I think many people here are pro-Monzo (and are Monzo users).
However, Monzo isn’t perfect. You’ll find there’s an appetite to discuss limitations/issues with Monzo here because we weren’t allowed to discuss them on the Monzo forum (for fear of being banned, or abused by trolls).
If the bank was interested in learning from customer feedback, it ought to watch this forum, as opposed to its own forum.
For what it’s worth, I for one, welcome you and your contributions and opinions here so I hope you stick around. I don’t share in the assertion that you’re trolling or being confrontational.
I don’t think he’s Richard as he has (had?) a separate account on the Monzo Community too
Are you really suggesting that @anon55596034 is Richard Cook from the monzo forum, cos-playing/trolling as another person from that forum?
Ok, let’s chill a little bit here.
Many of us are Monzo users or have an interest in Monzo (and why not - it’s a Fintech forum after all!)
Everyone is welcome on this forum, and we welcome constructive conversation, regardless of whether it’s positive or negative, but it has to be within reason.
However, no objections to talking about the way Monzo is/was moderated, that is the purpose of this thread.
I certainly hope the forum remains, if only for the not inconsiderable support members get from each other on money handling in general and advice with product features in particular.
Closing the forum would be “baby & bath-water”.
The point has been made earlier, though - if Monzo choose to terminate the community forum, an obvious next step would be for one of the cleverer members to launch a successor.
I genuinely hope for the Monzo forum members peace of mind, that the Monzo SMM makes a decision sooner rather than later about opening up the forum again. But, as discussed, there really is a lot for them to think about and as things stand, none of us know what’s going on behind the scenes.
It’ will be a very interesting couple of hours when/if the forum reopens.
It was hard to deliver support through the forum for security/privacy reasons, though.
Normal community members were not formal Monzo support staff and couldn’t be relied on to give 100% accurate advice.
IMO Monzo ought to reallocate its forum staff onto formal customer support.
I’d rather see this forum be used to announce new Monzo features and to give generalised advice. I’m sure fintechforum will be used for that regardless of whether the Monzo forum exists.
I think as somebody mentioned above the main purpose of the forum for them now, in my view, is to reduce the number of people contacting customer service for general information - they’ll need to do a calculation whether the money saved by reducing load on CS is worth the money they need to spend moderating the place.
Wouldn’t surprise me if at the very least some of the more general discussion areas end up being closed and they focus in on more structured Q & A sections.
Obviously in the long term this will kill the forum but it’s effectively how most of these company run communities end up.
Monzo could improve the in-app support function for this purpose.
It already offers a fairly good search function for common support questions. It could take this search system further. Automation would make a good return on investment.
They don’t have formal forum staff (other than Richard, but you don’t see him much either). Coral Crew are also just volunteers.
So shutting the forum would take away valuable first line support/general information provided (especially) by @Anarchist and @ordog (has anyone seen them?) whilst not freeing up any resources for actual support
They tried but the consensus is:
Yeah, I was aware of the nature of CC, but back when I used the forum I remember seeing other members of Monzo staff answer questions, which was great to see.
Sorry to hear this situation changed.
People still pop up occasionally but that’s usually in their free time/when they’re off work to talk about things they’re passionate about. Or to promote new features/developments. Sadly they’re not COps and don’t have too much time allocated to the forum in their formal working day
Yeah potentially the case - I have no idea how much time real staff members actually end up tending to that place even if they don’t post.
But, as we’ve seen from this episode, it isn’t a completely hands-off endeavour. And if Richard has ended up having to set his social media profiles private due to this (though to be clear that is speculation at this stage) then it becomes a bit bigger than just the raw sums of money involved in running the forum, but how much general grief is it causing and whether the benefits of having it outweigh the negatives.
I had a look when @anon55596034 pointed this out. If you scroll through some replies there’s a strong hint that something to this effect occurred. That is just not on.
If this is what things have come to, then something drastic needs to give, because that’s not on, it’s not fair to Richard, and won’t be doing his mental health any good. I really do feel for him. Monzo need more staff to help with the community I think. The toll of running such a place is too much for one person.
Isn’t it meant to be run by Alan Doe these days? Though he seems forever AWOL, doing only copy/paste jobs …
I think he’s in the fraud team, nothing to do with social. At least he pops up occasionally to talk about that and in his free time helps with merchant data which is really going above and beyond
You’re describing Dan! He’s an absolute credit to Monzo.
I mean this guy:
I’m terrible with names and faces! 
I don’t even recognise actors when I’ve seen them in something then they appear somewhere else. My other half is like “haven’t we seen them in X” and I’m just like “I don’t think so”
It does make me wonder if I have some mild form of face blindness sometimes