Quicken Revenue Enhancement

LouF

I've been a Quicken user for over 30 years. During the course of those 30 years I had been requested about twice to re -purchase a newer version of Quicken because the version I had been using was not being "supported " anymore. Not a problem…I figured there were new features that i might avail myself of….recently, I received several emails from Quicken telling me that my subscription was about to expire. This was confusing to me because I PURCHASED Quicken…I owned it. I was foolish to click on this re-up option (to see what this was all about) because I soon found out that Quicken charged my credit card over $70 for this…. I called Quicken to complain and get a refund for something I did not need. Subsequently each time now that I open Quicken an obnoxious banner appears across the top of the screen as well as down the right side of my screen that announces that my subscription has expired and extols me to re-up and renew that subscription that I never wanted nor needed to begin with.

A call to customer service gives me the following: no we cannot remove that obnoxious statement from your screen and you need the subscription in order to utilize direct interfaces with financial institutions. Then, customer service goes on to explain that you no longer purchase Quicken but Subscribe to it.

I explain that I do not use direct interfaces with financial institutions nor have I ever used that service, therefore I don't want it. Secondly, if Quicken was able to alter my product to insert their message then they certainly can REMOVE their statement. I further explain that I own my Quicken as was the deal when I purchased it and Quicken has no right to alter my purchase to push their revenue enhancement scam on me. Apparently, the customer service people were trained not to think logically but to follow Quicken's deceitful explanations.

I'm in the market to find an alternative software to Quicken…if there are any suggestions I would appreciate hearing those.

NotACPA

You did NOT "own" Quicken. You owned a license to run Quicken pursuant to the license agreement, which you agreed to when you installed it.

That banner is because you either haven't purchased a renewed license, OR you haven't installed such.

No one to blame but yourself for failing to read the agreement that you signed.

Boatnmaniac

Most subscription softwares and Internet services will totally cease to function once the subscription expires. That was the original plan for Quicken's subscription, too, but after much protest they made a concession to allow Quicken to be used manually/offline (except for Starter edition which becomes read-only) however that banner reminding the user to resubscribe would be present.

Yes, they (Quicken Inc., not their Customer Service) could remove that banner if they wanted to but they have said repeatedly over the last 5 yrs or so that they will do that only if/when the user resubscribes. Businesses are in business to make money so they will do what they feel they need to do to accomplish that. If I were in their shoes I would hope that the banner will be irritating enough to get some people to resubscribe and if some don't resubscribe then so what because they are not helping to keep the company in business.

This is all pretty much stated in license agreement and user terms & conditions that we all had to agree to before we could even begin to use Quicken Subscription. It's also pretty clearly stated in Quicken's website at https://www.quicken.com/support/quicken-subscription-membership-faqs/ .

I know it's not what you wanted to hear but at least you can continue to use Quicken manually/offline, just like with the pre-subscription software, instead of losing all that functionality entirely so that is a good thing. It's just that nagging banner that we need to put up with if we want to continue using it without resubscribing.

volvogirl

Over 30 years you only upgraded to a new version like twice? It used to be you needed a new version every 3 years if you wanted to keep using any online services like download transactions and quotes etc. Then starting like in 2014 or 2017 it went to a 1 year subscription. Also starting in 2014 they started requiring an ID to get into your data. I only use Quicken manually so I stopped at Quicken 2013. It was the last good stable version and has no renew banners.

What was the last version you upgraded to? And the version before that?

jacobs

I explain that I do not use direct interfaces with financial institutions nor have I ever used that service, therefore I don't want it. Secondly, if Quicken was able to alter my product to insert their message then they certainly can REMOVE their statement. I further explain that I own my Quicken as was the deal when I purchased it and Quicken has no right to alter my purchase to push their revenue enhancement scam on me.

@LouF Quicken switched to subscription pricing back in 2018. Yes, they could remove the annoying banner for people who don't have a current subscription, but they choose not to. This was the compromise they came up with back at that time to allow people who choose not to renew their subscription to continue to use Quicken manually versus not at all (read-only). People who aren't paying the subscription fee are former customers who are not contributing revenue to keeping Quicken in operation. We may disagree with this approach, but that's their business model, and has been for the past 6 years now.

As others have noted, you never owned Quicken (or any other software, for that matter); you owned a license to use Quicken. The subscription offering is not a "scam"; you were apparently unaware when to purchased the subscription that it was a subscription. Prior to subscription pricing, that was a perpetual license, with online services that expired after three years. Under subscription pricing, it's still a perpetual license, with online services that expire after one year. So it's basically the same — except that lapsed subscribers now have to put up with the nag banner to renew.

If you have an old, pre-subscription version of Quicken (Quicken 2013 for Windows, Quicken 2017 for Mac), you can continue to use that software without a subscription fee or a renewal banner. (But for Quicken Mac, you'd be missing out on many, many new and improved features since Quicken 2017 came out.) You can still go back to your old software and an old saved backup copy of your data from prior to your upgrade, and continue as you were using it in the past… until a time comes when an Apple upgrade of macOS breaks your old version.