Charles Schwab - Direct Connect

NCBryan01

I find these community threads extremely difficult to get help from.

I don't have time to read through dozens of threads each with hundreds of posts with the intricate details of each user's unique experiences for the information I need.

I create a new question and the category I need can not be selected.

I post questions and they get moved to another thread without any notice.

Threads get closed so no one can participate.

I am even unable to find a way to reply to an existing thread that doesn't say closed but has no way to "Reply": that I can find.

For what users pay for this service there needs to be some real effort at providing product support. An apology from the CEO is useless for helping with problems.

With all the problems Quicken and Charles Schwab have created for users I want to followup and find out if Direct Connect is available for Charles Schwab now? And will it ever be available? After being cut off from downloading, resetting the account, verifying the account, deleting 18 months of duplicate transactions, it's finally been working fine with Web Express+ but I would prefer to use Direct Connect if possible.

It shouldn't require hours of a paying customer's time to get an answer to this question.

Thank you

Greg_the_Geek

It doesn't look like Charles Schwab wants to pay for Direct Connect anymore. You're stuck with Express Web Connect+ unless you change to a firm that supports DC.

NCBryan01

Thank you for the response. I would hope to get an official response regarding the matter as well.

Something similar happened with another of my bank accounts not long ago but Direct Connect eventually returned as an option. I hope this will be the case for Charles Schwab as well.

I'm too embedded in Schwab and a 3rd party advisor to move to another brokerage at this point.

Thank you

Chris_QPW

I doubt you will get an official post on the subject, what's more I doubt that Charles Schwab is going to change their minds.  They pushed the change for all the "aggregators" that access their customer data.

And in fact, you really need ask Charles Schwab not Quicken Inc on this because they are the ones that make this kind of decision.  And that is why Quicken Inc can't post an official statement, because they don't make the decision.

Ps56k2

NCBryan01 said: Thank you for the response. I would hope to get an official response regarding the matter as well.

It was Schwab that changed the "lock" to the house -
and the rest is Quicken trying to make their "keys" work...

So - it's all on Schwab

https://www.schwab.com/legal/public-security-tips-popup

NCBryan01

I fully support Charles Schwab's efforts to increase the security on their customer's accounts. It sounds like they're not only following standards that they and other financial institutions agreed upon, they helped develop them. I can't imagine it being the price of the service preventing them from paying for it, unless it's excessively priced. They've already agreed to such terms with 3 major institutions that make up 70% of the data aggregation performed with Schwab (according to the published FAQ referenced above).

Quicken should be able publish which service(s) are available from each institution to their customers for their product without violating any terms.. I suspect they're still negotiating terms as why they haven't made any public statement on the Direct Connect matter.

nerdindenial

The Web Express+ download seems to be fast (e.g. 20 seconds) when it is working correctly. Still on an "update all accounts" including two specific Schwab accounts it takes more like 2 minutes and 20 seconds and then just those two accounts don't really get downloaded. The other 6 Schwab accounts download fine. I think the 2 minutes is from TCP_TIMEOUT on socket traffic. If I try again to download ONLY those 2 problematic accounts, the account list says they got updated, but no downloaded transactions ever appear. I'm going to wait for the next Quicken version before debugging this further. At least the duplicate downloaded transactions will be limited to 60 days' worth in the next version.

Chris_QPW

NCBryan01 said:

Quicken should be able publish which service(s) are available from each institution to their customers for their product without violating any terms.. I suspect they're still negotiating terms as why they haven't made any public statement on the Direct Connect matter.

I don't think it violates any terms that have been set out.  I'm just used to dealing with Quicken Inc and Intuit all these years, and it is that experience that tells me that they most they are ever going to say on the subject is some vague statements.  They might surprise me, they have in the past, but not very often, especially since they seem to have the attitude that telling users the least amount of information on what they do it for "security".

Note you might be interested in this conversation starting at this comment:
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20221083/#Comment_20221083

If @10s_player is correct that is even more reason to believe that Direct Connect is never coming back to Charles Schwab

For what it is worth I don't believe Charles Schwab is dropping Direct Connect because of the "cost".  I do believe that their intentions are to get to one API for all.  When one is talking about the true costs that Charles Schwab would be concerned about it isn't any upkeep of Direct Connect.  It is the upkeep and concern for security from all parties that want to access their client data.

Quicken is just one of many that wants that access.  Even if Direct Connect is made totally secure, but still have aggregators that aren't they haven't got to where they want to be.  And since the other aggregators aren't going to agree on Direct Connect/OFX then they are certainly going to push all parties to one that they can support that is secure.

I think this is a shame for Direct Connect/OFX because of all the extra parties that are now involved in Express Web Connect + instead of just Quicken (the program), not to mention the storage of data on servers that might be hacked.

NCBryan01

> @nerdindenial said:
> The Web Express+ download seems to be fast (e.g. 20 seconds) when it is working correctly.

I'm experiencing the opposite. It's taking much longer on Web Express than it did with Direct Connect.

nerdindenial

@NCBryan01 Yes when Web Express+ is slow (e.g. over 2 minutes) I believe that means it isn't working and times out. You can start unchecking accounts in One Step Update and eventually determine which account is slowing it down. I found that 2 of 7 WE+ accounts were slowing the OSU from 0.33 minutes to 2.33 minutes. I wasn't able to find proof in a log file yet, though.

NCBryan01

Chris_qpw

Agreed.

However Intuit is one of the 3 parties they've already established agreement with. I suppose this is for their Mint.com service. Quicken should work with Schwab to re-establish the service for it's users and utilize the API's developed by the group that are already being used by Intuit and the other two mentioned. .

Chris_QPW

NCBryan01 said:

Chris_qpw

Agreed.

However Intuit is one of the 3 parties they've already established agreement with. I suppose this is for their Mint.com service. Quicken should work with Schwab to re-establish the service for it's users and utilize the API's developed by the group that are already being used by Intuit and the other two mentioned. .

I think that is exactly what Quicken is trying to do (even if it isn't going smoothly), as far as the switch over to the API.  But note that because Quicken Inc isn't an aggregator, and as such doesn't directly connect to the financial institution, there is the added complication Quicken to Quicken Connection Services to Intuit to Financial institution's API.

Chris_QPW

nerdindenial said:

@NCBryan01 Yes when Web Express+ is slow (e.g. over 2 minutes) I believe that means it isn't working and times out. You can start unchecking accounts in One Step Update and eventually determine which account is slowing it down. I found that 2 of 7 WE+ accounts were slowing the OSU from 0.33 minutes to 2.33 minutes. I wasn't able to find proof in a log file yet, though.

This sounds very likely.  This is exactly what has always been the case for problem accounts/financial institutions.  With Express Web Connect (and Plus) running in parallel it is a lot harder to look at the status screen and see which one(s) are causing the problem.  The best thing you can do is exactly what you suggested.

nerdindenial

The tricky part (at least in my case) is that the slowness from the bad WE+ accounts only occurs on a mass OSU - it does not occur if you download the problematic account individually. The history is that over time I added additional accounts and user credentials to Schwab and Quicken. Now that I am trying to convert them all to WE+ simultaneously some of the updates seem to be contending with each other.

So when all my accounts are supposedly fixed and I do a one-step update I see this (# means my comment):
Charles Schwab and Co., Inc. (XXXXXXX123) # Wife's IRA
Charles Schwab and Co., Inc. (XXXXXXX456,XXXXXXX372) # Joint account & Intelligent Portfolio
Charles Schwab and Co., Inc. (XXXXXXX789) # My IRA
Charles Schwab and Co., Inc. (XXXXXXX012,XXXXXXX483) # Son's account & Intelligent Portfolio)

Note: this seems to be working, but not that many transactions have downloaded lately.
It all gets very confusing because the credentials for line 2 can also see the accounts in lines 1 and 3.
Line 2 accounts tend to stall for 2 minutes on a one-step update without an update being listed in the account list.

But if one of the line two accounts is downloaded separately, they claim to download/update successfully in about 15 seconds - still I don't recall seeing any transactions being actually downloaded. I am waiting for a new Quicken release before investigating further.

retird

Ps56k2 said:

NCBryan01 said: Thank you for the response. I would hope to get an official response regarding the matter as well.

It was Schwab that changed the "lock" to the house -
and the rest is Quicken trying to make their "keys" work...

So - it's all on Schwab

https://www.schwab.com/legal/public-security-tips-popup

[removed - inaccurate/speculation/disruptive]

Chris_QPW

retird said:

Ps56k2 said:

NCBryan01 said: Thank you for the response. I would hope to get an official response regarding the matter as well.

It was Schwab that changed the "lock" to the house -
and the rest is Quicken trying to make their "keys" work...

So - it's all on Schwab

https://www.schwab.com/legal/public-security-tips-popup

The blame game was in full swing while Intuit owned Quicken.  That part is certainly not new.

I agree that this isn't "All on Schwab", in my opinion is that they were certainly the ones that said, "we are going to do this", but make no mistake, Quicken Inc, and Intuit did agree to it, and they all had plans of how to get it done.

So, I agree that Quicken Inc "dropped the ball too", but maybe not exactly how people think.  Quicken Inc has been hinting for a long time that they were working on a new connection method.

And in fact, it seems on the Mac side they seem to have pulled this off much better than on the Windows side.  Maybe that is due to the Mac having new code to work with, or that they were already using "QCS" for years and Quicken Windows only changed to it at the beginning of the years, or maybe the developer's skill or the testing, ...

For sure it was a big undertaking, which didn't go well.