Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) and QMac ?
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Thanks for the technical explanation, however, if intuit is their aggregator, then they should be able to get quicken the data like they do for mint and probably CK in a few months. If we can put a man on the moon back in 1969 w/o the computing and software advances that we have today, then perhaps quicken should hire some real programmers to make it happen to all 15,001+ financial institutions IMO..
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Thanks for the technical explanation, however, if Intuit is their aggregator, then why can’t quicken connect to TSP like they do for Mint?
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Need to ask this question, yes extremely frustrating but couldn't Quicken fix on their end but the problem still reside on the TSP side? Why all the blame directly on Quicken?
For over the past year I have completely given up on TSP activity coming into financial software. The TSP website 'upgrade' was an abomination…period. Directly from the TSP site for the longest time you couldn't even get statements to download.
Additionally outside of Quicken, I use Empower (Personal Capital) and also my bank's financial software. Past nine months, constant lock outs of my TSP account, timeouts trying to connect and inability to download activity for months. Sorry this isn't a quicken problem.
If we want to get this resolved we need to go another route and it's not to the Thrift Savings Board but to our congress/senate representatives.
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Well, it's quite troubling to see how little attention that Quicken gives to solving this problem.
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Irrespective the reasons for the TSP download challenges via Quicken—whether it's the TSP website's fault or Quicken's software—I have the expectation that Quicken should better inform its customers what it is doing or plans to do to address the TSP download issues. Why are we experiencing these issues, what steps is Quicken taking, etc? We are 2.5 months into this now and nary a word from Quicken in this forum or others that I am aware of where they are providing updates.
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Agreed! And why should they ask us to contact the quicken support line ? I have called them and was on the line for over 1 1/2 hours trying to get this resolved, unsuccessfully. Basically I was told sorry, it’s TSPs fault.
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Fellow Users,
Aside from this forum, how else can one urge Quicken to take action on the TSP download issues?
Thank you.
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Aside from this forum, how else can one urge Quicken to take action on the TSP download issues?
Calls to Quicken Support. They track the topics of calls they get, and lots of calls on a particular issue can cause it to get attention at higher levels.
Unfortunately, because Quicken stubbornly never posts information about the underlying cause of a connectivity problem — is it TSP? is it Intuit? — there's no way to know if a lot of calls will or won't make a difference in getting the issue resolved. But if you're asking what users can do, that's the avenue available.
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19932 -
I agree, we all need to contact quicken support and ask for a supervisor or you will just get an offshore call center. We pay good money to subscribe to quicken so they should reciprocate in kind. To be honest, if Credit Karma can provide that support, I will subscribe to them and ask for a refund from quicken. Bottom line, if we don’t pick up the phone and contact quicken support, nothing will get done for the millions of TSP account holders. Merry Christmas to all and hopefully a great New Year 🍾
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I see that this thread has some Quicken Windows user in it.
Let me just warn you that the problems you are having aren't the same as the ones for Quicken Mac.
For Quicken Mac it was working, and then stopped working. For Quicken Windows it never got implemented.
So, even it gets fixed on the Mac side that isn't any kind of guarantee that it will work on the Windows side.
As for "pushing this" it's always a slow process because you are a customer of a customer. You complain to Quicken Inc and they complain to Intuit. And depending on where the problem is, they complain to TSP. And by "complain" in the case of Quicken Inc and Intuit I think at most you are looking at someone "checking/asking" "what's up" say every week at best.
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So sad but true. Like I said, I’m moving elsewhere and ask for a refund if quicken can’t solve this minor issue.
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start posting on Twitter (x) Facebook or any other platform. It’s what I did. It’s crazy you pay for a service and get nothing moderator fix this will start writing letters to your cooperate office or the consumer financial protection bureau military members and public servants should not suffer
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Chris - 25% of my retirement savings is in TSP. My routine assessment of my financial position revolves around download of this data. 6.5 million people are part of this program, I would think it is worth Q's time to serve that market. Try reaching out directly to Dale Knieval - mailto:dale.knievel@quicken.comhe may be able to escalate this or bring it to the CEO's attention.
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Quicken supports more than 14,000 different financial institutions. Most connectivity issues are handled by Quicken's connectivity supplier, Intuit; Quicken, a company with only about 200 employees, does not have its own staff do deal with dozens of new service outages caused by changes at financial institutions every day of the year. Of course, as a customer of Intuit, Quicken can bug them for progress on specific issues, but they typically don't have the ability to actually resolve them.
And while TSP is indeed a large financial institution, it doesn't have nearly as many customers (and presumably Quicken users) as companies like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab, Citi, Chase, Amex, Capital One, etc., all of which have 50 to 100+ million customers. I say that only to note that TSP is bigger than small regional banks and credit unions, but not near the top financial institutions in terms of customers. (Size undoubtedly matters to some extent in the resources and urgency Quicken/Intuit put towards fixing certain service outages.)
I know it's highly frustrating and unsatisfactory to have a problem with one of your key financial institutions. But if you look at the topics posted on this forum, there are a lot of such problems with a lot of financial institutions. Unfortunately, the financial services industry has some, but not comprehensive enough, standards and protocols — and Quicken is actually a tiny player with very limited clout in that arena.
While I know you just want the TSP problem fixes a.s.a.p., one practical question I'd ask is how many transactions you have per month in your retirement account(s) at TSP? In the retirement accounts my wife and I have at Vanguard and Schwab, we don't have a lot of transactions, and it's actually not a problem for me to enter all the transactions manually. If we had many dozens of hundreds of transactions monthly, of course that wouldn't be feasible. But if you have a few transactions per paycheck and a few dividend transactions per month, you might find you could enter those TSP transactions once a month and get by reasonably well until such time as there's a working automated solution. Just a suggestion to consider…
P.S. Why did you list the name of one particular Quicken employee to contact? Unless I'm mistaken, the person you mentioned is in Quality Assurance (e.g. software testing), not product development/programming. (I don't actually know who heads connectivity services or is the lead in dealing with Intuit.)
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19931 -
I would just like to add something to @jacobs' excellent explanation.
Getting in touch with the Quicken Inc CEO isn't hard are all.
Look at the bottom of the Quicken.com About Us page:
What's more I would be extremely surprised if he didn't already know of this problem. But believe it or not he can't just command the problem away as both @jacobs and I were explaining. Well, at least for the initial problem that is covered in this thread for Quicken Mac, and that is it was working and now isn't. For Quicken Windows maybe he could change the priority to actually make it work in the first place. If one was to scan the Windows threads for TSP you would find that the answer is "TSP is the one that has to select to support this, and they haven't." What changed for Quicken Mac and hasn't yet changed for Quicken Windows is the connection method. It was always expected that TSP being an investment account type would have to be supported by Direct Connect. And it was also noted that it was believed that Intuit charged for supporting this connection type (not sure if they still do this), but what's more they would have setup an OFX server to support it. Quicken user in general and in this case TSP customers that use Quicken tend to believe that they are this great big group of people that everyone has to listen too. In reality this is a very tiny group of people to even TSP. You aren't their highest priority.
So, a while back basically a new "sub" connection type was born, and I believe this is what made this possible. @jacobs/others correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I believe the "magic" is in the fact that transactions aren't downloaded, only the balances. Thiis is what Quicken Inc is calling "Simple investing mode". The fact that "what they needed to download" changed they could now access more financial institutions that would not support the full functionality that Direct Connect provided.
This also has a dark side to it. In Quicken Mac there is only: Quicken Connect, Direct Connect (note that Direct Connect always had both the transactions and the balances in the download), Web Connect (this is basically a data file with the response side of Direct Connect). On the Windows side Quicken Connect is basically like Express Web Connect and Express Web Connect +.
Express Web Connect + (same for Quicken Mac just not visible to the user) uses a protocol called FDX between Intuit and the financial institution.
Express Web Connect on the other hand is the "wild west" with no standardized protocol. This means for any given financial institution there is an "agreement" on how that data should be downloaded. And here is the thing, it is usually tied up with the financial institution's website. And it isn't uncommon for a financial institution to make changes in their website that basically breaks that agreement. I'm sure they don't do it on purpose, but like I said you really aren't a top priority to them.
Quicken Mac is definitely ahead in the supporting of this new Quicken Connect/simple mode over Express Web Connect/simple mode in Quicken Windows.
One might wonder why Quicken Windows could hold on to the top personal finance position for all these years when such problems exist. Part of it is that it really does take a long time to build up the functionality as the Quicken Mac users know since the "rewrite" of Quicken Mac has taken so long to fill in features. But one of the main barriers are the financial institutions themselves, and one might even say "US/Canadian freedom". If all the financial institutions would adopt one standard protocol most of these problems would go away. Direct Connect/OFX was in fact an attempt at getting that, but at the highest only about 4,500 financial institutions adopted it. And it is probably more like 2,000 these days. Instead, we have "aggregators" like Intuit that have to figure out how to get the data on a financial institution by financial institution basis. In the EU they passed a law probably more than 10 years ago now that their financial institutions have to support one or both of the main standard protocols for this. OFX being one of them.
Without this kind of standardization, you have what you have, at any given time a financial institution might break the connection and then the aggregator will have added that financial institution to a big, long list of financial institutions that need to be worked on. Some of which might mean that the aggregator has to change something, and sometimes the financial institution (or whoever is providing this service to them which happens too). And RARELY Quicken Inc needs to make changes to Quicken (the program) or one of their servers.
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Getting in touch with the Quicken Inc CEO isn't hard are all. Look at the bottom of the Quicken.com About Us page…
@Chris_QPW That's actually a bit of sleight of hand by Quicken. 😉 It says your message sent there goes to the Office of the President, but…
(a) I'd note that Eric Dunn is CEO of Quicken and not President. I don't believe they even have anyone with a title of President! But let's not let that get in the way, and assume they mean "Office of the CEO"…
(b) I'd then note that "Office of the CEO" doesn't equate to "the CEO". In fact, messages sent to that address are screened/read/and mostly responded to by "Office of the President/CEO" staff members who are actually advanced members of Quicken's Customer Care (e.g. Support) team. They know that most message to that address are complaints, and they want create satisfied customers — especially if they've tried getting help from Quicken Support and come up empty — so they create the illusion of writing to the CEO, but you're actually writing to top support people. I'm sure they are empowered to pass some messages on to the CEO when it seems appropriate, but I believe this team of special support representatives tries to respond to, and ideally resolve, almost all such communications. (I don't think I've ever seen post from anyone on this forum saying they got a reply directly from CEO Eric Dunn.)
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930 -
I have got a message from Eric Dunn, but yeah it wasn't from filling out this form. 😉
It had to do with them working with my data file to solve a corruption problem that everyone was having.
And I should clarify what I mean by "he knows". I don't mean that he is actively involved, I mean I'm sure from time to time he gets updates on the number of financial institutions that aren't working right, and TSP might have been "mentioned".
But using this form does represent "the highest people you can talk to" as a customer.
In some ways that isn't really what people think it is though. Your priority (as a given customer) isn't necessarily going to become their priority. What's more, for certain they aren't the one actually doing the job.
If you have ever worked a job where you are being told this and that and that and that are high priority, you know at that level what really happens, everything can't be "top priority".
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What is peculiar in this fail is that when I make the initial connection to TSP Quicken can see the current balance - it is shown in one of the dialog windows where you confirm the account you want to link - so it is clearly getting some data. Then it cannot download the transactions and gives an account with '0'. I just got my email that my sub is renewing at the end of January, which prompted me to come here and confirm that while Quicken are very good at taking my money on schedule, they cannot even repair something so core to their business. I see on the community alert that now we are supposed to call in - see Quicken Anja's request from Dec 9 - which is bound to be an easy and pleasurable experience, right? ;-) Sure, so your customers are now also supposed to work for you, for free? May I drop by your house and mow your lawn, or shine your shoes too?
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I don’t see how calling Quicken Support is “doing their work for free.” Are you going to break down the code, diagnose what’s happening, and code a solution? That would be doing their work.
Instead, they’re offering to do the work, but need customers to help them gather data needed to identify the problem. Which seems better to you: spending a little time on the phone with a Quicken Support representative who is trying to help you, or posting your complaints on a user forum which no one from Quicken’s support or engineering teams will see? 😉
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19931 -
I was on the phone with quicken support which sounded like I was in a chicken coop for an hour and a half (see pic) and yeah, they did try to help me, however, they are just customer care from who knows where, not the actual programmers that could solve the problem at hand. Anyone on this board that keeps making excuses for quicken must be working for the company. I’m hoping Credit Karma can make it work like they do with mint so I can cancel my quicken subscription and go with them.
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Anyone on this board that keeps making excuses for quicken must be working for the company.
If that refers to me, I can assure you I'm not working for Quicken. (And the same goes for everyone else here; we're all fellow Quicken users, except for the handful of Quicken employees, whose usernames all begin with "Quicken".)
Making excuses for Quicken? No, I think I and others here were trying to explain why these things can happen, and how/why Quicken is often at the mercy of the financial institution, and/or their connectivity provider, to achieve a fix. I think all of us simply want things to work the way they should. When they don't, it's frustrating — but it's not always Quicken's fault.
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19932 -
[Removed - Speculation/Disruptive/Rant]
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@JustRight Yes there are other apps that compete with Quicken, but you're not going to read about them on Quicken's forum. And if you think you're going to get better results connecting to banks with a different program, I suggest you do some research first. I think you'll find users of those competing programs are just as unhappy in that respect.
Quicken Mac subscription. Quicken user since 1990.
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on top of all of this and the issue still remaining with TSP, I just got an email about their rate increase next year. 🤣
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I believe quicken will fix the connectivity issue soon as it’s not rocket science. 🤞🤞🤞
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Hi, any advice on how to resolve this issue? I recently switched from Mint to Quicken but will likely cancel if I can’t connect my TSP account.
Thanks
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I just make an entry each day to adjust the balance. I use the Daily TSP app (not the official TSP app) to get the daily change in balance, duplicate the last entry and then edit it. It takes about 10 seconds so not a big deal to me. Heck I used the Windows version for 20 years and survived without it.
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Although the title of this string is TSP, I wanted to share my miserable experience with phoen support (echoing some of the above comments). Where I now stand is that approx. ten of my accounts are no longer able to connect with the corresponding institutions (Discover, Shopyourway, Citizens Bank, etc). All these accounts were working fine until quicken had the "slow download" issue around Christmas time. Tech support is not able to help so what to do? I really would like to email Mr Dunn - anyone have a way for me to email him?
Thanks
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Maybe you can try VP of Customer Care instead - Pehr Lawson.
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