@Quicken Anja, thank you for your continued support in the community and for serving as an intermediary with the Quicken team; the issue described below is relatively new, and any assistance you can provide in advancing it toward resolution would be greatly appreciated.
After four months of missed bills, late payments, and added fees caused by the loss of paper bills, I find it unacceptable that Quicken’s “reliable Online Bill Service” now requires online billers to use paperless billing (eBills / third-party electronic statements) - Reconnecting Billers requires you to agree to have bills no longer sent in the mail
This automatic switch to paperless billing creates an additional problem: customers have no practical way to opt out using their billers' own account portals. In my case, both PSEG-LI and National Grid provide no option for the customer to change billing preferences when it's in this state. Instead, their second-level support must be involved to restore paper billing — only for it to be reverted again by Quicken’s online bill service.
Who, in product development, would decide to remove a customer’s ability to choose paper billing? In my case, the online billers themselves have no idea why this is happening, let alone how to explain it. From their perspective, nothing has changed — and they blame my bank. My bank, in turn, blames the online biller. Conference calls between the two result in nothing but finger-pointing.
One thing is clear: the online billers all agree that whatever "third-party" billing service is making these payments has no legitimate reason to change a customer's paper billing preference - the choice is, and should be, between the customer and their biller. Yet Quicken, through this new online bill service, is automatically converting accounts to paperless billing.
For me, this has caused:
- Missed bills
- Late payments
- Additional fees
- A complete loss of trust in Quicken’s bill management feature
Paper statements exist for a reason: redundancy and reliability. Removing them without customer control creates a single point of failure — and that failure is now happening in real life to me. Why is Quicken enforcing this behavior and why are customers unable to opt out?
This is not an improvement in bill payment. It is a regression. Being a loyal Quicken user for thirty-five years, I chose Quicken for one reason: convenience and reliability.
- What convenience is there in having to log into each online biller once a month just to see a bill — especially when Quicken cannot reliably download it into the program?
- What convenience is there in Quicken being stuck in a constant “awaiting next bill” state?
- What convenience is there in continually having to “reconnect” online billers, only for the connection to work for a month, if that?
- What convenience is there in repeatedly submitting online bill payments, seeing them canceled for no apparent reason, resubmitting them, and ending up in an endless loop of submission and cancellation?
At a minimum, customers must be given a clear and supported option to opt out of forced paperless billing and retain control over how, and where their bills are delivered.
