Issues with EWC+ and Chase

gilieberman

When we switched the Chase connection from Direct Connect to Express Web Connect+ (EWC+) we lost the ability to pay bills and transfer funds from within Quicken and now we have to use the bank’s website. We were told this was an improvement, although I’m not sure for whom.

Quicken said we can use Quicken Bill Pay to generate payments, however, the payment isn’t generated for several days after the funds are deducted from our accounts. Quicken gets to float those funds (invest) during the time lag and keep the interest gained. Is this another one of those improvements Quicken talked about?

When we use the new and improved download-only EWC+ connection the balance reflects all pending transactions, but the transactions are not downloaded. We are not given a choice of balances to use for the reconciliation so we either have to enter the pending transactions into Quicken manually or add a reconciliation adjustment to the account. If we add the transactions manually, they will be marked as reconciled, so when they do download, Quicken can’t match them. To fix this we have to manually change them from reconciled to uncleared or the next download will fail to match transactions or reconcile. Yet, we were told this was an improvement.

Is there any hope that Quicken will fix these improvements any time soon? I’ve been using Quicken since when it first came out, but now I am seriously thinking of trying another product.

gilieberman

I should add that I get the reason for the change from Direct Connect to Express Web Connect+ (EWC+). Direct Connect was a bi-directional connection. Quicken is admitting they can't secure the connection from bad actors who could hijack the connection and enter bogus transactions to divert funds. EWC+ is a read-only connection so it is much more secure, but the banks all have smartphone apps that have two-way connections so it is possible to secure the connections using certificates and other means, so Quicken seems to have admitted they can secure the connections. This is one of those improvements we were told about.