Penfed (Pentagon FCU) not connecting (again!)

Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭
edited October 2024 in Download, Add/Update Accounts (Mac)

I wanted to see if it's just me, since I didn't see any Alerts about it. Penfed is failing to connect for downloads or for adding accounts. This problem started Wednesday, June 12 in the morning and has persisted until now.

About every six months, Penfed connections fail and take days (sometimes weeks or months to fix). The last outage affected me for about four months. Pretty sure it's not a Mac-specific problem.

Is anyone else having problems with Penfed?

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Comments

  • Moderator mod

    Hello @Harry D,

    I have taken the time to look further into the issues that you are experiencing and have found that you are receiving an FDP-102 error message with your Pentagon Federal Credit Union account(s).

    Error 102 (or FDP-102) is displayed when a bank is selected that is unavailable; or you have changed your sign-in information with your financial institution and the new credentials are not carried over to Quicken. You may follow this link to access a FAQ that provides more information and troubleshooting steps. It is recommended to save a backup before proceeding (just in case).

    I hope this helps!

    -Quicken Jasmine

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  • Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    I've submitted my case to Quicken Care (Dora) who said that they are escalating my case. I've already tried all the troubleshooting steps. Based on my previous experience with this persistent error, it is either Quicken or Penfed (or a combination) that is at fault. I hope it doesn't take months this time to find a solution.

  • Moderator mod

    Hello @Harry D,

    Thank you for coming back to update us!

    Please do not hesitate to reach out with any further questions or concerns.

    -Quicken Jasmine

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  • Quicken Mac Subscription Member
    edited June 2024

    [Removed - Disruption/Speculation]

  • Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    After more than two weeks, the problem remains. Those of us who use Quicken to download transactions from Penfed are used to it now — every six months or so, connections succeed either rarely or not at all. It takes Quicken some days or weeks (or months!) to resolve the issues. The issues are timeout errors — either Quicken is not waiting long enough to scrape all the transactions or else Penfed changes its operation so that Quicken can't connect any more. Is this a common experience for those at other banks? I don't have this problem with my credit card or other bank accounts.

    I am still waiting for a resolution to the problem from Quicken Support. Luckily, every now and then (on average once per 24 hours) Quicken can connect and update transactions to that point. I hope I'm never in a hurry.

  • Quicken Windows Subscription Moderator mod

    Thank you for your reply,

    I can see that you already have an open escalation ticket for this issue. Due to that open escalation, we cannot do any troubleshooting since any action we take could interfere with what the escalated team is working on. Since the escalated team communicates by email, please keep on eye on your emails to see if they require more information/action from you.

    Thank you!

    Quicken Kristina

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  • Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    My problems with connecting to Penfed are still hampering my ability to use the product. Things seemed pretty stable until the morning of June 12, when something changed.

    Connections to Penfed mostly fail; every now and then (maybe once or twice a day on average) they succeed. My other financial institutions haven't failed at all during this time. It's just Penfed that's the problem.

    Adding accounts has not worked at all since June 12, when something apparently changed with either Quicken or Penfed.

    Customer support said they pushed a fix that might work. There was no change. I got no reply when I reported this. Is my ticket still open?

  • Quicken Windows Subscription Moderator mod

    Thank you for your reply @Harry D,

    Yes, ticket 11119351 is still open. I can see they sent you an email on the 3rd and you replied to it.

    Thank you!

    Quicken Kristina

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  • Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    Quicken Support said they thought they might have resolved the issue, but it is not resolved. I'm approaching four weeks without reliable updating of transactions to Penfed. Is anyone else having problems with them?

  • Quicken Windows Subscription Member

    I also have a problem getting tired of paying for a subscription and then can’t use it for downloads on Pentagon Federal. If you can’t get the downloads to work then Quicken should cut the cost of the subscriptions.

  • Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    Quicken did give me three months' extension to my subscription for the mess last winter. I don't want the free months of software that doesn't work — I'm willing to pay the three months for software that DOES work. Now Penfed is asking for 2-factor authentication stuff, which it NEVER did before. Is anyone else experiencing this?

  • Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    The connection problems have gotten worse. Now when trying to add accounts, I get a two-factor authentication request for a code sent to my phone, but of course Quicken gives me no way to enter that code. Now Penfed seems to think my account is at risk and it requires a 2FA almost every time I sign into the regular web account. A very frustrated and unsatisfied customer!

  • Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    I heard from Quicken Support today that they were working on my FDP-102 issues. They mentioned it was a widespread problem, which is sometimes all I need to hear — if I know the problem isn't just me, then I won't try a dozen possible workarounds to solve it. They basically told me to be patient and that when it's fixed they will let me know.

    I am falling back to importing downloaded transactions from a QFX file. It is somewhat inconvenient, but made easier by the fact that Quicken is smart enough to ignore transactions already imported/downloaded, so that I don't have to be precise about the date range I download/import. I suppose I can deal with that for a few more weeks while they're working on the problem. Good luck!

    All in all, I give Customer Support credit for keeping in touch, letting me know they hadn't forgotten me, and asking for more information to help diagnose the problem.

  • Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    Well, Quicken Support doesn't get any gold stars now. Last week I was asked for available times for a phone call to discuss Quicken's failure to download transactions from Penfed. I responded with some available times but got no reply. When I re-sent the message, it bounced saying the ticket is now closed. I'd say that it's not good for support to close a ticket that hasn't been resolved. And Penfed downloads still mostly fail. Every so often (average once every other day) they seem to work. Downloading from the Penfed credit card has been completely broken since June 12. It's not even seen when I try to add it (again) to my list of accounts. Is anyone else having trouble with PenFed?

  • Quicken Windows Subscription Moderator mod

    Thank you for the follow-up @Harry D,

    I checked on the ticket and can see that the escalated ticket was closed, but they opened a CTP to track the issue, CTP-10458. I can see that they did receive the email you sent with the best dates/times to contact you, since that information is included in the CTP.

    I hope you hear from them soon!

    Quicken Kristina

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  • Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    I had a "chat" with Quicken Support today (Jeremy). I'm told the problems will be fixed in the update on Monday (July 29):

    Jeremy from Quicken: According to the information on my system, this should be resolved in the next Quicken update. Monday is when they are going to release the update patch. I am very sorry for the inconvenience.

    Me: So you think that this coming Monday will be a release that solves my problem?

    Jeremy from Quicken: According to the information on my system, yes, it was a general problem and it will be resolved in the update.

  • Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    The update promised for Monday (yesterday) didn't happen, but Support (Joshua) said that I should wait a day or two for the update.

  • Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    I gather from the ONGOING status of these errors that the promised update is not actually going to happen. So those of us with the PenFed download problems will continue to download/import transactions manually.

  • Quicken Mac Subscription SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta

    I gather from the ONGOING status of these errors that the promised update is not actually going to happen. So those of us with the PenFed download problems will continue to download/import transactions manually.

    @Harry D I have no insight into the specific issue with PenFed, but I'd just note that there are up to three companies involved in connectivity issues: Quicken (usually the least significant player), Intuit (who handles all connectivity for Quicken) and the financial institution itself. Fixes to changes made by a financial institution almost always require Intuit to program changes, and sometimes require coordinated fixes between Intuit and the financial institution. Financial institution IT departments often have Quicken/Intuit connectivity low on their priority list, but until they deploy an update, it may be impossible for Intuit to deploy their change. And if there's a change Quicken needs to make to its servers, Quicken's need to address multiple connectivity issues each week can often mean their schedule changes if bug/problems are discovered during testing. The point being: there are multiple moving pieces, so just because someone at Quicken Support told you a fix would be deployed on Monday, I would not conclude it is not going to happen at all just because it didn't happen when he originally told you it would.

    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    @jacobs I do not assume it won't happen at all. I understand the three companies involved. Penfed makes this difficult by changing things every six months or so. In Oct 2023 they changed their web site and it took until mid February to finally stabilize. The current problems started on June 12 and have now persisted for seven weeks. So in the past ten months, Penfed downloads have been inoperative for almost six of those months. My intuition is that Penfed is the source of these problems — Quicken works with thousands of financial institutions pretty smoothly. Penfed has repeatedly told me that they do not / will not / have not ever supported automatic downloads in this way. I download transactions from other institutions on a regular basis. My only problems have been with Penfed.

    My beef with support was in telling me something that apparently wasn't true. If there wasn't a fix yet, they should say so — they've been willing to say so many times in the past. In fact there's an active alert today saying they do not have an ETA for a solution.

    I've just today received a request to make an appointment with the support folks (who appear to be working time zones corresponding to India) who want a phone call to discuss my problems. They requested this a couple of weeks ago, but my reply went un-answered. I hope to get a phone call with them sometime next week.

    Thanks for your reasoned reply. I have tried to be patient about this. Maybe I should just forget automatic downloads and use manual download/import every few days.

  • Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    For what it's worth, I have a Zoom appointment with the script support team later this week. Perhaps I can contribute to some progress in solving these problems.

    I disconnect all Penfed accounts weeks ago. Trying o add accounts back continues to fail. I also noticed that when I perform the manual download/import for transactions, the account is apparently connected to "Pentagon Federal Credit Union" which is the old, bad connection script for Penfed. The old/bad script should really be deleted to avoid confusion. After that I have to manually disconnect (from the "bad" script) any account that I manually imported. That is inconvenient.

  • Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    I had a real-time Zoom meeting with a Quicken Support person and one of the Intuit script engineers. They were very understanding of my problems. They monitored the back end interactions while I tried to add accounts with Penfed. The issue seems to come down to Penfed operating very slowly when Quicken is trying to access the accounts. They gathered lots of network traffic during the interaction. I was glad to help, but I think it will be a while before there is a fix for this problem. Meanwhile, I will be using the manual download/import method to transfer transactions from Penfed to Quicken.

  • Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    After less than a week, I received an email from Quicken Support (Crysta) saying that a potential fix had been applied. It worked! I was able to add accounts and download some transactions! I have connected a couple of times since and there were no errors. So far so good. Kudos to both Quicken Support and their Intuit counterparts.

  • Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    I am happy to report that the Penfed connection has been stable and reliable for a week now, since the fix was applied on Aug 14. Kudos to both the Quicken and Intuit teams for their work on this!

  • Moderator mod

    Hello @Harry D,

    Thank you for coming to let us know! I am happy to hear that the issue is resolved for you!

    -Quicken Jasmine

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  • Quicken Windows Subscription Member

    Penfed (Pentagon FCU) not connecting (again!)

    Harry D

    The issue remains as of today, September 13. I can’t sync any Penfed account.

  • Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭
    edited September 2024

    @melrog10 I contacted Quicken support and after two or three rounds of communication, my issue was fixed. I would seem that the issue all along has mostly been timeout problems; the Penfed site responds slowly enough to cause Quicken's connection (through Intuit) to give up. They have tried to be responsive whenever I've contacted them. I start with the Chat feature, if that helps. Good luck!

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