Quicken Membership Fees [Edited]

Trinity Starfire

I paid for the software. I should be able to use it with all it’s features without having to pay Quicken extra money for a membership as I don’t need any additional services from Quicken. All I want to do is use the software with it's included features that I already paid for and download transactions directly from my bank. It shouldn’t even involve Quicken.com, and you shouldn't be in the middle of it unless I want my account set up that way. Instead, you've set up your software to communicate with you as a middle man instead of giving buyers control over who and what they connect to.

[Removed - Speculation/Inaccurate]

Chris_QPW

You don't understand how the downloading of transactions works.  In the US there isn't any standard that all the financial institutions adhere to for downloading transactions.

This fact means that any software that wants to be able to download transactions has to maintain all kinds of different interfaces with different financial institutions on how to log in and get the transactions.  And they can't just do that without permission.  So along with that is an agreement with the financial institution on how it will be done.

That is where the "aggregators" come in.  This kind of job requires a lot of labor, to setup and maintain.  So there are in fact just a few companies big enough and willing to provide the aggregator services.

Quicken Inc pays Intuit for this service.  And you in turn pay them to keep up that link.

TTSguy

Are the aggregators necessary even if you don't sync and only use Web connect to download your transactions?

Boatnmaniac

TTSguy said:

Are the aggregators necessary even if you don't sync and only use Web connect to download your transactions?

No.  Neither is an aggregator needed for Direct Connect. 

But whether or not an aggregator is involved/needed is a moot point.  The point is that when we installed the software and activated it we agreed to the terms and conditions of Quicken's EULA.  And that license grants us the right to use Quicken's online services for only a specific amount of time.  After that time is expired we can either resubscribe for another period of time or we can opt not to and continue to use Quicken but on a manual basis with no online services.

Quicken hasn't been sneaky or untruthful about this.  It is very clearly stated in the EULA terms & conditions that we had to agree to before Quicken would be permitted to run on our computers.  Anyone who gets mad about this when their subscription expires should really be mad at him/herself for either forgetting about the terms of the subscription or for not reading what they agreed to when they installed Quicken.