why is quicken starter edition more expensive than quicken deluxe?

jgtibbs

Best I can tell, Deluxe does more than Starter and it can continue to be used (w/o updates) indefinitely while Starter cannot. Shouldn't Starter be cheaper than Deluxe?

splasher

This is from the small print in "Footnotes and disclaimers":

"†Discounts are calculated based on the annual price. The final price may differ from the monthly discounted price multiplied by 12 months. All offers are for the first year only when you order directly from Quicken by January 8, 2023, 11:59 PM PT. Offer good for new memberships only. Subscription billed annually. Offers listed above cannot be combined with any other offers. Offer does not apply to Quicken Starter. Upon the end of your membership term, the subscription will automatically renew at the then-current rates, unless you or we terminate this agreement."

You are seeing prices for "new users", not returning customers.  Bolding was done by me.

volvogirl

I see Starter is 3.49/mo and Deluxe is 2.99 because of 40% off for new users.  Looks like Deluxe is on sale right now.  

Starter  https://www.quicken.com/personal-finance/quicken-starter-windows

Deluxe https://www.quicken.com/personal-finance/quicken-deluxe-windows

jacobs

Here is the basic pricing for the different levels of Quicken on the Quicken.com website:



As you can see, Quicken Starter is indeed cheaper than Quicken Deluxe. If you're seeing otherwise, you may be seeing a temporary sale price. Quicken sometimes has discounts up to 40% off on Quicken Deluxe and above, but only for new users.

volvogirl

I scrolled down on that page and it has this

jacobs

The key with those discounted prices is that they're only good for new users. People sometimes see those prices and try to buy, but as soon as they log in to Quicken.com and are found to be existing customers, the discount disappears before check out. And some people get miffed at this, bur the footnote states clearly (but quite small): "Offer good for new memberships only."

Boatnmaniac

jgtibbs said:

I found these prices at several places. For example, googling “Quicken Starter Subscription” yields a “Starter” subscription at $41.88 and a “Deluxe” subscription for $35.93. Similar results found for other searches.

Be sure to take a close look at the box and the product description information.  While there are some nice discounts from retailers for current subscribers I think you will find that most of those steeply discounted offers are for new subscribers only.  If you are a current subscriber and try to use the activation code from one of those new subscriber-only offers you will find that Quicken will not accept it.

Also, as mentioned above, it seems that Quicken is now promoting non-Starter editions but not Starter which is why Starter's prices are higher that Deluxe.  That will likely change once Quicken starts a new promotion deal of some sort.

It also might be a Marketing strategy (pure speculation on my part) to discourage people from buying Starter so they can get increased revenue when the Deluxe+ subscriptions expire in a year and people start to resubscribe.

jacobs

@jgtibbs Can you share where you are seeing the prices you're describing?

splasher

This is from the small print in "Footnotes and disclaimers":

"†Discounts are calculated based on the annual price. The final price may differ from the monthly discounted price multiplied by 12 months. All offers are for the first year only when you order directly from Quicken by January 8, 2023, 11:59 PM PT. Offer good for new memberships only. Subscription billed annually. Offers listed above cannot be combined with any other offers. Offer does not apply to Quicken Starter. Upon the end of your membership term, the subscription will automatically renew at the then-current rates, unless you or we terminate this agreement."

You are seeing prices for "new users", not returning customers.  Bolding was done by me.

volvogirl

I see Starter is 3.49/mo and Deluxe is 2.99 because of 40% off for new users.  Looks like Deluxe is on sale right now.  

Starter  https://www.quicken.com/personal-finance/quicken-starter-windows

Deluxe https://www.quicken.com/personal-finance/quicken-deluxe-windows

jacobs

Here is the basic pricing for the different levels of Quicken on the Quicken.com website:



As you can see, Quicken Starter is indeed cheaper than Quicken Deluxe. If you're seeing otherwise, you may be seeing a temporary sale price. Quicken sometimes has discounts up to 40% off on Quicken Deluxe and above, but only for new users.

volvogirl

I scrolled down on that page and it has this

jacobs

The key with those discounted prices is that they're only good for new users. People sometimes see those prices and try to buy, but as soon as they log in to Quicken.com and are found to be existing customers, the discount disappears before check out. And some people get miffed at this, bur the footnote states clearly (but quite small): "Offer good for new memberships only."

splasher

jacobs said:

The key with those discounted prices is that they're only good for new users. People sometimes see those prices and try to buy, but as soon as they log in to Quicken.com and are found to be existing customers, the discount disappears before check out. And some people get miffed at this, bur the footnote states clearly (but quite small): "Offer good for new memberships only."

But if those prices are only available to "new memberships", why does Quicken send the marketing emails to existing members telling them about the 40% off deals for "new users only"?
That is pure evil and marketing at its worst level of dishonesty.
Are they expecting existing Quicken users to pass those emails on to their non-Quicken using friends and family?
Pushing it thru ads in social media is one thing, but emails to existing users is just over the line.

jacobs

I suspect that many people have more than one email in their system. (I used to use a different address as my ID for beta testing, for instance.) Or: their marketing email lists aren’t correlated with current subscriber data, so they send to everyone instead of a selected list of former users/subscribers.

Chris_QPW

I was going to suggest that was just bad programming where they don't take into account that you aren't a new user, until I realized something.  There is almost zero chance that they would have the email address of a "new user".

jacobs

But there are many people in their email database who are not current subscribers.

Chris_QPW

jacobs said:

But there are many people in their email database who are not current subscribers.

What would they be, the Quicken users that had enough of Quicken and quit using it?

I mean really, where have you seen "sign up your email address so that you can get email" web page?
I guess you could count the people in the "Before you buy" section, but I think that would be about 1 a month by my count.

P.S.  No matter how you cut it, it is either bad marketing or bad programming, take your pick.

jacobs

Chris_QPW said:

jacobs said:

But there are many people in their email database who are not current subscribers.

What would they be, the Quicken users that had enough of Quicken and quit using it?

Or those who haven't bought a recent subscription. There are plenty of people, even some regulars on this forum, who stick with pre-subscription versions of Quicken. And some with expired subscriptions. And some with multiple Quicken IDs or Intuit IDs from years gone by.

volvogirl

Like me.  I get emails.  I'm on 2013.

jgtibbs

I found these prices at several places. For example, googling “Quicken Starter Subscription” yields a “Starter” subscription at $41.88 and a “Deluxe” subscription for $35.93. Similar results found for other searches.

Boatnmaniac

jgtibbs said:

I found these prices at several places. For example, googling “Quicken Starter Subscription” yields a “Starter” subscription at $41.88 and a “Deluxe” subscription for $35.93. Similar results found for other searches.

Be sure to take a close look at the box and the product description information.  While there are some nice discounts from retailers for current subscribers I think you will find that most of those steeply discounted offers are for new subscribers only.  If you are a current subscriber and try to use the activation code from one of those new subscriber-only offers you will find that Quicken will not accept it.

Also, as mentioned above, it seems that Quicken is now promoting non-Starter editions but not Starter which is why Starter's prices are higher that Deluxe.  That will likely change once Quicken starts a new promotion deal of some sort.

It also might be a Marketing strategy (pure speculation on my part) to discourage people from buying Starter so they can get increased revenue when the Deluxe+ subscriptions expire in a year and people start to resubscribe.

jgtibbs

As bizarre as it sounds, I kept looking and prices seemed to change at each search…I ended up getting Quicken Deluxe for 1 year at $2.49/month (at the Quicken/Intuit website)…go figure. Thanks for the comments & help.