USAA transaction downloads pending transactions [edited]

Chris_QPW

I thought I would post a pointer to this comment in the Mac thread of the same problem.
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20194228/#Comment_20194228

He says that if you download at a given time you shouldn't get duplicates and speculates that is because you hit a properly configured server, but at other times you might hit one that isn't properly configured.

wrldtvlr

Interesting... Per @Chris_QPW , I tried delaying my scheduled downloads from 6AM to 9AM and did not get any duplicate transactions. Only one datapoint, but I am hopeful...

wrldtvlr

> @wrldtvlr said:
> Interesting... Per @Chris_QPW , I tried delaying my scheduled downloads from 6AM to 9AM and did not get any duplicate transactions. Only one datapoint, but I am hopeful...

And two days with no duplicates...

Buzzmeupcaptain

Sigh.... after a little more than a week with no dups, I had a handful yesterday. Much more disconcerting is that I have been receiving variations of the same vendor's name (not sure if this is under USAA's control, suspect it's a mix of USAA and others - over the past 8 years I don't recall seeing this very often).

The issue variations on vendor names creates for me is the memorized transaction categorizes our routine expenses (cell phone, utility bill, etc.). I rely on Quicken to manage my wife's business accounts, so now I'm stuck having to review all this year's expenses to ensure categorized correctly for reporting. As I didn't catch this earlier, it has impacted quarterly tax payments (thankfully a minimal impact resulting in overpaying estimated taxes). It won't be to challenging to manage going forward, but there goes more time to straighten this out.

The concept that there is a server misconfigured sounds viable and would help explain the challenge for USAA. My teams used to manage patching and configuring of their software for hundreds of servers and it is extremely difficult to ensure you have identical configurations (different teams may be responsible for different software configuration on the server). While difficult, managing server configuration and patching is critical to limit/prevent cyber attacks. As a stock holder, I'd be very concerned if this is the issue - this needs to be a critical business process with multiple eyes on it, but also needs accelerated triage/remediation as these types of issues hint that there may be other cyber vulnerabilities on a miss configured server.

buzzard192

I always download between 5AM and 6AM and have bee dealing with the duplicates. I will try downloading in the evening to see if it makes a difference but I have noticed a change the last few days.

Twice in the last week when I reconciled the transactions, I deleted the duplicates and accepted the remaining. However, the reported balance was different than my balance. On both occasions there were several transactions that were finalized on my USAA Visa account that were not downloaded.

Once I manually entered those transactions, I could reconcile the account. The missing transactions were downloaded the next day along with other duplicates.

To see if the theory of a misconfigured server is correct, is there a log we can check to see which server we download from? Maybe by IP address if they are not doing any reverse proxying?

Joe Biggs

I have given up on USAA and got a 53rd Bank Master card. So long USAA

Chris_QPW

buzzard192 said:

To see if the theory of a misconfigured server is correct, is there a log we can check to see which server we download from? Maybe by IP address if they are not doing any reverse proxying?

The logs aren't going to give the IP address, just the names of the machines.  But just for reference there is the connection log and the OFX log.  Help -> Log Files...

Chris_QPW

Note I just saw this comment in a Mac thread that people should read (and a few just before it), it looks promising :
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20196556/#Comment_20196556

wrldtvlr

I rescheduled my daily download back to 7AM. Only a single datapoint, but there weren't any duplicates.

wrldtvlr

Spoke too soon. 7AM download several dups.

Joe25

I am still receiving downloaded duplicates. I am amazed this has been ongoing this long.

wrldtvlr

I've gone back to delaying downloads until after 9AM Central Time. So far, no duplicates.

Joe Biggs

Just called USAA and cancelled my credit card account. Can't wait for them to fix this problem

mxsmith4

Problem solved.

Cancelled my USAA card and went with a card from Fidelity (Elan). No more problems. I've told USAA IT that they need to stop downloading pending and uncategorized transactions to fix the problem. They told me the problem was fixed back in early August. I told them the problem is fixed, I cancelled my card. They wanted me to send them an export of my account. I told them their IT department should set up a credit card account and do the downloads themselves. I truly feel they are not working the problem or they have an incompetent IT staff. I had the credit card with them since 1988.

isonclubikin

I'm torn about USAA.  We've been doing business with them for something like 40 years now.  I've already moved big chunks of cash out of their savings since my local credit union is paying 20 times the interest as USAA.  And this duplicate transaction thing has me worrying all the time about whether the duplicates (two more this morning) are just bad programming on USAA's part of if there are actual duplicate charges going on.  So, now I'm considering doing what others here have done and getting rid of our USAA credit cards, too.  You'd think a bank would worry about that.

AaronInTexas

8/29/2021 - after several days... maybe a week or two with no duplications I thought it was fixed. Then, just now got a duplicate transaction. Oh well.

Buzzmeupcaptain

I'm no longer torn, they have been under an OCC Consent Order since 2019 that includes IT governance. Consent orders are a big deal in the industry, when my applications were associated with one at my bank I had very Sr executives helping me move routine and strategic work to free resources to address the issue. Governance issues can be broad and not quickly resolved, but 2 years seems to be to long (they were fined by the OCC due to this).

We just got bit by another piece of bad logic in their overdraft routines that transferred money from our savings account to a checking account that had nearly $3k in it and no pending debits. It will take a few months for us to unwind a 35+ year banking relationship with USAA but we will begin doing so this month.

Chris_QPW

I'm a relatively new USAA customer (2012) and never had a USAA credit card, only a checking and savings account, so this part with the credit card of it isn't affecting me.  It did effect me when they first changed over, that part took them about a month to fix the duplicate transactions (sending pending transactions with a different unique Id). It still sends 0 as the check number for every transaction, but that is pretty minor, especial since most of my transactions in the checking account are matched to scheduled reminders and that overrides the zero check number.

But these problems and some problems I was having with Vanguard has got me thinking.  Many years ago I left the local banks for online banks because the local banks were nickel and diming me with fees.  But these days I carry much higher balances and don't have to worry about such.  And there was the commission fees on trades for my investments.  I don't trade much, but now even that isn't a factor because none of them charge a commission fee any more and I can also buy securities that "belong" to the other brokerages, which I couldn't do long ago.  I have kept a Chase savings account for a very long time and they have had given great service, support Direct Connect, and they are literally across the street from me, so after maybe 20 or more years I actually in the process of moving every thing over to them.  It will be nice to have almost all my finances at one financial institution.

USAA has given me pretty good service, but not better than what I get at Chase.  And in fact once I have more of my money there I will apply for their "Private Client" accounts, and probably get better service.  So even though it is a pain to change some of the automatic payments/direct deposit I have setup with USAA I have to face the fact that the world changes and I need to change with it because being "loyal" to a financial institution over what is best for you just doesn't make sense.

Sharkbait

Chris_UPW, you might want to take a look at Fidelity's Cash Mgt Account (CMA) with free checking, and a 2% cash-back credit card, which you can setup to auto-deposit the cash back into your CMA. They work well with Quicken. Keep your Chase savings account in case you need to deposit a bunch of cash, since Fido's not a bank.

Chris_QPW

Sharkbait said:

Chris_UPW, you might want to take a look at Fidelity's Cash Mgt Account (CMA) with free checking, and a 2% cash-back credit card, which you can setup to auto-deposit the cash back into your CMA. They work well with Quicken. Keep your Chase savings account in case you need to deposit a bunch of cash, since Fido's not a bank.

Thanks.  Fidelity was definitely on my list of possible choices.  I have accounts with them in the past they are pretty good.  I should have mentioned that I also have two very good cash back credit cards from Chase that very happy with.  What really made me go with Chase over Fidelity is the fact that they have both the bank side and the investment side, so I could consolidate almost everything with them.  And of course being right across the street is really nice.

Oh I should say that the one thing I don't use a "local bank" for is my longer term cash account.  I have a savings account with Synchrony bank.  They pay 10 times more interest.  They are terrible for connecting with Quicken though.  They have a very unreliable Express Web Connection, that I don't use.  But since the only transactions I have with that account are an monthly interest payment and if I transfer money in or out, I just manually enter transactions.

Richard Troy

I've had double-downloads continuously since March and consider myself a charter member of this thread.  Along the way, I've had three communications with USAA.  Here's my latest update.  After another message to USAA, I received a phone call from Diane(?) and we spoke for about 15 minutes.  I asked her which office she was from, but she essentially said she was a trouble-shooter.  She claimed that there had been a software update in early August to resolve this issue and suggested I deactivate and reactivate my connection to USAA.  Which I did.  Nothing has changed.  And that was two weeks ago.  She told me that they had opened a ticket in my name at USAA, but I've yet to hear back, even though I've again messaged USAA through the website.  And so it continues.

Buzzmeupcaptain

Well, I've moved about 7 accounts to my local bank and have been planning to leave one checking account with USAA to service my mortgage and insurance. BUT neither I or a CSR (3 hours of hold time!) could trigger the account linking process (a couple of weeks earlier I successfully linked 2 of the local bank accounts, just needed to add 2 more). We ended up having to open a ticket for this.

This morning I tried to follow up on the ticket... seems I can't find a link to message them directly any longer and their automated chat is unable to understand the subject. I'm not throwing another 3 hours of my life away on USAA hold.

After 35+ years I hate to see it actually come to this, but I'm done. I'll have to close that final account with USAA.

wrldtvlr

The past few months I changed my daily download to 9AM (was 6AM) and saw very few duplicate transactions. For grins, I did a manual download at 8AM today - no duplicates. One swallow does not summer make. Will continue to check.

wrldtvlr

Nope - Massive number of duplicates this morning.

AaronInTexas

10/26/2021 update - still getting duplicate transactions.

rm54tm46

Fingers crossed. Have experienced this problem since its outset, but despite 25 new transactions have had no duplicates since 10/26/21. It's a coincidence that makes no sense, but duplicates stopped at the same time I activated the replacement cards that were received when the prior card reached its expiration. No change in card number. Just the expiration date and security code.

tldbos

I've also been having success but not due to what @rm54tm46 saw. I reset my account a number of times as I was playing with setting up Quicken Mobile and Web and the only way to get USAA to sync to that was to shut off sync'ing across all accounts and delete the online data. After that, you turn on sync'ing again and things magically work. There's a post somewhere in this forum about that. Anyways, I thought I might have figured something out because the old name for my USAA credit card kept appearing in Mobile & Web and I couldn't figure out why since I had deleted all online data multiple times. At some point, I gave up trying to figure out why that was and just stopped my experiment with Mobile & Web. Ever since, things appear to have started working for the first time since the issues started this year. I still keep waiting for the duplicates to reappear but I've not seen any for a week or two.

fda2f6fc

It has been at least a week without any duplicate downloaded transactions. This coincides with the time I updated Quicken to version 36.38. It appears the infrastructure update used to connect Quicken to financial institutions, making it more secure and reliable may be helping. Fingers crossed.

Chris_QPW

fda2f6fc said:

It has been at least a week without any duplicate downloaded transactions. This coincides with the time I updated Quicken to version 36.38. It appears the infrastructure update used to connect Quicken to financial institutions, making it more secure and reliable may be helping. Fingers crossed.

That change was to add Express Web Connect + to investment accounts, it doesn't affect USAA at all.  Most likely USAA changed something around the same time (or you are just lucky, for now).

Quicken Alyssa

Hello all,

Thank you for continuing to update this discussion with your experiences, successful or otherwise. 

I noticed that many of you seem to have found a resolution, which is great news! I am just curious if any of the others in this discussion are still experiencing issues.


Quicken Alyssa