Two stories to make a few laughs
- During the major outage;
I work in the Financial Services Industry and my job is usually pretty unrelenting at the best of time. I had booked Friday afternoon off work so that I could go on a date (my date was a teacher and it was half term for her). This was the first time I had met her so I walked into the pub (Castle in Tooting) did the quick introductions and set about getting two drinks. Got the two drinks, tapped my Monzo, walked off back to the table.
The moment of dread - Barman walks over “Sorry Sir, card has been declined”. Now at this point I immediately try to tap again, forgetting that Monzo had sent a status update about some issues. Declined again, “Not to worry ,I’ll just pop to the cash point”. Card declined, at this point I am starting to sweat, first impressions and all that. Rather stupidly (going against all advice of Monzo) in haste to stick the proverbial middle finger up to the banks, I migrated my entire liquid financial balance sheet to Monzo. No other cards. Now my date is looking at me rather strangely thinking what the hell is going on, I’m constantly checking my phone whilst also trying to pay attention to what she is saying (I’m awful at multi-tasking at the best of times). About 45 mins passes by and I get a ream of notifications on my phone from Monzo. Card back up and running. I let out a huge sigh of relief, go straight back to the bar and order a two more drinks.
Date gets back on track. Towards the end of the date we joke about my first impressions, she actually said (previous bad experiences with dates) that she was wondering if I was between jobs and lying about taking a half day, and if I was completely broke. 
We’ve since met again, so all’s well that ends well.
- I received rubbish charges from a bank (same one @anon91821566 use to have) whose account I have kept open since migrating to Monzo. I called them up and complained, three hours worth of phone calls later I get through to the complaints team. I’m tired and grouchy and so I decide to not hold back. Explain to the woman (who in fairness was absolutely lovely) why this bank and all others like it are doomed. How they are so institutionalised and ingrained in their existing way of thinking that my new bank Monzo is going to wipe the floor with them. She asked my why this was and I provided tangible examples, she was very impressed.
Yesterday, I arrive home to a very nice hamper waiting on my doorstep as a way of an apology.
In summary, Monzo are impacting the status quo already and in my opinion haven’t even scratched the surface of what they plan on doing yet. Viva la Revolution!
and are taking the customer acquisition from “challenger banks” seriously