Renew Subscription Banners

Pfeggie

So last year I decided to upgrade my Quicken product. I've been using Quicken since 1991, upgrading every 3-5 years. Last year I found out that Quicken had become a subscription product. I'm not too interested in doing all the online stuff but I wanted to use a more current version of the software. The salesperson I spoke to said that I would still be able to use Quicken after my subscription expired, except for downloading transactions, etc. Since I didn't want this feature anyway, I signed up for the subscription. Fast forward to this year, my subscription has run out and sure I can still open my files, but there is now a "RENEW" banner displayed on 25% of my screen and there is no way to remove it. Had the salesperson told me last year that I would lose 25% of my screen if I didn't renew, I would have stuck with my old product. Now I can't go back. I can only reluctantly pay the renewal, put up with the renewal ad, or find another product.
How do you people sleep at night? Why would you do this to your loyal users? I paid for the product. Why can't I use it without the annoying renew advertisements?

Greg_the_Geek

You agreed to the renew banners when you accepted the EULA. If you're using Quicken Windows, you can go back to either Quicken 2017 or 2016 without the renew banners.

mshiggins

@Pfeggie
I sympathize with your predicament. It definitely is not fun to feel like you were mislead by the salesperson. 

What was the prior version you were using?

Greg_the_Geek

Since when does Quicken have salesman? Did the OP contact Quicken Customer Care?

jacobs

Greg_the_Geek said:

You agreed to the renew banners when you accepted the EULA. If you're using Quicken Windows, you can go back to either Quicken 2017 or 2016 without the renew banners.

@Greg_the_Geek That totally misses the point. The user isn't saying it's not legal; they're saying this information was (intentionally) omitted when the Quicken representative said they could continue using Quicken after the subscription ended. 

@Pfeggie  Please understand that in this "community forum" you're talking mostly with fellow Quicken users. Quicken management does not read nor respond to posts here. I understand your frustration; any time any of us who are users tell people about the subscription, we always mention the renewal notice which steals screen space.

You said, "I paid for the product; why can't I use it?" What you actually paid for was a one year subscription to use the product. Now that your subscription has ended, you can either renew your subscription or continue to use the existing software with the presence of the annoying renewal notice. You may not need to download transactions from your financial institutions, but the subscription pays for ongoing enhancements and new features in the program, for updates to stay compatible with operating system changes, for bug fixes, for free Customer Support, even for this forum. You may think "I'd be happy without any of that", but the bottom line is that they need users to pay them money to keep supporting the program; the old software model of buying software once and then occasionally paying to update it was just not financially viable.

You ask: why do they do this? I can only partly answer that question. When Quicken was moving to subscription pricing back in 2017, their originally-stated plan was that once a subscription lapsed, users could access their existing data in read-only mode, but not enter any additional transactions. Users complained, and management came up with what they labeled as a compromise: they would allow Quicken to continue to operate in manual mode once a subscription lapsed, but in return, they would add messaging about renewal. At the time, no one knew it would be so large and persistent.

What I can't answer is why they feel it's better to annoy the heck out of people rather than periodically pinging them to renew. I suppose they feel they get some customers to renew this way, and for the people who walk away, they're not losing anything because those people had already decided not to pay Quicken more money. It seems odd to me that they're prefer to try to hound people into renewing versus gently coaxing them to renew, but they have about four years of data on renewal rates since the first subscriptions expired, and their metrics and stats on renewals versus non-renewals hasn't led them to make any change in this policy.

mshiggins

Greg_the_Geek said:

Since when does Quicken have salesman? Did the OP contact Quicken Customer Care?

If the "sales person" was someone from Quicken customer care, they were either incompetent or purposely omitted the information about the upgrade nag banner. 

jacknpaula`

I'm in the same predicament! I don't download any info from any institutions. I don't even need to update my current version. I was using 2003 basic for years until I needed the ability to save an account as an excel file. That is the only reason I went to 2019. Somewhere, someone knows how to disable the obnoxious renewal banner! Hello! Someone! Are you out there?

Greg_the_Geek

As it's been posted many times, either renew or revert to Quicken 2017 or 2016.

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @Pfeggie,

I have sent you a direct message, please navigate to the inbox in the top right-hand corner of the Community page and check your inbox.

Thank you!