Royal Bank of Canada - Can't Update Accounts (Q Mac)

jmottle

I have made three calls to Quicken over the last month to inquire why none of my Royal Bank accounts can be updated. After I press "Update All Online Accounts," it thinks for a while, then it opens the Account Status window but shows no errors.

In all three calls to Quicken, they have blamed the Royal Bank and said it's an issue on their end and need to address it. Quicken refuses to provide an ETA, to escalate the issue or let me speak to someone else.

When I call the Royal Bank, they said they changed their endpoint URL that third-party vendors connect to, but it's the responsibility of the 3rd parties (Quicken) to update their software. They said this happens every single time they update their URLs. So it seems Quicken wants to blame the Royal Bank when the issue is with Quicken. I also use Quickbooks for my business, and none of the Royal Bank accounts have an issue connecting in Quickbooks, which further confirms what the Royal Bank is saying. It's Quicken's fault.

On my last call today to Quicken, they said the same thing. It should be fixed soon, and they won't provide an ETA. I asked to have this escalated, but they refused to provide me with any case number and actually said, "it was a general escalation, and we don't know when or IF anyone will get back to you". They also refused to provide any compensation for their fault software.

To say that Quicken support has been pathetic would be an understatement.

jacobs

I don't have any direct insight into your problem, but I'd note that Quicken outsources their connectivity to Intuit's OFX group, which also provides the connectivity services to Intuit's own Quickbooks. So where does the fault lie? There's no way we as consumers can know.

Since RBC changed their connection server, the first question is whether they reached out to Quicken (or Intuit) to give them advance notice. They're supposed to per their agreement with Quicken, but many banks don't. Then, once Intuit is aware of the issue, the next question is how they prioritize making changes/updates for all the customers they support. It's not surprising that their own Quickbooks might get higher priority. For Quicken, I'd guess that they may have different tiers based on the number of customers involved; when Citi or Chase have an outage, those likely get more immediate attention than banks which have a much smaller number of Quicken customers, such as RBC. Keep in mind that with more than 15,000 financial institutions supported by Quicken, if each bank made just one URL/website/logic/security protocol change per year, they'd have close to 60 such changes to handle every weekday! Some changes require small, quick changes and others require extensive work. Finally, the Customer Service people at Quicken can't give you an ETA or more information because they probably can't access any information from Intuit other than that it's a know issue on the to-do list.

My point here is certainly not defending Quicken, it's only to explain that with three parties involved, these things often move more slowly than anyone would like -- and pinpointing who is to blame is difficult. How can it be Quicken's fault if they contract this out to Intuit? How can Intuit's Quickbooks get a prompt connectivity fix while Quicken doesn't, if both are handled by the same division at Intuit? 

jmottle

Fair enough of an explanation. At the end of the day, however, I paid for a service and I can't use it and I have reports to get to my accountant. Quicken's team seems less than interested in trying to make it right.

jacobs

Unfortunately, the Quicken Support people may not have any avenue to get a connectivity issue fixed faster than whatever is in the works at Intuit, or between Intuit and the bank. You've probably noted that these problems get resolved behind the scenes; there's no update to the Quicken application to solve connectivity problems. There should probably be a better system for the Quicken reps to be able to look up the status of issues on the Intuit list of pending or currently being worked-on connectivity issues, but that wouldn't get anything fixed faster.

In the meantime, although it's not your preference, you can enter transactions manually; unless you have hundred of transactions, you might be surprised that it may take less time than you'd expect. When connectivity is restored, downloaded transactions will auto-match, or can be manually matched, with the ones you downloaded.

jmottle

My experience has been that trying to manually add transactions from a download file will not work on these quicken connect accounts. It won’t recognize the account and creates a duplicate account.

jacobs

jmottle said:

My experience has been that trying to manually add transactions from a download file will not work on these quicken connect accounts. It won’t recognize the account and creates a duplicate account.

No, manually added transactions are not importing a downloaded file. (You're correct that that will create duplicate accounts and/or duplicate transactions.) Manual entry means clicking New Transaction and entering it from the keyboard. If you never do this, you might be aghast at the suggestion. But as someone who routinely enters his transactions manually, I can tell you it doesn't take a huge amount of time. (Some of the time you spend entering transactions manually is time you would have spent entering splits, categories or memos on downloaded transactions.) Now, if you have multiple hundreds of transactions each month, you might conclude this isn't practical, but if you have a modest number of entries, you might be surprised to find it doesn't take too long. You said time was of the essence because of reports you need to get to your accountant, so this is simply an interim workaround solution until the download issue gets fixed.

jmottle

After a ffith call to Quicken, still no resolution and no ETA. [removed - rant/disruptive]