Chase - Ongoing issue but for how long?

AnonAnon

I'm trying but failing to get my kid to use quicken for finances due to the chase situation. The younger crowd doesn't see a need for this software given the energy it is taking to configure, and when it is made unusable (aka, "Sign into Chase bank failed. Try again.") they win the debate. The company is going to lose the next generation of sales b/c this install is rendered useless since the Sept chase authentication noise overran us all.

Frankx

Hi AnonAnon,

You raise a very interesting and important issue.

I too have been wondering whether the next generation will be Quicken users and I too have my doubts.  But I do believe that Quicken management is also very aware of these concerns and also think they are taking steps to entice younger folks to use a new(er) Quicken product - Simplifi. 

I, too, agree that the younger generation (I am generalizing here - I know) is not willing to expend the "energy" needed to maintain Quicken because they likely don't believe the outcome/product is worth the amount of effort needed to maintain Quicken.

So much for my 2 cents and crystal ball gazing - I need to update my data...

Frankx

Chris_QPW

Frankly with one exception I don't think the "younger generation" is wrong.

To me, the only benefit Quicken has over what is available at the financial institutions is a consolidated view.  And that benefit is largely dependent on how complicated a person's finances are.  I certainly didn't need Quicken when I was young, and I don't need it now that I'm retired after I have consolidated most of my finances, instead of having them spread out over lots of financial institutions.

And there is a basic problem with Quicken.  The financial institution never standardized on a system for providing this service. OFX (what Quicken Inc/Intuit call Direct Connect) was an attempt at it, but at the most only about 4,000 financial institutions adopted it, that is now down to less than 2,000 out of the 35,000+ financial institutions in the US alone.  Express Web Connect/aggregators is just a hack, an act of desperation to try to provide this service.  And it shows it with its constant problems.  And now you have Express Web Connect +/FDX where they have standardized the part from Intuit to the financial institution. But first off how many financial institutions will really adopt it?  I'm betting that less than adopted OFX.
And at least at this point that standardization isn't helping much.  People are reporting no transactions downloading or missing transactions.  Not to mention just the problems with getting it setup in the first place.

Contrast that with just using the financial institution's website or mobile App.  Those just work.

And speaking of things that just work you have the "old timers" still wanting to send out a payment "manually" to have "control".  Instead of just setting up the payments to be paid automatically.  There is a completely different set of what they trust (or don't trust).

Chris_QPW

BTW here is a story to illustrate what long time users of Quicken tend to forget, since it has just become second nature to them (workarounds).

Several years ago, when doing betas I noticed that there was real lack of new users since almost all of the beta users were long time users. And as such, not much input on what the new user might run into.

My wife one really used Quicken by bring up a copy of my data file and looking at what was spent on different things so I figured that she would be a perfect candidate for this.

So, she was to create a new data file and start setting it up.

She never got past adding the accounts.  When I came to check on her an hour or two later, I saw that the reason she couldn't get things setup was because she needed to do one of the many workarounds (at the moment I can't remember the exact one) just to add that financial institution.  This is the reality.

Quicken Inc advertises that people will have access to all their financial information with a quick an easy 15 minutes of setup, but the truth is far from that.

Their advertising should really read.  "It isn't easy to set this up, but if you expend a lot of effort on it you might get some good benefits.".