Should I Renew?

SGK

I have Quicken but it expires next month. To be blunt, why should I pay a company for their services when that service tries to hold me hostage? Give me a good reason.

All my banking accounts went to web express connect. They update at different times daily so I am hostage to checking updates all day long, not knowing when the different banks will update. If I wait until the next day, the next day's entries ruin the reconcile so it is a series of endless errors. Why should I renew to continue this? Sell me on why. My downloads were perfect and easy when they were all direct. Quicken mandated the change to Web Express Connect, not me. It was a hostage situation - if you want to use downloads it WILL be Web Express Connect. Sell me on why this inconvenience is a benefit I should pay for. Every bank I deal with has both a Web Page app and smart phone app that only takes me 1 minute to check vs all day waiting on Quicken - I am listening, sell me on why I should continue in this relationship. It was a good one for a long time - since DOS days. Today it feels abusive.

I have close to 30 years Quicken files that were saved as year end files. With the current subscription when I try to open them, they corrupt the existing file when I open it again. I have spoken with Quicken about this, and it is a design situation. Now I learn that without a subscription I will not even be able to open them. Want access to your old records, PAY US. Sounds like dealing with the Mafia - why should I renew if this will be the future treatment. Explain to me, sell me on the idea of why I should accept this hostage situation.

In contrast I have a spreadsheet for last year. I can access it any time I want without involving this year's spreadsheet. It takes me 10 minutes daily to reconcile it vs checking back all day with Quicken. Please explain why I should pay you good money. I read in a post from a Quicken agent that your hands are tied on some of these things by Intuit. Explain to me why I should renew when you do not have control over your product because the parent company determines things that affect the processes. I worked for Intuit once too - awful experience but that is another story. I just want to hear why I should spend my hard earned money to pay for a renewal when the present product does not serve my needs. Thank you .

Jon

Your bank determines what access methods they will accept; if you don't like being forced into EWC, complain to them as they were the ones who made that change, not Quicken. If you want to blame Quicken for something they have no control over, that's your prerogative.

And it's simply not true that you cannot open your old files without a sub. As long as you have at least a Deluxe subscription, your files will become read-only when you cancel but you'll still be able to open them & run reports.

Chris_QPW

@Jon I think you stated that a bit wrong (maybe a typo). For Starter edition, expired subscription, it goes to read-only. For Deluxe edition and above you can still do manual entry, just no online services. In both cases though you will have a banner ad that takes up about 25% of the window prompting you to renew.

@SGK you have your facts wrong. Intuit isn't a Quicken Inc's parent company. Intuit sold Quicken years ago. But Quicken Inc is a small company that can't be their own "aggregator" and deal with all the financial institutions. So, Quicken Inc pays Intuit to be their aggregator. So, in that sense Quicken Inc is still "hindered" by what Intuit will fix or not.

And for the record just as a customer, I have always found Intuit to be very poor as far as supporting their customers go. I see all the time people posting "Quicken was better when Intuit owned it." Well, I have been using Quicken since 1992, I never saw that.

Jon

@Chris_QPW You're right, it's Starter that goes read-only, I should have double-checked that.

jacobs

why should I pay a company for their services when that service tries to hold me hostage? Give me a good reason.

You should pay if Quicken is useful to you. If you've determined that it's not, then don't renew. We all use and utilize Quicken differently; to me, Quicken is quite useful, but it may not be to you.

All my banking accounts went to web express connect. They update at different times daily so I am hostage to checking updates all day long, not knowing when the different banks will update. If I wait until the next day, the next day's entries ruin the reconcile so it is a series of endless errors. Why should I renew to continue this? Sell me on why.

I guess my question is why you find it necessary to reconcile all your accounts daily. You can look at transactions to see if anything seems amiss, but do you need to reconcile them? I prefer to reconcile Quicken to a monthly bank/credit car/brokerage statement. That removes any timing issues, and works flawlessly for me.

Quicken mandated the change to Web Express Connect, not me. It was a hostage situation - if you want to use downloads it WILL be Web Express Connect. Sell me on why this inconvenience is a benefit I should pay for.

Nope, that's just incorrect. Quicken still supports Direct Connect for financial institutions which choose to provide that service. Quicken didn't mandate any change to Express Web Connect; financial institutions chose to discontinue Direct Connect. I'm not sure why you'd blame Quicken for something they have no control over.

Every bank I deal with has both a Web Page app and smart phone app that only takes me 1 minute to check vs all day waiting on Quicken - I am listening, sell me on why I should continue in this relationship. It was a good one for a long time - since DOS days. Today it feels abusive.

To me, one of the key values I derive from Quicken is having all my financial data and history in once place. I can search for a long-ago transaction, without needing to know what account it was paid from, and find it within seconds. To me, that's useful. If you can do what you need by hopping around to various financial institution websites/apps, then perhaps you don't need Quicken.

You keep angrily demanding that we sell you on Quicken. We can help correct misinformation or misperceptions; we can offer suggestions on different ways to do things. But if you decide Quicken isn't useful to you, then you've reached your decision about whether to renew.

I have close to 30 years Quicken files that were saved as year end files. With the current subscription when I try to open them, they corrupt the existing file when I open it again.

I can't offer much help with that, as I'm a Quicken Mac user. (I think this is one of the reasons Quicken Mac doesn't make it easy to separate data files by year.) Software changes over the years, and if you have old files in this or other programs, it's always important to open them every now and then to resave them in the most current format. You might be able to get some of those old file to open if you install an older version of Quicken; Quicken 2013 is free to download. Quicken Windows users might have more tips on how to update old data files.

Now I learn that without a subscription I will not even be able to open them.

As noted in a reply above, that's incorrect. Quicken even has a "data access guarantee" which pledges that you will always be able to access your data, even without a subscription.

Please explain why I should pay you good money.

Your post is written as if you think you're speaking with Quicken executives. You're not. This is a community forum, with mostly fellow Quicken users and a handful of Quicken moderators.

splasher

@SGK

I have close to 30 years Quicken files that were saved as year end files. With the current subscription when I try to open them, they corrupt the existing file when I open it again.

If you are going to create year-end-copies of your data file, once it is created you need to open it and disable ALL the reminders that are setup and anything else that might be set to happen automatically. It is the firing off of a year or mores reminders that are messing up your data file. If you didn't delete the reminders, then to safely open up an old data file, you need to set your computer's date to the date of the YEC so that the reminders aren't acted upon.

Am I going to sell you on renewing Quicken, nope. It is either worth it or its not and that decision is solely up to you.

mshiggins

FYI, opening old files is likely syncing to the Quicken cloud, then the cloud data is syncing back to your current file.

If your financial life is simple enough to track via Excel, definitely no need to use Quicken at all.