BILL PAY ISSUES

Bob24

I have been using Bill Manager for several months now and I have been continually frustrated by how the program functions. Back in the day (Quicken Bill Pay) I would create electronic payees and then select that payee from the register. Quicken would display "Sent" to be replaced by a check number when the payment cleared. In Bill Manager there are a multiple often unrelated choices that have led me to miss payments and sometimes make payments twice because of the confusion. After months of this, I thought that I had it figured out until this latest glitch. When I tried to pay a manual bill, the program told me that I had exceeded my quota of 6 payments per month! The quota for Quick Pay is apparently 12. I do have several Quick Pay billers but the majority of what I do involves local vendors like doctors offices, repair services etc. who do not offer online transfer services. When I talked to support, they told me that Bill Manager is a "New Service" that they are trying to fix and they are sorry. Sorry about what? that they deployed a service that was not ready? Any comments on this?

jrich75

I agree that this is something Quicken will need to correct.  At a minimum they will need to provide a way to purchase additional Check payments even if they ultimately increase the basic allotment.  As far as Quick Pay goes, there are some major issues with how it currently works.  Although they claim thousands of existing online billers, my personal experience is that it will only work with only 4 of my primary credit cards.  Neither USAA nor Capital One would work for me.  Also, many billers (particularly utilities) want to charge a fee for the processing via Quick Pay.  For me, there is no chance I'll ever use the 12 Quick payments allotted.  
Quicken needs to realize that users will find alternatives if they don't improve.  The alternatives include bank bill pay systems (some of which can be initiated from within Quicken) or using the billers systems to deduct automatically from either Credit Cards or your Bank.  They have recently added to ability to schedule future payments but more improvements are necessary it they expect to retain current bill payment users.

Chris_QPW

jrfaris said:

Quicken needs to realize that users will find alternatives if they don't improve.  The alternatives include bank bill pay systems (some of which can be initiated from within Quicken) or using the billers systems to deduct automatically from either Credit Cards or your Bank.

I really wonder how much money makes (or will make) from these bill paying services. I seriously doubt it is any kind of real good money stream for them.
I will bet they do it mostly because the customer "expect it".

I personally I would suggest for the people "have to use" a bill paying system to look elsewhere.  The Online Bills (bill presentment) which all of this is based on has never been "solid" in all the years it has been available.  It seems unlikely that you can build a Bill System on top of that and get a reliable system.

jrich75

@Chris_QPW
You are probably right.  I will likely drop the Quicken service after over 25 years.
I think they got into a bind by including bill payment with Premier subscriptions and then were not able to continue the traditional Billpay service partnership.  Bill Manager is just a way to say they are still providing a payment service.  I doubt if it is a money maker but it will affect whether users are willing to pay for a premium service.

jrich75

I just got the following in an email regarding the demise of Quicken Billpay:

In its place, we've launched Quicken Bill Manager, which is smarter, faster, and better than ever:

• Avoid late fees with same-day electronic payments
• Pay electronically or by check from one easy-to-use dashboard
• Receive payment verification without ever leaving Quicken
• Now supporting scheduled payments

We appreciate your loyalty as a Quicken customer. Quicken Bill Manager is still included in your Quicken Membership, with up to 12 electronic payments and 6 check payments each month.

I doubt that many existing users would agree with their description of BIll Manager.

Chris_QPW

@jrfaris Yeah I think at best that gets LOL!

About the only thing that some people would agree is better is that Quicken Bill Pay had a nasty reputation for bad customer support, and taking forever to get accounts setup.

Quicken support and the setup time for new users is certainly faster, but considering that you are always going through Quicken support that then forward problem like not supporting a given biller to the "hidden third party".  It probably wouldn't be considered an improvement, just different set of problems.

Chris_QPW

P.S. I think the marketing folks could make having a tax audit and a root canal on the same day something that you would look forward to doing!

Marauder

Just find a bank that supports direct connect, switch to it and move on. Quicken has a master list of banks you can use its from March 2019. 

here it is:
https://www.intuit.com/content/dam/intuit/intuitcom/partners/documents/financial-institution/icom-partners-ofx-fi-list-quicken-windows.pdf

I switched banks back in March just after the first notice and everything is fine. I dont pay extra fees either. 

Bob24

Follow up from my previous. I just had to go online to pay my Amazon (Chase) credit card bill and my mortgage, both set up as "Online Bills". Both were showing Overdue with the latest statement as a month ago, even after refresh. Again, I have been using Quicken for...well since there was Quicken and online banking for almost as long. I have had lots of problems with the stability of the program but I could always get them resolved without being misled by the program that everything was OK as seems to be the case now.