Quicken has become too complicated while Customer Service is declining

Ives0313

It seems that Quicken's basic product has — like many other essential software programs in our life — become increasingly complicated ... and, more importantly, less intuitive. I find myself frustrated by changes to the program that often take awhile to understand.

To be clear, I am not a techno rube or Luddite. I have been using Macs since they first appeared. I am not an IT software developer, but my basic sense of how to negotiate the Mac's OS and most programs is better than average.

But lately I find myself calling for Customer Support more often than I used to and, more disturbingly, getting on the phone with folks who I can tell have little to no knowledge of the program. I can practically see them opening a manual. Yesterday, I spent 30 minutes in chat with someone who I thought was helping another customer at the same time (her responses to me lagged quite badly). I never got my problem fixed, so I ended the chat. This morning I called and after getting my question answered, I asked the young man if my suspicion — chat employees are serving more than one customer — was true. He said yes. They work with two at a time.

To wit, it took a phone call to find this page where I can post this missive. There was no clear path on the first page of Community to find it.

As these products become more complex, I find that I don't even know the terms to use to describe a problem when I call for support. And that leads to some very complicated and frustrating conversations and explanations.

All this ... and I'm paying for premium support ... about $80 a year ... as more and more software companies realize they can give us less customer service while charging us for it.

Sometime in the next few months, I will likely drop my subscription to Quicken and start using another product. It gives no pleasure to do this as I've used Quicken for more than 20 years. But I feel like I have no choice.

jacobs

To respond to a few of your comments…

• I think it's pretty typical for chat customer support at many companies to have a representative working with more than one person at a time. I've observed the lag in response with chat support on many sites, and just assume that's the way it typically works. I really don't think Quicken is an outlier here.

• You note that you're paying for "premium support"; what you've paid extra for gets you "priority access" to the front of the queue for phone support -- but not different or better support. Some people find this worthwhile, particularly if they call support several times a year.

As for your dissatisfaction with the complexity of the program, there's not much I can say about that; we all use the program for different features and in different ways, and can have different perceptions of a program's user interface and usability. Some people want a simple checkbook; others want to manage stock options trading and other complex financial transactions; others want to do the bookkeeping for their business. I agree with you that the program has its complexities; I don't find it confusing to use, but I understand you might. I absolutely think there are things in the user interface which could be designed to be easier to use or figure out by intuition -- but I don't envision the program getting more simplified over time, because users continue to ask for hundreds of additional features to deal with the intricacies of managing personal financial data.

Bottom line: if you can find another product which better meets your needs and expectations in terms of operations and/or customer support, then it makes sense to move on. If you'd like to stick with Quicken, and can identify and articulate ways in which the program could be made better and easier for you to use, this forum can be a good place to put those ideas forward (or vote on ideas others have already put forward) to help influence the developers' priorities. Best wishes.