I’ve been a Quicken user since dinosaurs walked the earth. Every year I wait a few months to let the worst bugs get sorted out, then upgrade. I moved to version 2018 a month or so ago. Everything seemed to go well.
Then I tried to pay some bills.
I’ve been a Quicken Bill Pay user for more than a decade, and used that. The transactions were accepted just fine, but wouldn’t upload. I tried to log in to the Quicken Bill Pay website, but couldn’t find my credentials. Quicken 2017 and earlier versions knew about them, so everything had worked, but I’d lost them. I tried the forgot password routine, but they gave me two phone numbers that I didn’t recognize.
So I called support. After I while I got a new password. All good now, right?
Wrong.
I could log in to Quicken Bill Pay on the web, but Quicken couldn’t. I called Bill Pay support again.
They told me that Quicken 2018 couldn’t use my old Quicken Bill Pay account. I would have to close that account and open a new one, which would be free so long as I paid fewer than 15 bills a month.
I opened a new account, which was quite complicated, because every time I thought I was done and clicked OK, the site found something wrong and wiped out a lot of what I’d already entered. They told me that in a couple of days I’d see two small deposits to my bank account that would indicate to them — and to me — that they two could talk to each other.
That was a week ago, and there have been no such deposits. They also said they would cancel my now-useless Bill Pay account, but I my usual monthly payment just got deducted, so that hasn’t happened.
Then I got to thinking. I’ve got hours and hours invested in entering information about payees in my old Quicken Bill Pay account, and there’s no way I’m going to be able to port that over to the new one. So this is an opportunity to rethink my bill paying altogether.
I signed up with the bill pay service of my bank. I’m interested in seeing how well they interface with Quicken works.
I think this is a missed opportunity for Quicken. They obviously want you to sign up with the new Quicken Bill Pay service, since that will make them more sticky, but they sure don’t make it easy. How hard would it have been to automatically transfer all your old information to your new Quicken Bill Pay account and make the transition transparent?
The material below was added 2/24/18.
After weeks of waiting, I finally got an email from Quicken Bill Pay saying that they needed a lot of supporting paperwork before they could open an account for me, and they gave me a list of documents that I needed to copy and physically mail or fax — anybody remember that technology? — to them. No mention of why the authorization protocol that they initially said they were going to use was now, um, inoperative.
I think I’ve broken the code. The old QBP cost money, and they wanted you to sign up for it, so they made it easy. The new QBP is included in the price of Quicken, so the fewer customers they have to serve, the better. So making signup as inconvenient as possible is a perfect strategy for them.
Grrr…
[Added 4/28]
I noticed that Quicken Bill Pay is still billing me $9.95 a month for the service that I can’t use. I canceled my account (which you have to do by phone, and be prepared for a long time on hold and a fairly-complicated process). They say I’ll get a confirmation email this time. We’ll see.
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