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Don’t pop-up advertisements to paying customers (+52 Merged Votes) [edited]
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Also, what happened to the OLD community where we could "vote" to agree?
I guess that's now in the little thumbs up / down on each comment? Booo hiss.
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COMPLETE list of Product Ideas - Quicken for Mac to VOTE onObject to Quicken's business model, using up 25% of your screen? Add your vote here:
Quicken should eliminate the LARGE Ad space when a subscription expires
(Canadian
I have not seen any other ads, only this one. I'd be interested if others have seen anything other than this one? I also don't see it pop up very frequently, so I guess I'm less angered by it than many of you have been. In any case, here's my take on why this is happening. If you're upset about the pop-up, please don't flame me; I'm not defending the practice, only explaining what I see...
Quicken doesn't see this as an ad for a random product, they see it as an "offer" which has tangible potential value for its users. Part of the partnership with Capital One last year involves creating some Quicken-branded products that have tangible benefits for Quicken users. And note that it's not Quicken "users," but Quicken "members" in the text of the message -- and I think that's the key insight. Quicken is trying to make membership have benefits (to steal an old line from a different credit card company!) that go beyond just licensing the software. Members are more likely to be loyal customers; members have multiple reasons for continuing their affiliation. We typically use the words users, subscribers and members as synonymous, but I think Quicken's long game here is to try to build more value in being a Quicken subscription member.
If you click on the Learn More link in the pop-up, you're taken to a page on Quicken.com -- notably not CapitalOne.com -- which uses Quicken branding (fonts colors, style) to explain the virtues of the CapOne money market account and offer. And for some people, the cash incentives in this offer -- $200 to $600, depending on how much you deposit for at least 90 days -- could be pretty handy. $600 pays for a lot of years of Quicken subscriptions/memberships! (And it's certainly a much better inducement than the Quicken credit card they launched a few months ago, in a different partnership with US Bank, which rewarded new cardholders with a one-year subscription/extension to Quicken Deluxe -- possibly the least-valuable credit card sign-up offer ever.)
I think you can see more about this Quicken membership strategy if you click on one of the links on the webpage about the credit card. I can't paste a link because it's pop-up; here's a screenshot:
That, I think, gives you an idea where this is headed: a growing portfolio of Quicken-branded or Quicken-approved products which provide special deals for Quicken members -- any of which might provide bona fide value for some Quicken software users.
So if you think this pop-up is something they might just flip off if people complain, I'd say to think again, because this seems to be a piece of a much larger strategy for the company. That's why the note from Quicken in the voting box at the top of this thread says there are "no plans to change this feature." Note the wording: they want people to see it as a feature, a potentially useful offer instead of an ad which is an intrusion/annoyance. Clearly, they need to do a much better job of explaining this to Quicken users, and to make the user experience less frustrating (e.g. allowing users to turn off or limit offers, putting them in a menu rather than a pop-up, or otherwise making it less bothersome to users).
Here's the full scoop on how to earn your bonus:
Open a 360 Money Market account by 11:59 p.m. ET on July 31, 2019. To qualify for the bonus, you must have received an email about the promotion directly from Quicken. If you have or had an open savings product (excludes CDs) with Capital One on or after January 1, 2016, you’re ineligible for the bonus.
Deposit $10,000 or more of new money from an external bank (transfers between Capital One accounts will not qualify) within the first 10 days of account opening (Initial Funding Period). The amount of your bonus will be determined as follows:
Argh - Subscription and ads. Yuck. Wow, I've been with Quicken since quicken98. It's sad that it will be no more.
So, it looks like it's just a single ad, potentially, because of a partnership with CapitalOne.
Offering ads/features/preferred partners, whatever Quicken wants to call it, when not opt'd-in (or minimally, offering opt-out) of current and all future "offers" is a poor customer experience.
Quicken needs to increase its revenue to deal with all the demanding (whiny? cheapo?) customers. Newspapers and magazines and television and movies and websites all have an initial fee to purchase and are filled with advertisements as a basic part of their business model. So far, the world hasn't perished.
It's a higher class product if these are reachable through a menu item versus pop-ups though.
Aside from the Capital One ad, Quicken is, of course, always going to promote the latest version of Quicken to users who are using older versions. Once you're on the subscription version, this becomes a non-issue, since you always have the latest version and there's nothing new to buy. But if you're still using an older version, then you see the reminders. I find them easy enough to just dismiss, although I do wish that dismissing them turned them off for a month or two at a time.
Your original message, part of which has been since redacted, also complained about the termination of online services for Quicken 2016. This has been Quicken's financial model for more than a decade. There are costs associated with maintaining connectivity with thousands of financial institutions, and their way of funding that has been to expire each version after three years so users would need to upgrade in that time period. Users who don't need the online services could continue using the program if they don't wish to upgrade. Now, they've switched from this pseudo-subscription model to a straightforward subscription, where users pay one annual (or biannual) fee for a bundle of online services, ongoing program upgrades, and phone & chat support. As before, a user who doesn't want online services, and doesn't want upgrades, can continue to use the program without a current subscription.
So for QM2016 users, who may have never been part of this expiration model, they would be seeing this for the very first time after April 30, 2019. So not a long time.
And QM2007 still has not been expired and so far it has been stated that there are no plans to intentionally expire it either.
So it is very understandable if QMac users are caught off guard, especially if they have been a long-time user of QMac.
- Where to find a Help Guide for Quicken for Mac?
- Quicken Mac FAQ list
- Quicken Windows FAQ list
- Help Guide and FAQs for Quicken Mobile
COMPLETE list of Product Ideas - Quicken for Mac to VOTE onObject to Quicken's business model, using up 25% of your screen? Add your vote here:
Quicken should eliminate the LARGE Ad space when a subscription expires
(Canadian
In any case, I was not saying that @gwwilk should have known the history; I was explaining that Quicken moved to this sort of ongoing payment financial approach many years ago and that it was not something new and evil, as the redacted post stated.
For many QMac users, it is a "sudden" change since it is very likely the first time they are running into this.
- Where to find a Help Guide for Quicken for Mac?
- Quicken Mac FAQ list
- Quicken Windows FAQ list
- Help Guide and FAQs for Quicken Mobile
COMPLETE list of Product Ideas - Quicken for Mac to VOTE onObject to Quicken's business model, using up 25% of your screen? Add your vote here:
Quicken should eliminate the LARGE Ad space when a subscription expires
(Canadian