(Mac)Quicken 2020/unable to activate Quicken Connect to Bank of America

jchime

I have tried to activate Quicken Connect with Bank of America approx. 20 times between today and yesterday. Every time I try I get the message "The Bank of America website may be down". In each instance the BofA website was not down because I was able to use the Web Connect to download, but I prefer the Quicken Connect. I contacted Quicken Premier Tech Support yesterday and the person I spoke to said she had not encountered this problem before and indicated that it was a problem with Bank of America. I have been trying to contact BofA, but they place me on an interminable hold. Bank of America recently started their 2 Factor Authentication requirements for log-in. Could that be causing the problem?

jchime

Update: I was able to speak to the Bank of America online digital specialist. We took off the extra-security two step authentication from my account, and I attempted to activate the Mac Quicken Connect, while the BofA specialist was on the line. I got the same message "the Bank of America website may be down." He has had 4+ years of experience in his position, and has not encountered this problem. Referred me to Quicken. So I have officially come full circle with no resolution.

Quicken Francisco

Hello @jchime

Thank you for reaching out on the community and telling us about your issue. Have you had this connected in the past or is it your first time trying to set it up?

 I believe BOA may be one of the sites that may have a 3rd party services page that might be giving us a bit of trouble. If you double check in the settings page of BOA see if there's a 3rd party applications page or sometimes under privacy settings. Could you double check on the website and see if some option like this is available. 

Next by chance do you recall all of the things that support tried to do? We'll see if there's any other steps that I can think of they may not have tried.

When you get the chance please let me know! 

Thanks,

Quicken Francisco

jchime

1.) Yes, I have had this connected in the past, with no problems downloading.
2.) I checked the "Third-party Site Access" tab and it says:

"This page lists third-party sites and apps that connect to Bank of America through our secure data-sharing protocol and to which you've given consent to share your account information."
" You haven't provided consent to share your account information with any third-party sites or apps that utilize our secure data-sharing protocol"

3.)Regarding Quicken support steps taken, I contacted them because when I clicked on the "update online accounts" tab, nothing would download. As I recall we went to Settings, then deactivated downloads. Shut down Quicken. Restarted Quicken. Went to settings, then Activate downloads, selected the bank, entered the various verification codes etc. That is when we hit the impasse of "the Bank of America website might be down."

I recently purchased the Quicken for Mac 2020 version and am pretty sure I had successfully downloaded transactions at least once since then. I was hoping it had to do with the 2FA, since the download issues occurred after BofA sent messages requiring the 2FA. But, as mentioned above, I ran into issues even after I disabled the BofA extra security.

Thank you so much for your help on this. If all else fails, i can at least do the Web connect, albeit being a bit of a hassle.

Quicken Francisco

@jchime

Thanks for the update! Let's see if we can creating a test file to get connectivity back to the account.  

In the top left select file > new > Start from scratch > do not sync mobile and web. From here you should then get a screen asking to add your account go ahead and choose BoA. Go ahead an try signing and I believe it should give you a prompt asking for you to go to the BoA website to authorize usage of third party products. Once you sign in on the web it should be the first page you see. 

Once authorized go back to quicken and cancel the sign in. We're going to want to go back to our original file. You can do so by going into the top left and selecting File > Open Recent.  Go ahead and try to reactivate your BoA account like you've previously tried. Ideally we're able to get the account to sync properly again for use. 

Try this out and let me know how it goes!

Thanks
Quicken Francisco

jchime

Early this morning I gave things another try...and ended up not getting that same message from BofA and was offered an option of connecting to Direct Connect. So I clicked that, and then got the message that Direct Connect was not available to me, and asked if I'd like to use Quicken Connect. I clicked to continue with Quicken Connect...and once again did not get that message. Something on BofA's end must have shifted, because this did not happen on any of my earlier attempts. So now it "appears" that I'll be able to download. Since I did a Web Connect on Saturday to download all my transactions, I won't have any new transactions to download until after Monday's banking day (Tuesday downloads). Since everything looked fine previously before I ran into the earlier download issues, I suspect there may still be download problems.

If that is the case I will immediately implement the steps you suggested. If the downloading does happen successfully, I will let you know.

Thank you!

jchime

@Quicken Francisco

Update: The (Mac)Quicken 2020 Quicken Connect is now correctly downloading transactions from Bank of America. Not sure what shifted on BofA's end, but I will use your suggested steps should the problem occur again in the future.