instantly. Monzo took over a day because they don’t have a process to handle the different types of reasons why it might be blocked - so they have to go for the worst case. I got treated the same way a serious organised criminal would, just for trying to do a simple bank transfer.
This is why the blog is misleading - there are laws they need to comply with, but the big banks are capable of resolving the ‘false positives’ almost instantly.
As for threatening to go on the BBC - I’m not threatening anything, I’m saying its the sort of story they love, because Monzo are pretending this is happening to criminals when in actual fact it’s happening to normal people who are doing the things we’ve done without issue at the big banks.
Well, yes, I’d expect everyone to be treated the same whilst their case was reviewed.
Again, whilst I appreciate its concerning to have the account frozen, it was done for a reason. Much like the police arresting you for a crime you haven’t committed, it’s necessary to review all the information before making a concrete decision.
As someone said previously, I don’t think one day is too long to wait in the interest of fraud. But, by all means if you are disappointed by their handling of things, get in touch with Monzo directly 
I’m talking specifically the issue of frozen accounts. Go on twitter and you’ll find as many complaints to Monzo in the past month as you will for all the big banks over the past year. The difference is Monzo are freezing accounts that shouldn’t be frozen (I.T issue) and can’t deal with it quickly (resource issue). Monzo are apparently transparent - they still won’t even tell me why they froze the account despite the “investigation” being over and my account returned.
In summary. I don’t want to go on BBC, I’m saying this will appear on there (I’m convinced it will). You’ve read the blog and think Monzo are freezing a load of criminals and terrorists. That isn’t the case, they are freezing regular people for using their Monzo account in a way that is normal with other banks.
I know Monzo have built up this following and can do no wrong - and that people aren’t going to take kindly to me coming on here and talking negatively, but I feel really strongly that my experience was unnecessarily awful and that Monzo are being really disingenuous over this situation. “We can’t give you more info” is the common line - actually, in most cases they probably can, but they are choosing not to because people will realise the problem is them. I don’t believe they can be transparent about what’s happening as it is brand damaging.
I would recommend you use the complaint procedure as you are clearly unhappy about this
Here’s an idea - cut off all of your bank cards, drive 50 miles from home (with not enough petrol to get back). See how long a day feels then.
If they suspected fraud they could do what every other bank does, send you a text message and ask you to phone up and confirm it’s genuine. The big banks deal with this so much better. I was planning to make Monzo my main bank but after my experience I can not even consider this. I have written to Monzo, I believe I ended my complaint with “you’re just a glorified pre paid card, people now rely on you and use you as a main bank so start acting like one”. The reply was just a standard “sorry yep it was frustrating”.
You aren’t appreciating just what it feels like to have this happen to you and the situation you get left in. I won’t bore people any longer, but if anyone is actually interested in the full story then feel free to DM me… although to be honest as soon as I’ve sorted moving back to a proper bank I’d rather just forget Monzo and never talk about them again. The only reason I’m here is that the blog really irked me with the comment “the criminals put pressure on us by saying they can’t feed their family” - well I tried the pressure tactic, but actually the situation I was in was very real - but thanks monzo for posting the blog in response to my tweets, now everyone thinks I’m a terrorist !
Have done so. But I read the blog and the supportive replies and feel that the truth is very different.
I think some of your points are fair, especially if you didn’t feel you got a sympathetic response when your account was later found to be frozen in error. This may very well be an area where Monzo need to be better, e.g. I think a letter from someone at compliance just apologising and stressing the importance of tackling suspicious activity may help rebuild trust.
However, based on my knowledge of reading this forum and blog posts I wanted to correct a few misconceptions you seem to have.
While I appreciate this must add to the frustration, you can’t know the reason for this because if Monzo were to tell you, then criminals may be able to work out methods around their fraud prevention systems.
Monzo may be seen as a softer target for criminals simply because they’re newer then other banks (so criminal gangs are less likely to have had accounts shut down by them in the past). They also have easier sign up. These are just my theories of course. But I also disagree this is on a larger scale than with other banks.
I believe you’re referring to a different type of fraud. If Monzo froze your account then they would have probably believed you were involved in some criminal activity. Your old bank would follow this too, as it’s the law. This is different from you recieving a text from your old bank about suspected fraud on your account. Monzo have a separate strategy for this, which may involve freezing your card in app, ready for you to defrost if this was actually you putting through this transaction
Please elaborate as the KYC checks are pretty much standardised across all UK banks.
It’s highly unlikely they suspected that I was the criminal, because my account was unfrozen after 24 hours - you’d have to agree that isn’t long enough to conduct a criminal investigation.
Remember - the action I had taken on the day I was frozen was that I was trying to transfer my wages back to my old bank(s) to cover payments. One payment worked and one failed - the one that failed gave a “sorry try again later message”, seems fairly obvious that they suspected that my account had been hacked and someone was trying to clear it out. The exact same thing happened with HSBC and they did send an SMS, I phoned their fraud line and passed the checks, they said “a payment has been made, was this you?” I said “yes its for X amount right?” to which the guy said “yep ok, we’ll get that processed”.
So, I believe I am comparing like for like. You are referring to card fraud, whereas I’m talking about account takeover. The payment being made is to another bank account, not a card payment. Monzo said to me “please tell us about your account activity recently so our specialist can help” - I said “what? tell which transaction and I’ll tell you what it was” to which they replied “sorry cant”. So I had no idea what they wanted to hear, but I took a guess and said “if you mean the payment to the bank in my name that I’ve paid numerous times before, its my account and my DDs are due out” - I attached a screenshot of my other bank showing it was in my name and the DDs were due. 24 hours later “Your account is now active”.
It all seems fairly obvious what happened. And no reason for them now not to say “we thought your account was compromised” - well, apart from the fact it highlights it takes them 24 hours to deal with something that takes 10 minutes elsewhere. I suspect they have extra checks because they have less margin for error (they’d have to refund me if I had been hacked). But the actions I took to trigger this freeze is an every day scenario and could happen to any of you. No one cares if you freeze a pre paid debit card, freezing a main current account is a whole different action and they need to be able to react faster.
Me too 
I’ve just looked on Twitter and there are a few but just like the Trustpilot ones I suspect the majority are not genuine. This is why they added the verified order mark on there
The rest of what you’re saying is wildy innacurate and there is no way that you can back these up with any evidence.
How many have Monzo had VS the big banks?
There have been zero reports of this and their status page says otherwise.
They’ve explained everything in the blog post you were given earlier in this discussion. It’s not their choosing.
You can’t tell me what I’m thinking 
I’m sure they do get it wrong sometimes but better safe than sorry. Imagine if it was the other way round.
You’ve clearly not been on this forum long 
As others keep saying, I think you should take this up with Monzo because you’re starting to sound very silly and appear to be clutching at straws. I’d suggest you do some proper research to support your points too, instead of just saying random things to try and make it sound far worse than it is
Thanks for taking the time to reply, you’ve missed almost every point I’ve made.
For my specific issue, they can tell me more (the other banks did) but they choose not to. The I.T issue I’m referring to won’t appear on their status page - that’s for when their system breaks. My point is that the fully working version isn’t as good as it needs to be.
I’ve posted enough info for my points to be understood. Not my fault if you don’t. This is the problem with forums, people pick a side/stance and blindly follow it. If you think I’m wrong, you need to pick apart the facts of what caused my account to be frozen, rather than nitpick at silly stuff.
By the way - the twitter complaints are genuine. I know this because what they are saying happened matches my experience of being incorrectly frozen.
I think you’ve got this the wrong way round 
Good luck with this attitude though
If your account is being flagged by other banks and this isn’t the first time you’re obviously not telling us the full story 
For about the 10th time you’ve taken a statement as an isolated comment rather than apply the context to the situation.
The context is I’ve been paid and moving most of my wages over to another account in my name. They aren’t flagging me as an international terrorist. They just want to make sure the transfer is genuine. All banks do it - hsbc dealt with it in 10 minutes. Monzo don’t have the capability to do that. It’s a common everyday activity and there is no legal reason monzo can’t say it was frozen for that reason. If there is then hsbc broke the law because they did tell me.
If the crux of your complaint is that it didn’t take 10 minutes to resolve like other banks did, why not just say this and leave all the other nonsense out?
Its when you started saying things like “I’ve seen some complaints on twitter so Monzo now freeze more accounts than all other banks” and “Everyone on this forum support Monzo and believe they never do wrong”…
I could go on but this is where I got involved and you lost all credability.