Bank of America....EWC+ Connection

Robert Ralyea

I do not have a problem dup transactions. The downloads match what’s in my registers. All I  see for bill status is processing. 

Randalllind

Quicken just disable something with transactions saying once fix they will enable it again. Whatever it was seemed to have been my issue. I downloaded from BOA today with no dups.

Randalllind

> @denmarfl said:
> Looks Like BofA shutoff DirectConnect Today.  I thought the date was 10/12; Quicken support thought it was 10/10/22.  I used BofA DC yeaterday, today I got OL-393-A....BUT...normally you SE RETRY..today that button displays REAUTHORIZE and list all your accts.  Seems they PULLED the PLUG offically on DC

I believe 10/10 was the date.

DreamKiller

Well I guess it is true that your mileage may vary...... I gritted my teeth and took the plunge and switched my BOA accounts over to the new connection method expecting a disaster. 3 checking/saving accounts and 3 credit card account with BOA. To my surprise it went smooth as silk. No double transactions or anything. Just worked.

What I did was yesterday (Saturday) I did a normal Quicken update accounts before switching. Then this morning (knowing usually new transaction don't show up Sat to Sun) I switched and reauthorized the BOA accounts. Then did a normal Quicken update accounts. No issues so far. Guess real test will be next week sometime when new transactions show up. To be continued..........

denmarfl

AND...just to keep things confusing and interesting....I used ONLINE CENTER and just selected to Update only my BofA Accts.  I got no alert to REAUTHORIZE the accts.  The Connection DC, showed COMPLETED.  I did not have any thing to Upload.  I then clicked the UPDATE ALL accts circle that is at the top of the ACCT column, I got the alert to REAUTHORIZE my BofA Accts.  Hmmmm......

denmarfl

Now that I had no other choice but to convert to EWC+....my experience...not good.  In a release about this chnage seems to me the words were "faster more secure connection...."  No way this EWC+ is faster than DirectConnect...no way.  I felt like I could watch my grass grow faster.  here's another way its not faster, when I go to the BofA Website to enter Transfers between my accts at BofA....the Transfer entry time takes longer than when I entered it in Quicken.  Each Entry....the little circle comes up as the entry is being recorded...its not a quick process...plus, there is no MENO entry...so if you wanted to document the purpose of the Entry...you cannot.  As to Bill pay, that is more streamlined as you open Bill Pay, there is the List of Payees...and if you have more than 1 Bill to Pay you can enter payment info without leaving that site.....

But the EWC+ connection time is definitely Slower...from my experience thus far

Mark1104

My understanding is that the change to EWC+ was dont to enhance security.  Things are much different than they were 30 years ago, so I am all for security.

What has also occured over 30 years is how we all use Banking.  It used to be that overnight batch processing was fine.  All there really was were checks clearing and deposits received at the branches during the day.  

The systems are all set for overnight batch processing. (remeber the days of noon cutoff for deposts - that was because banks needed time to race the deposited checks from the branch to the central processing site.  Those cutoffs have all disappears as banking changed to more or a 'real time' / 'daylight' environment.

Banking has changed: 1) a lot more use of credit card transactions, 2) more use of debit cards, 3) ATM withdrawals for cash, 4) ACH transfers for deposits and payments of bills.   These all occur during 'daylight'.  The 'daylight' balance is more important as BofA does not permit overdrafts using the debit card or ATM cash withdrawals.  These are all the 'pending' transactions.  They have occured during 'daylight' but have yet to be updated in the overnight batch process.  (the cash transfers on their website cut off at 10:45 p.m. because the overnight batch processing begins at 11 p.m.)

On line bill pay transactions are a whole different 'kettle of fish'.  In a way they are 'pending' transactions, but not really. They have yet to occur while the items in the prior paragraph has already occured.  The bill pay 'pending' transactions come from a totally different system within the Bank (in fact, it comes from a separate company)

So it appears the EWC+ method is enhancing security for the 'daylight' transactions and the bill pay transactions are the collateral damage of the enhancement (by definition, NONE of the online bill pay transactions are processed in 'daylight' - they are all processed during the overnight batch processing as are all other paper checks) .... and that may be because the bill pay transactions come from a different source and it wasn't worth incorporating that into the enhancement as overall, as I suspect not as many use bill pay as they used to: a lot more vendors accept credit cards and debit cards than 30 years ago and the new generation is more accepting of permitting vendors to auto-debit their checking account, IMHO

Andrew02467

The bad communication though is all on Quicken's part: reauthorizing also authorized my mortgage and HELOC accounts even though they were not the four listed as needing conversion. I lost all the payment history for both those accounts. The process also put my money market account linked to my checking account (it said LINKED and I mistakenly assumed it would link to the correct account). These issues were correctred by my restarting again from my backup data copy (and choosing Don't Add for mortgage and HELOC). But the checking account and credit card accounts both are off..the checking account is off by over $4400 from the amount shown by BofA online and in my original backup data copy. Duplicates are not immediately obvious either. I put in a correcting entry to get the balances to agree, but in each of the updates since (two of them) I am getting transactions downloaded which date back to early September showing up again with these updates. These were all downloaded, matched and reconciled weeks back. I am thinking I will revert to my backed up data, and not use my BofA credit card at all, then will rely on hand entering checking account info.

What a mess this is!!

Mark1104

@Andrew02467 - from other posts, what is driving the reconcilation issue is an 'opening balance' transactions....suggest reviewing if that is the change / deletion that is required. just delete the transactions from September that were already downloaded / reconciled; will that put you back in synch? 

Andrew02467

@Mark1104-Thanks for taking the time to make those suggestions. As to the credit card account you were entirely correct...the opening balance dating to May of 2001 had been changed from zero to the exact amount that account was off by, and it was still marked reconciled as such at that. Changing that to zero, got the credit card balance in synch. The checking account is more difficult...it was opened in May of 1998 with an amount which I cannot recall to confirm but was not zero, as immediately after there were direct debits for mortgage etc. which certainly mean it did not open at zero. And this amount is not the same as the amount the register is off by (opened at $8321, register is off by $4424). And neither 4421 nor the difference of the two corresponds to any entry in the register since then. I suppose instead of my fudge transaction I put in yesterday, I could reduce the opening balance to 8321-4424 and make that go away...or I could check my backup copy database for reality check on the opening amount. But good ideas.

Yes, and transactions coming down from the updates which were already entered, matched and reconciled, I just deleted them. Hopefully this will not keep occurring.

Cheers.

BarryGraham

I did not get a prompt to change my connectivity method but now I am getting an error when I try to download from BofA.  It seems the only way forward it to deactivate and reactivate, is that correct?

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BarryGraham

That is the source of the error, but I wasn't informed and I wasn't prompted to make the change, so I had to make the change manually. 

SWaxman

I have been a 30+ year BOA customer and have been using Quicken and been a Support client for almost as long as the product's been available. The PR on this change has been nothing short of horrible on both sides. The Bank has been silent with it's customers and Quicken announced the connection change as an enhancement, without advising it's clients of any loss of functionality. To make matters worse, when contacting them about this, both sides blame the other for the change and refer you to them for resolution. How could this have been handled any worse? Question for Quicken - What will you do to resolve our loss of functionality??

Greg_the_Geek

Why should Quicken resolve your loss of functionality when it was BoA that forced Quicken to change the connection method? Maybe you should ask BoA what they are going to do to resolve your loss of functionality.

BarryGraham

Greg_the_Geek said:

Why should Quicken resolve your loss of functionality when it was BoA that forced Quicken to change the connection method? Maybe you should ask BoA what they are going to do to resolve your loss of functionality.

Because the only reason that connection methods exist is to allow the downloading of data into Quicken.  Quicken and the Bank own the problem jointly regardless of who made the decision.

Jon

Quicken cannot force BoA to accept bill payment instructions if BoA no longer wants to. And Quicken cannot force you to move to a different bank that does accept bill pay if you don't want to. Between you, BoA, and Quicken, Quicken is the only one that cannot fix this. They do not own the problem equally.

Chris_QPW

BarryGraham said:

Greg_the_Geek said:

Why should Quicken resolve your loss of functionality when it was BoA that forced Quicken to change the connection method? Maybe you should ask BoA what they are going to do to resolve your loss of functionality.

Because the only reason that connection methods exist is to allow the downloading of data into Quicken.  Quicken and the Bank own the problem jointly regardless of who made the decision.

The Express Web Connect + connection does allow downloading of transactions.  What it doesn’t do is download scheduled payments or allow for sending instructions for scheduling payments or transfers.

As for the loss of those features, if we look for it to happen in Express Web Connect + the FDX protocol that it uses would have to change.  Given that the financial institutions got together and created that protocol and purposely left out that functionality, there is little chance they are going to put it in at a later time.  And even if they did it would be years into the future kind of timeframe.

Now Quicken Inc does recognize that the customers want that feature, but the best they are going to be able to do is try to do it with their third-party service bill presentment/payment system (Quicken Bill Manager).

Personally I don’t trust that system to be reliable, but that is where to look for whatever Quicken can do to restore this feature.  I haven’t looked at that system for the details of what it can and can’t do for you.

Mark1104

here is another solution:

First, I always get the sense that most Quicken users are older.  (I am one of them).  They have used Quicken for 20+ years and are used to their PC/ Laptop and not as comfortable as the younger generation is using their phones (since alot of the millenials  don't own a PC/ laptop).  

I appreciate I am making a lot of generalizations and assumptions with that statement, so please no blow-back. 

My point is have you considered making the Bill Pay payments another way?  It's just not a system of payment that is used as frequently as 20 years ago.  

1) Rather than pay the utlities via BillPay, have the utilities auto-debit your account.  I've done it that way for years and years.  Never had an issue.

2) Does the vendor accept credit card payments? Have them autobill the creditcard (rake up those points and cash back credits!). 

3) Use Zelle for the small payments.  I know there are all these horror stories about Zelle payments, but come on, each of those stories is someone who was frauded because they were not smart.  If you know the person (or company) you are paying, it isn't a problem.  It's when you don't know the person (or company) you are paying is where the fraud arises. 

Bottom line: are you behind the times? Are you using an aging process (Bill Pay) when other tools exist that are better and more convienent?  Can you elimiate 80% of the Bill Pay payments by using another process, leaving a very few payments to manually enter into Quicken? (p.s. I don't even bother what that anymore for the few Bill Pay payments I still make).

Lastly, this does mean you have to trust the counter-party to know you checking account number....but they do everytime you send them a check.  It's coded right at the bottom of the check so there is no additional risk!!!! And if you are providing your credit card number, you are protected against mis-use - that is federal law. 

Think about it!!

Chris_QPW

@Mark1104 I had to chuckle a bit when you mention that they should try the method you suggested to get with the times.  Except for Zelle, I have been using the process you described for over 25 years.  I really haven’t found the need for Zelle, but that is just because I don’t usually pay individuals.  It is certainly nice to have it available as an option.

Mark1104

@Chris_QPW - I am at the point that I a) write under 6 checks a year, b) use Bill Pay no more often that once per quarter, and c) have not carried cash in over a year. 

Every payment is via credit card, auto-debit or paid at the vendor's website (auto-saving my credit card number in my browser makes it a very quick process). 

I am 65 years old and have used Quicken for 28 years, so it's not that I am a millenial 

ysg26

Problem with Autopay using your bank account is that to do that you first have to sign a waiver/disclaimer that you are authorizing them to do so. Therefore in the rare case you do have a problem - for example the cable company continues to take it's monthly fee even after you cancel your account - don't expect any help from your bank. Your only recourse is with the merchant

Chris_QPW

@Mark1104 I’m also 65!    My finances are so automatic these days they are very boring.  In fact, with Chase’s change over to Express Web Connect + I just decided to forgo using Quicken at all.  It felt really weird for the first week not updating Quicken everyday.

Jon

Like @Mark1104 I only write a small number of checks each year. As much as possible I pay my bills with a credit card (and then pay the CC bills via Fidelity's bill-pay) but I generally don't let anybody auto-bill if I don't have to. I had a bad experience once with getting over-billed via auto-pay and getting my money back was a big hassle; I don't care to repeat that. I want final say on how much money is getting paid out.

Mark1104

@ysg26 - how long ago did that occur?   Have you asked your bank if that is still the case? CFPB has been challenging and changing the status quo since they were formed after the Great Recession.

Please read this article from CFPB.  As long as you take the right actions upon ending your relationship with a vendor who has been auto-debiting your account,  you have protections.   

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/you-have-protections-when-it-comes-to-automatic-debit-payments-from-your-account/

Chris_QPW

ysg26 said:

Problem with Autopay using your bank account is that to do that you first have to sign a waiver/disclaimer that you are authorizing them to do so. Therefore in the rare case you do have a problem - for example the cable company continues to take it's monthly fee even after you cancel your account - don't expect any help from your bank. Your only recourse is with the merchant

I certainly feel better paying by credit card where I can just dispute any payment, not that have actually had to do it.
The only bills that I pay directly from my checking account are my utility bills, HOA, and the credit card payments themselves.  Beside going through the credit card earns cash back and the cashflow is much easier.

I do agree with @Mark1104 though that I believe the protections for payment from the checking accounts have improved a lot over the years.

Mark1104

@Chris_QPW - my payment appraoch is the same: auto-debit the utilties, HOA, the credit card payments themselves.  Billpay ends up being property taxes and a few one-offs that don't permit use of a credit card, which is getting rarer and rarer - and even for some of those that used to be BillPay, Zelle comes in handy - the vendors appreciate it saving them a trip to the bank (lawn care, plumbers, electricians, etc.);

Randalllind

> @BarryGraham said:
> Because the only reason that connection methods exist is to allow the downloading of data into Quicken.  Quicken and the Bank own the problem jointly regardless of who made the decision.

I agree and expect Quicken to work the same regardless of connection type.

mshiggins

SWaxman said:

I have been a 30+ year BOA customer and have been using Quicken and been a Support client for almost as long as the product's been available. The PR on this change has been nothing short of horrible on both sides. The Bank has been silent with it's customers and Quicken announced the connection change as an enhancement, without advising it's clients of any loss of functionality. To make matters worse, when contacting them about this, both sides blame the other for the change and refer you to them for resolution. How could this have been handled any worse? Question for Quicken - What will you do to resolve our loss of functionality??

Definitely the PR on this change was excreable.  Quicken Inc may not have been the instigator of the change, but they could have done a far better job of explaining to Quicken users what the impact of the change was going to be.

L_K

Don't know if Quicken actually reads these posts, but, the recent loss of bill pay syncing / downloading of pending payments for B of A is not acceptable. I need to know, by looking at my register in Quicken, that I've scheduled a payment. Having to log into B of A to see this information is asinine. This information use to be downloaded and it should continue to be downloaded. BTW - the Pending Transactions feature, which according to their help page is supposed to show this info if you let Quicken automatically add downloaded transactions into your register does not work - I tested it and my pending transactions did not download.