OL-301-A error Chase Bank for 2 weeks

Cyndi B

The technical representative I worked with 5 days ago couldn't help me and it is extremely difficult to work around not having bill pay for 2 weeks. How long does it take to get issues resolved?

Quicken Jared

Cyndi B said:

The technical representative I worked with 5 days ago couldn't help me and it is extremely difficult to work around not having bill pay for 2 weeks. How long does it take to get issues resolved?

Hello @Cyndi B, 

I am sorry to hear about this error message causing you this frustration. Thanks for inquiring about this here on the Quicken Community. 

First, have you made use of the steps listed in this Support Article? If so, and that has not resolved the issue, I would like to know the connection method being used to add or link your account(s) to online banking services. You can verify this anytime by going to Tools > Account List and then clicking on the Edit button in the row associated with the affected accounts. Next, go to the Online Services tab in the new window that appears afterward. The information we are looking for should be found under the Online Setup callout box.

I hope to hear back from you soon, if you should have the opportunity to check back in with us and speak on this matter further. 

Thank you,

Quicken Jared 

wchjr56

I was just called by Quicken after having this very same problem with Chase. I was told that Chase is moving away from the "Direct Connect" method of connecting to "Express Connect". This kills the ability to us pay bills directly through Quicken and Chase. As a new customer of Chase who left another bank because of this very same issue, I am fit to be tied on what to do next. I am also told that "Express Connect" will not allow you to use Quicken's Bill Pay Manager either. Which is fine by me because I don't like it and don't like giving Quicken another $10 per month for the right to hold on to my money. This is not a Quicken problem but a Chase Problem.

Jason Gittman

The only workaround is to pay bills directly from the Chase Bank's website. Although I would prefer to do everything through Quicken, it is not that big a deal as the payments are automatically downloaded into Quicken. Automatic payments still work as before. Once Chase changes over to Web Connect Plus, downloading transactions should be comparable to using Direct Connection although it may be a little slower.

I just wish Quicken or Chase would inform customers of these changes. Until I checked with the community, I was thinking my Quicken program or data file was corrupted. And, when I called the Chase tech rep, I was told there was nothing wrong on their end and that no one else reported any problems. She didn't know anything about the connection changes.

Chris_QPW

I'm afraid that it is getting harder and harder to stay with Direct Connect.  First all the Credit Unions dropped it years ago, and now there is a big push to go to Express Web Connect +, which is what Chase is going to at the end of September.

The difference between Express Web Connect and Express Web Connect + is that where Intuit and the financial institution's "agree on some way to log in/transfer transactions" with Express Web Connect (no standardized protocol), Express Web Connect + uses a standardized protocol.  And note that it uses rotating tokens instead of your username/password to log in.

The overall flow is the same for both of them:
Quicken -> QCS (Quicken Connection Services/Quicken Cloud dataset/Sync, the same sync as Mobile/Web) -> Intuit server -> financial institution's website.

Any connection type can work with "Quicken Bill Manager", but I wouldn't touch it will a hundred-foot pole.  It is Quicken talking to a third-party service that logs into the biller's website and tries to schedule a payment from there.  I personally pay all my bills by setting them up on the biller's site but consider this completely different.  First off, as a human I can read all the information on setting this up and know about any fees and such.  And I can understand any kind of special login requirements, instead of being a "script" that doesn't understand when something changes.  Second, what I setup is for my bills to be paid in full on the due date.  I don't try put in a payment every month on some kind of schedule.

Chris_QPW

BTW Quicken Bill Pay is based on the same service that use to be known as Online Bill Presentment.  Basically, the same third party doing the same kind of trying to log into the biller's website to get the payment date and amount.

I tried using it for years, some billers worked fine, some worked "sometimes", and some never worked.
And that isn't trying to pay bills through this system.  If they can't even get the bill date/amount reliably why would anyone believe they can pay bills reliably?  I would never trust any system to pay my bills that I don't consider close to 100% reliable.

Oh, I should mention that for the ones that never worked, I'm talking about the ones that were listed as supported, but either I could never get them setup, or they would setup, but never given any bill information.

There is also "Check Pay", which is for billers that aren't supported, and the third-party service is supposed to send a check for these.  Problem is that there have been horror stories on here from people that those checks have sometimes taken weeks to get to the biller.

Chris_QPW

Is see in this announcement that indeed some of the bills that Quicken Bill Pay use to be able to track from Chase won't be able to be in the future, like loans.
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7915619/the-community-meetup-july-2022-edition

In reality to me this is "nothing new", as I said above what can be supported and such is dependent on the biller's website and what the third-party can do to access it, so it always "subject to change at any moment".

Jason Gittman

> @Chris_QPW said:
> I'm afraid that it is getting harder and harder to stay with Direct Connect.  First all the Credit Unions dropped it years ago, and now there is a big push to go to Express Web Connect +, which is what Chase is going to at the end of September.
>
> The difference between Express Web Connect and Express Web Connect + is that where Intuit and the financial institution's "agree on some way to log in/transfer transactions" with Express Web Connect (no standardized protocol), Express Web Connect + uses a standardized protocol.  And note that it uses rotating tokens instead of your username/password to log in.
>
> The overall flow is the same for both of them:
> Quicken -> QCS (Quicken Connection Services/Quicken Cloud dataset/Sync, the same sync as Mobile/Web) -> Intuit server -> financial institution's website.
>
> Any connection type can work with "Quicken Bill Manager", but I wouldn't touch it will a hundred-foot pole.  It is Quicken talking to a third-party service that logs into the biller's website and tries to schedule a payment from there.  I personally pay all my bills by setting them up on the biller's site but consider this completely different.  First off, as a human I can read all the information on setting this up and know about any fees and such.  And I can understand any kind of special login requirements, instead of being a "script" that doesn't understand when something changes.  Second, what I setup is for my bills to be paid in full on the due date.  I don't try put in a payment every month on some kind of schedule.

I am a little confused. When I would receive a bill in the mail and could set up a one time bill payment to Chase from Quicken (before this month), I thought all that Quicken did was send that info to the Chase bill pay website. I presume that is different from the "Quicken Bill Manager" to which you are referring. In paying bills that way for around 20 years I never had a case whereby the vendor did not receive payment from Chase or other banks, either electronically or by paper check.

Chris_QPW

I like to think of the Quicken Direct Connect/Bill Payment system as a "GUI" for the financial institution's bill payment system.  Using the OFX protocol Quicken could talk to the financial institution OFX server that would then relay information back and forth from their bill payment system.  As such that payment system would do the transfers or if needed send a check withdrawing money from your checking account.

Quicken Bill Pay is a completely different animal.

Quicken talks to a third-party server through some kind of API.  In turn that third-party server goes to the "biller's website" and logs in as you and gets the billing information and also schedules payments and such.

So, the Quicken Direct Connect/Bill Payments originate at Chase and are sent to the biller.
Quicken Bill Pay payments originate at the biller's website and are "pulled" from your checking account.  And Check Pay, is where the third-party server sends a check in the mail to pay a biller that isn't supported by the Quicken Bill Pay/third-party service.

As you can see it is quite a different system.