Unable to reactivate loan account with Premier America CU

len

I am able to reconnect my checking and savings accounts with the CU, but when I attempt to reconnect my loan account, I immediately get "Sorry, we encountered an error (it's not your fault). Quicken is having trouble connecting to Premier America CU."

It happens so fast it seems it's not even trying to connect. This only happens when I select "Loan Accounts" from the "What type of account do you want to add?" I have tried signing out and back in from my ID and cloud account. I also tried again after the recent AWS issue was reported to be fixed. Thanks for any suggestions.

Quicken Francisco

Hello @Len

Thank you for reaching out to the Community regarding your issue, although I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing issues with your loan account. With the error you're receiving we'd like to collect some information to see if we can find out what could be happening here. 

To start how are you trying to connect the account? Are you trying to add a new account or are you using the setup now button on the account details screen? Where exactly are you selecting the loan accounts option? Is it when you're adding the accounts and it asks to add a new account or link to an existing account? These should help us narrow down the issue.

Last thing here is we'd like to look at the logs to see what's happening on the backend. If you could go across the top of Quicken then go to help > report a problem. Please include all the logs (Should be selected by default) and we'll look at them to see what we can find out.

Once you get the chance please let us know more about the issue and when you've sent the log files as well. 

Thanks,

Quicken Francisco

len

Thanks for the quick reply. As instructed by my CU, I disconnected my 3 existing accounts and then attempted to re-link to them. This did work for Savings and Checking acounts, but not for my Loan account.

As instructed by the CU:
I click Tools\ Account List. In the Account List, I click the Edit button for my existing loan account. In the Account Details window I click Online Services, and Set up now. I select Premier America CU. In the Add Account window - What type of account do you want to add? - I select Loan Accounts and click Next.

I sign into the CU with my credentials, click Connect, and immediately see the error message "Sorry, we encountered an error (it's not your fault). Quicken is having trouble connecting to Premier America CU."

I have sent the log files as you requested. Thanks very much.

Quicken Francisco

@Len

Thanks for the update. For these logs I'll need a bit more time to look into them as I need some tools I don't have available to me on the weekends. Once I do get the chance to look more in depth I'll let you know more about the issue. I'll let you know once I have more info!

Thanks,
Quicken Francisco

UKR

For whatever it's worth ... I would not bother attempting to activate any loan or mortgage account for downloading.  (Not discussing LOC or HELOC accounts here which should be treated like credit card accounts)

An online-connected loan or mortgage account does NOT have a transaction register. All data shown in the account come from whatever information the bank downloads to you ... if this process works at all.

As a result of being connected, the scheduled payment transaction reminder cannot transfer the amount of principal paid into the (non existent) account register and must use a category, usually something like Loan:Principal, instead. The category seems to vary with the Loan Type you selected when creating the loan account in Quicken.

Effective with Quicken Windows 2018+
you can deactivate an online-connected loan account and regain full control over your transaction register.  However, you should still review the Scheduled Reminder (or Memorized Payee List entry) associated with the monthly loan payments to ensure they now transfer Principal to the loan account register and not to a Category.

len

UKR: Thanks for the info. Prior to last week when the CU updated it's software, the loan account had been working perfectly. In my case the CU transfers my loan payment from checking automatically, and the downloaded loan account showed these transfers and remaining balance, affording a convenient way to reference aspects of the loan status.

len

Hi Quicken Francisco, I think the problem is with the CU. Today I tried again to link my loan account, and this time I was prompted to enter an access code they texted to me. That worked but now it says it can't find a loan account. Ok, I can live with that and just take UKR's advice.

But since you have my logs, if you wouldn't mind - a more serious issue occurred at the same time, but seemingly unrelated to what happened immediately after relinking my CU accounts.

I have an Amex Blue account. After relinking the CU accounts, I noticed a new account appeared in my list called Amex Blue 2. As far as I can tell, transactions from about 2018 through June 2021 were removed from my Amex Blue account and moved to this new account. And when I look at "Edit Account Details" for this new Amex Blue 2 account it says the financial institution is Citi Cards, with no account number and a customer ID number that I don't recognize.

My Amex account is a completely separate entity from my CU, so it seems something in my file got badly garbled. I didn't mention this earlier in order to tackle these two problems one at a time and avoid confusion. Would you be able to see from my logs what might have caused this and the best way to repair the damage? Thanks very much.

Quicken Francisco

@len

Thanks for the update. Loan accounts are unable to be relinked so you would need to add it as new if you would like to have it with automatic downloads. As a side note, I would recommend what UKR mentioned with a manual loan account for greater flexibility but is it up to you.

AS for your Amex blue, that's interesting. I would recommend trying to delete the new account that was created and then deactivating/relinking your Amex accounts. Relinking is similar to reactivating but has different effects on the backend. I'll leave steps on how to do so down below.

First we'll try deactivating all of the accounts for the affected FI. You can do so by following the article listed down below.

https://www.quicken.com/support/deactivate-online-banking-services-quicken-account

Once all the accounts are deactivated go ahead and follow the article here on reconnecting the accounts.  You'll want to make sure you're using the add account option then linking to an existing account.

https://help.quicken.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=3216277

Once you've had the chance to do this let us know if your Amex account links properly again. If we're still having issues we can gather logs and take another look.

Thanks,
Quicken Francisco

len

Hi Quicken Francisco. I did everything according to your instructions. It seemed to work, except that all of the transactions for the 4 years that ended up in the erroneous new account were of course deleted when I deleted that account as you instructed. That necessitated restoring an older backup in order to retrieve these entries. I then moved them all to the correct Amex account (which required changing the reconcile status of all entries, otherwise I was prompted to hit enter for each of the hundreds of entries).

Once I did that, I set the reconcile statuses back, and then performed your instructions again. Now I have all the data correct in the Amex account. But for some reason my savings and checking accounts are several thousands of dollars off from my online balances. I'm not seeing anything obvious such as duplication of entries that might have resulted from improper cloud syncing. Something really got lunched and it's going to require many more hours to figure out how to right it again.

Quicken Francisco

@len

 Did you double-check to see if you might have multiple opening balances? This is one of the things I can think of that might be causing the issue. Search the opening balance in the register and check if the original balances are correct to your opening date and also that there are no extra opening balances as well.  Additionally here is an article that goes over information as well on what to look for during the reconcile.

https://www.quicken.com/support/correct-difference-account-if-it-does-not-reconcile

Once you've had the chance please let us know if you're able to track down the issue. 

Thanks,
Quicken Francisco

len

Hi Quicken Francisco. That's a good suggestion, yes I had previously checked for opening balances and there were no extras. It took me all weekend but I got it mostly resolved. It came down to primarily data that was mixed between the original Amex account, the parasitic Amex2 account that appeared after attempting to relink the loan account, and my savings and checking accounts. I can't conceive how all that could have happened, but it just reinforces how glad I am that I make a backup after each session. I got the accounts to within a few $ hundred and then applied balance corrections. Thanks for the reconciliation help link, I will file it for future use.

BTW, I'd like to register a request to bring back the "File\ Save As" tool to the menu. I understand for most people the new Backup strategy probably streamlines things, but for my decades-long ingrained process it just makes Quicken much less Quick, and frankly a PITA.

Thanks for all your help and attention.

Len

Quicken Francisco

@len

I'm glad to hear you were able to get it sorted. As for the request you'd be best creating an idea so that it can be seen by other users and voted for. I don't have any power with program changes. I'll leave a link down below on creating an idea so that you can submit it once you have the chance.

Creating and Voting for Ideas in the Community — Quicken

Thanks,
Quicken Francisco