I went full Monzo just over a month ago and the one thing that lets it down is the customer service, I think it has expanded so quickly it doesn’t have enough well trained staff.
I do however have faith that they will solve it and I’m going to wait and see
I have been full Monzo since dec 2018 on a joint and been with them since Mondo.
I have I think only needed to speak to CS about twice and one of those was to get TestFlight access😂
s/themedia/Watchdog/
I think the impact of the Watchdog story has been overstated. Of the mainstream media, only the Telegraph has picked up on the story, and in a circumspect fashion. And where I’ve seen smaller media outfits report on the story, they’ve made the point that all banks have to follow the law and it’s a bit odd of Watchdog to single out Monzo.
It may not feel like it right now, but I suspect the whole thing will blow over in a few weeks. I mean, Watchdog can’t go after Monzo with every episode, can they?
It feels bigger to us because we’re in the middle of the story, really. And if we’re all honest, if the Watchdog story had taken the angle of “Monzo’s customer service isn’t good enough; they’re taking too long to respond to customers and not prioritising urgent queries well enough”, then a lot of us would be sat back thinking ‘Ouch, but they’ve got a point…’
If they can get customer support sorted, they’ll do grand.
This 100%!
I’ve already left once and that’s not happening again!
I regretted it almost immediately and came back a few months later (before they introduced the 1 month wait).
I think the grass isn’t always greener on the other side
There’s a one-month limit on reopening accounts that have been closed, not 6, just to clarify 
I have to say that my experience with Monzo has been a very positive one so far.
However, something has been nagging at me for a while.
When Monzo was started, it was said to benefit from being a fresh new bank, unencumbered by creaking old technology and without the overhead of a branch network. That made it fast-moving and able to introduce some genuinely innovative features, quickly, but which are now becoming more mainstream. However, Monzo doesn’t seem to have benefitted as much from this as I would have thought.
I think the big problem is that it started as a top-up card. We all got used to transferring just enough money into Monzo as we wanted. The rest of our money was held elsewhere. Despite it getting its banking licence, I suspect that they’ve struggled to get people to move all their banking across. I think Monzo needs us to do that in order to generate profits. Steps like being paid early, account switching, offering overdrafts (even if apparently being a bit tight with allowances), and bill pots certainly help. That’s why I recently moved over. But it seems not to be enough right now.
Unfortunately this has made Monzo desperate to generate money by other means.
They seem to have decided that the way forward isn’t more encouragement to move your funds across or other innovative steps; it’s to sell other types of accounts. That failed and now they’re trying again, seemingly without having learnt much. I don’t expect v2 to go much better.
All of a sudden, our futuristic bank starts to look like the big old banks. While we all started as one group of nerdy enthusiasts, it now choose to split us into groups, straining its values. The boring ‘regular’ account holders versus those with the money to gain more benefits. Valued people who want to stand apart with their metal cards and their different colours and possibly front-of-queue service.
And then Watchdog. Which, frankly is a s**tshow. I haven’t cringed so much in years. So self-inflicted. And not to respond on the show. My God. And then the embarrassment as friends I’ve lauded Monzo to asked me if I’d seen that my money isn’t safe. Thanks for that.
So I think there have been some missteps. There was always going to be. I hope that Monzo will soon get back to thinking of exciting features that customers can’t get elsewhere and to use that to encourage account transfers.
In the meantime, I’m happy to keep my banking with Monzo… but my old account stands ready if I need a quick exit!!
Apologies, post updated!
Why should it be unrealistic to expect market leading rates from Monzo? The introduction of technology to financial services should lead to a reduction in the rates offered. We don’t have thousands of branches or employees (fixed costs) to cover for.
It’s important to remember banking costs money. The big banks can offer loss making products to bring customers in because they will make their money off the other things they will sell you like mortgages, home insurance, credit cards etc… Monzo is free with no other products to cross sell so it can’t afford to offer loss making products… yet… once Monzo has more than banking to offer then maybe it can have a market leading rate but to do so now would drive it to insolvency
Because they haven’t been offering market leading rates for anything else, so far, maybe?
There’s a fair few points in the main post I agree with; there are indeed a few things that lack the polish and attention they need; but I don’t think it hugely detracts from the overall offering.
And I think if you compare those flaws against any legacy bank - I feel the legacy banks would come out worse - limited stuff you can do online, waiting days for a transaction to post, ineffective for foreign travel.
I guess Monzo is very well suited to me and my needs, and I suspect many others in similar circumstances.
It’s very telling that bigger banks are now pushing to absorb fintech approaches and what not. A recent favourite, which came out around the time Get Paid Early and Bill Pots, was Nationwides ‘Pay Day is Save Day’ - advertised on TV, Billboards and the like.
So I guess the thing that worries me, is older banks have a much bigger advantage in their potential reach (and advertising budgets) than Monzo do. I suspect if they had an ‘approach’ that was half as modern as Monzo, they could still pull in a lot more customers due to those deep advertising budgets.
I do hope a credit card comes though.
Because the banking world is all about risk and statistics - the bigger you are, the more risk you can handle, the better rates you can offer.
Economies of scale will kick in at some point as well. I’m talking about efficiency gains from the use of technology.
I like Monzo, I like their offering but I don’t feel comfortable enough to go full Monzo and ditch my legacy bank. This being for several reasons. I really really like their app and the instant notifications and real time balance. It’s helped me so much with budgeting and planning. However one of their biggest flaws is their support which is woeful. I have my legacy account with First Direct and I am pretty confident that if there is an issue I can pick up the phone and be speaking to a person within 2-3 minutes. My experience with Monzo is 2-3 days which is not helpful.
I’m concerned about the high amount of freezing accounts. It’s never happened to me but it seems to have caught out quite a few ‘innocent people’ and that’s a potential hassle I could do without and I rally don’t need a main bank account being frozen.
I just don’t think Monzo is very grown up. I recently signed up with Starling and think they have a much more well rounded view to the market and their product offerings. That said I don’t think I trust either just yet over my legacy bank. Guess it’s a matter of time.
As to whether or not it will survive…I hope so but they’re going to have to do something drastic to convince people to go full Monzo and generate the revenue they require to keep going.
Not really, they just need to start offering the same suite of products as legacy banks: mortgages, etc.
That’s my point…it means going full Monzo and using it as if it were a legacy account with the products you mention to generate revenue.
What they do need to start doing straight away is improving their contact centre/chat/resolution service
I see a lot of people complaining about customer service waiting times, personally I’ve never waited more than a couple of hours, but I obviously believe in people when they say they’ve waited days and I think it is a valid reason to complain. But I also think it’s one of those things that the more people complain the more Monzo will hire more people so it is a fixable problem in the near future. People say Starling is a lot faster when responding, I’m with Starling as well and I love both Monzo and Starling but Starling have 500K customers, whereas Monzo has over 3.2 million so it’s easy to see why Starling are faster. That’s no excuse of course, Monzo should just keep hiring more and more people, but ultimately I think Monzo’s problem is they are growing too fast, which is both a blessing and a curse
I think it’s a little unfair to compare an instant communication medium, with an inherently delayed one. Have you ever tried calling the number on the back of your card, for Monzo support?
With regard to chat, I’ve never waited more than a few hours for a response (and once I get a response, provided I then re-engage fairly soon after, it’s almost a live conversation). Compared with my 48 hours at Barclays, and my responses via letter with NatWest, and the support team at Lloyds that “have a 5-day turnaround for these requests”, they’re better than my experience of legacy.
I suppose your mileage will vary…All I can go on is my experience with my legacy bank and my Monzo experience so far.
(Emphasis is mine.)
So much this. As I only work 2 afternoons a week, I have more or less constant access to my phone so am able to re-engage with chat very quickly and so I have not really had any bad customer service experiences. Not really advocating either way, but food for thought.