Using Dozens as my spending card for October

After a bit of a break, I used Dozens as my spending card for October. Basically, that meant transferring discretionary spend from Monzo to Dozens at the beginning of the month and going from there. Here are my findings!

  • Everything seems a bit snappier than I remember. Roundups are instantaneous. Notifications have more info in and are quicker than I remember.
  • I’m really missing a notes field. I’m a heavy user of that on Monzo.
  • I’m not getting any ‘unknown merchants’ this time. Big step forward.
  • I had to contact support a few times. Usually pretty responsive, but the second time there seemed to be a bug in the app - I couldn’t see my ticket when raised, and there were no notifications from the app. I ended up raising the same thing twice (and got different answers, unfortunately).
  • I ran out of money towards the end of the month, so transferred an emergency few quid in. It didn’t land immediately (like it usually does). I gave it 10 minutes and contacted support - very brusque “it takes two hours. Go away” (that wasn’t what they actually said, but that’s how they made me feel).
  • Transferring money out of Grow isn’t instantaneous - it takes a minute or so to show up in Spend. I always worry when my money appears to be in limbo.
  • I couldn’t see a way to set up a payee without sending money. I was trying to transfer some cash out, set up my account details, then I realised I’d forgotten how much I wanted to send. So I had to cancel out and do it all again.
  • Merchant enrichment is mostly good, but a went a bit wonky. My local newsagent came up as a completely different chain - I reported it (manually - there’s no automatic button like in Starling or Monzo) but it’s been over a week and nothing’s changed. And what’s even worse is that, unlike Monzo or Starling, you can’t see the original merchant name - only the enriched (and in this case, wrong) one. That alone is enough to stop me from using the account.
  • I used the yellow card both in person and through Curve on Google Pay. For Curve transactions, the name is correct (hurrah) but the locations all show as Curve HQ (boo). And because of the merchant name issue, there’s no way in the Dozens app to see how you made payment / whether it was via Curve.
  • There’s still an errant extra space between my first and last names on the feed when sending money out. So basic but so irritating.
  • I still really hate the positioning of the happiness rating. I want £values in a neat line on the right.
  • More generally (and this is very subjective) I’m not overly keen on the look of the app. The functionality is all there, but I’d be looking for a sleeker, low-key and more sophisticated look, especially if Dozens is targeting a slightly older, more discerning market. As an example, the icons on the transaction feed look (to me, at least) a bit childish. And it feels like the app still needs more white space and room to breathe.

Keep up the good work - but (for me at least) I’d need to see the raw / unenriched merchant name before I could use Dozens more regularly. And I’m missing a notes section terribly.

That all said, it was as fun as this form of testing goes. Looking forward to giving it another go with Visa cards, hopefully!

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