Heads up (or reminder) that 40% only applies to new users

mistertheplague

I have been a Quicken user for 10 years. My subscription lapsed 27 days ago. I saw that Quicken was offering a 40% discount, so I purchased Quicken Premier for -- I thought -- $46.77.

After I submitted the order the amount I was charged changed to full price. Chat agent confirmed what a search in this forum stated: discounts from Quicken Inc. only apply to new users.

I explained that the order screen didn't alert me to that unhappy fact. I had to sign in with my QID in order to get to the checkout screen. Had the price increased after I signed in, I would not have submitted the order.

Chat agent noted that there is a footnote on the promotional screen. I held my tongue (or fingers, as it were).

Chat agent transferred me to phone agent, who refunded me the difference between full price charged and discount price offered.

While I appreciate Quicken support staff being relatively responsive, I had to waste some time following through.

My suggestion to Quicken Inc. as a long-time user is: be overly transparent about things like this. Though most of the SUs and OGs in this forum know about this, I'm not exactly a noob and I had no idea. 

splasher

If your subscription had been expired by more than thirty days, you should have qualified for a discount.

Luckily, you managed to get resolution to your issue.

[edited for clarity]

Chris_QPW

I totally agree, something like this deserves more than a "footnote".

mshiggins

The other recommendation is to use a second email address and Quicken ID. With two QIDs, you can always be new. 

Some caveats apply if you are syncing to the Quicken cloud. 

mistertheplague

mshiggins said:

The other recommendation is to use a second email address and Quicken ID. With two QIDs, you can always be new. 

Some caveats apply if you are syncing to the Quicken cloud. 

Yeah, I use the Quicken mobile app for iOS. I'd read some speculation/reporting that 2 QIDs would create problems. 

Chris_QPW

mistertheplague said:

mshiggins said:

The other recommendation is to use a second email address and Quicken ID. With two QIDs, you can always be new. 

Some caveats apply if you are syncing to the Quicken cloud. 

Yeah, I use the Quicken mobile app for iOS. I'd read some speculation/reporting that 2 QIDs would create problems. 

Quicken Mobile/Web are basically the GUIs for the Quicken cloud dataset, which is synced with the Quicken Desktop data file.

The Quicken Id is part of the "access key" for deciding what Quicken cloud dataset to sync with.  In other words the access to any given Quicken cloud dataset is dependent on both the Quicken Id and which Quicken data file you are using.

So say you are syncing with Quicken Id1/Data file1.
And now you sync Data file 1 with Quicken Id2.  A completely different Quicken cloud dataset will be created and synced.  At this point there isn't any big problem except that it only start with a sync of 2 years.

But now a year later you switch back to Quicken Id1/Data file1.

It is going to be syncing Data file 1 with a year old Quicken cloud dataset.

Will Quicken properly sync to a year old Quicken cloud dataset?
I think it would depend on exactly what changed in all that time.  Like have accounts been deleted, has online information changed, ...

mistertheplague

Interesting.

The only thing that's likely to have maybe structurally changed in my datafile (Windows and Mac) YOY is the addition of another hidden account. Per your preference for not closing accounts because you can't reopen them, I have by now, IDK, 15-20 zeroed-out, deactivated hidden accounts. Old FSAs, merged IRAs, rolled-over 401ks, escrow accounts for homes I no longer own.

They don't bug me and they don't create any problems I can perceive. I wonder if syncing with 2 QIDs would have any effect 

Chris_QPW

The biggest problem with giving a good answer to this is that it is pretty much "theory only".
Very few SuperUsers (if any) use Mobile/Web with their real data files, and I'm sure there aren't any doing the toggling of Quicken Ids.

I have done the toggling of Quicken Ids, and will do it again in the near future on a test setup because I can get a free (to only new users) Starter edition subscription when buy TurboTax.  So I use it to test some of what people ask for on here.  But that isn't testing any of the syncing/long term possibilities.

One thing I didn't hit is if someone uses Quicken Bill Manager, from what I have seen on here it can get messed up just by doing a restore from a backup, because the local data file and the information on the server (which might be at the third party service's server) can get out of sync.

mistertheplague

Chris_QPW said:

Very few SuperUsers (if any) use Mobile/Web with their real data files

Really. I wonder why. I certainly remember the carnage that ensued from Q15's (or was it 14 or 13) really god-awful mobile sync. It borked a couple of my data files before I threw in the towel.

But I started using mobile sync again a few years ago, and it's been nearly flawless (I should find some wood to touch).

Having said that, I sync my Mac QDF, not my Windows QDF, with my iPhone app. Not for a specific reason, just because I use QMac more often now. Windows was always a more, er, challenging product, so perhaps  there have been more issues mobile syncing it. 

garysmith87

mistertheplague said:

Chris_QPW said:

Very few SuperUsers (if any) use Mobile/Web with their real data files

Really. I wonder why. I certainly remember the carnage that ensued from Q15's (or was it 14 or 13) really god-awful mobile sync. It borked a couple of my data files before I threw in the towel.

But I started using mobile sync again a few years ago, and it's been nearly flawless (I should find some wood to touch).

Having said that, I sync my Mac QDF, not my Windows QDF, with my iPhone app. Not for a specific reason, just because I use QMac more often now. Windows was always a more, er, challenging product, so perhaps  there have been more issues mobile syncing it. 

Syncing Quicken Mac to the mobile app seems to be amazingly stable now.  In the past year, I've only had to reset the cloud data maybe once or twice...and it's really pretty easy to do.  And it's never corrupted or changed my main data file.  

On the flip side, I've never had any long term success with syncing Quicken Windows to the mobile app.  I can't get into it here, lest I be banned from the group...but lets just say it is definitely challenging and I've had my data file corrupted multiple times. 

And while sync to Quicken on the Web works, it's results are so off the wall incorrect compared to the Mac desktop and even the mobile app...unfortunately, I find it unusable.  The transactions are all there...but all the graphs are so blatantly incorrect and I can't figure out where they're parsing the data from.  For example, the Net Income graph in the Quicken mobile app is spot on...along with the Expenses graph and the Expenses donut.  With Quicken on the Web...not one graph or chart aligns with that data.

For example, the mobile app shows my net income as a plus $1425 right now which is absolutely correct...whereas the mobile app shows a loss of over $6,000.  

I've notified support numerous times...but nothing ever seems to change there.  

Chris_QPW

Note that I was talking about Windows SuperUsers, for the very reasons you have stated.
It makes one wonder if it because Quicken Mac is more modern or the Quicken Mac developers have more skill, but in the end it doesn’t matter.  After problems with Express Web Connect and maybe Quicken Bill Manager, sync to Mobile/Web seems to be the most reported source of problems on the Quicken Windows side.

But even if it wasn’t reported as causing much problems I think that the main reasons the Windows SuperUsers generally don’t use it because it isn’t a big use case for most of them, and the very fact of what kind of problems it causes.

Who wants to hear “I think your data file is corrupted”?
The very fact that it is linked to corrupted data files is going to keep most people “in the know” away.

mistertheplague

Chris_QPW said:

mistertheplague said:

mshiggins said:

The other recommendation is to use a second email address and Quicken ID. With two QIDs, you can always be new. 

Some caveats apply if you are syncing to the Quicken cloud. 

Yeah, I use the Quicken mobile app for iOS. I'd read some speculation/reporting that 2 QIDs would create problems. 

Quicken Mobile/Web are basically the GUIs for the Quicken cloud dataset, which is synced with the Quicken Desktop data file.

The Quicken Id is part of the "access key" for deciding what Quicken cloud dataset to sync with.  In other words the access to any given Quicken cloud dataset is dependent on both the Quicken Id and which Quicken data file you are using.

So say you are syncing with Quicken Id1/Data file1.
And now you sync Data file 1 with Quicken Id2.  A completely different Quicken cloud dataset will be created and synced.  At this point there isn't any big problem except that it only start with a sync of 2 years.

But now a year later you switch back to Quicken Id1/Data file1.

It is going to be syncing Data file 1 with a year old Quicken cloud dataset.

Will Quicken properly sync to a year old Quicken cloud dataset?
I think it would depend on exactly what changed in all that time.  Like have accounts been deleted, has online information changed, ...

Interesting.

The only thing that like structurally changes over a 1 or 2 year period in my Q files (Windows and Mac) is that -- per your previous rec about not closing accounts b/c you can't reopen them -- I am apt to have another zeroed-out hidden account YOY.

Old FSAs, rolled over 401Ks, merged IRAs, even escrow account for homes I don't own anymore. I must have IDK 15-20 of 'em. Some of them are closed IRL, a handful of them are probably zombie accounts, some like the escrows obviously only existed in Quicken. All are deactivated. They don't get bug me, they don't create errors in my datafile (at least none that I've ever encountered), and they don't gum up my Quicken Update.

I wonder how that would affect cloud sync with 2 QIDs. Or not. 

Chris_QPW

Let me first say that I get the impression that not many Mac SuperUsers use sync to Mobile/Web for their real files, but I don't really track that.  What I know and mostly comment about is Windows.  So for Mac use it might not apply (but it could).

mistertheplague said:

Chris_QPW said:

mistertheplague said:

mshiggins said:

The other recommendation is to use a second email address and Quicken ID. With two QIDs, you can always be new. 

Some caveats apply if you are syncing to the Quicken cloud. 

Yeah, I use the Quicken mobile app for iOS. I'd read some speculation/reporting that 2 QIDs would create problems. 

Quicken Mobile/Web are basically the GUIs for the Quicken cloud dataset, which is synced with the Quicken Desktop data file.

The Quicken Id is part of the "access key" for deciding what Quicken cloud dataset to sync with.  In other words the access to any given Quicken cloud dataset is dependent on both the Quicken Id and which Quicken data file you are using.

So say you are syncing with Quicken Id1/Data file1.
And now you sync Data file 1 with Quicken Id2.  A completely different Quicken cloud dataset will be created and synced.  At this point there isn't any big problem except that it only start with a sync of 2 years.

But now a year later you switch back to Quicken Id1/Data file1.

It is going to be syncing Data file 1 with a year old Quicken cloud dataset.

Will Quicken properly sync to a year old Quicken cloud dataset?
I think it would depend on exactly what changed in all that time.  Like have accounts been deleted, has online information changed, ...

Interesting.

The only thing that like structurally changes over a 1 or 2 year period in my Q files (Windows and Mac) is that -- per your previous rec about not closing accounts b/c you can't reopen them -- I am apt to have another zeroed-out hidden account YOY.

Old FSAs, rolled over 401Ks, merged IRAs, even escrow account for homes I don't own anymore. I must have IDK 15-20 of 'em. Some of them are closed IRL, a handful of them are probably zombie accounts, some like the escrows obviously only existed in Quicken. All are deactivated. They don't get bug me, they don't create errors in my datafile (at least none that I've ever encountered), and they don't gum up my Quicken Update.

I wonder how that would affect cloud sync with 2 QIDs. Or not. 

I think the biggest problem with knowing what is going to happen is that we in fact don't get to know what is being done.  It is all done in the background, and there isn't any log that describes what is being done and such.  Like was XX synced from Desktop to cloud dataset?  Or the other way around?

And the other thing about this is just the realization that the sync is pretty much unlimited.  Because of some of the bugs that have been reported it is pretty clear that there isn't anything really restricting the sync from changing pretty much anything it wants.  For instance it can put back deleted accounts, destroy split information in long past paycheck transaction entries, ...

Without the visibility on what it does or has done, it makes the long time users that have decades of data very nervious.