Is Vanguard OL-295-A and Error 16503 due to the 2/20/2025 phaseout of a proprietary protocol?
The AI generated response to "Vanguard investments direct connect" generates the following response:
"Vanguard Direct Connect, which allowed users to directly connect their Vanguard accounts with financial software like Quicken, is no longer supported, with Vanguard ending support for it and requiring users to use Quicken Connect instead. "
Vanguard customer support confirmed that the issue with Quicken is in Quicken's hands, and that Vanguard investors can obtain transaction data by manually downloading QFX exports from the Download Center.
So far, Quicken blames the issue on Vanguard. I can no longer find the post, but is was my understanding that Vanguard had planned to discontinue the Direct Connect 2/20/2025 and presumably Quicken was aware of the interface sunset. I do not recall either Vanguard or Quicken providing any warning about this issue.
Whatever the technical situation, it seems clear that a system which worked nearly all the time for decades has not suddenly become the victim of some technical glitch. This smells like a business issue, not a technical one.
If this is a business issue between Quicken and Vanguard, it would be nice as a user to know if this represents a permanent impairment of the user experience or if this is simply a matter of deciding who gets paid for what.
Can someone knowledgeable from Quicken comment in a substantive way on these issues?
Answers
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It is certainly puzzling to me that no one is on top of this issue and providing guidance whatever the cause is.
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Hello All,
We understand the frustration around the Vanguard Direct Connect issue and appreciate your patience. From what we know, Vanguard is migrating to Express Web Connect+ (EWC+), which changes how accounts connect to Quicken. Additionally, they are currently performing maintenance on the Direct Connect system, which is currently impacting access.
While we don’t have full details on the timeline or the extent of these changes, we recommend reaching out to Vanguard for further clarification on their plans for Direct Connect.
Hope this helps!
-Quicken Anja
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I logged on to Vanguard this morning and there were over a dozen new transactions on 2/27 and 2/28
I downloaded directly from Vanguard into Quicken. Opened Quicken and said NO NEW TRANSACTIONS.
[Removed - Language]?????????????????????????????
I had to spend an hour entering manually all the transactions
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I echo the sentiments that the sudden change in downloading account information is extremely disappointing, and frankly unacceptable. Vanguard and Quicken are both large businesses and they both left a large reliable customer base confused and wasting time. I put most of the blame on Vanguard as they could have harmlessly warned ALL their personal customers of a change coming. Quicken techs may have been caught off-guard but they did not institute the major change, Vanguard did.
I think that we, as customers, need to show our strength and consider alternatives to Vanguard for future investing. (I plan on shifting much more back to Fidelity, and others for example) As a concerned American, the statistics about Vanguard's size in the financial world are staggering. Vanguard controls a MASSIVE amount of American wealth. I think it is very clear they are too big. I write as both a Quicken user as well as an American citizen. Do not forget, we the people, have more power than they realize to shop or invest elsewhere.
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@Jim&Ginny I think your comments about the massive size of Vanguard should help put this issue in perspective: Quicken connectivity is a tiny, tiny issue out of all the IT issues they deal with. Of course, that doesn't make it pleasant or even excusable for Vanguard customers who are Quicken users.
That said, there are a number of posts in the various Vanguard threads here which indicate that Vanguard has acknowledged the issue and promised it will be fixed (but not when it will be fixed, probably because it depends on them using a third-party for their connectivity).
I personally wouldn't jump through hoops to shift accounts to other brokerages over this issue, unless it lingers beyond a few weeks. You never know if Fidelity or Schwab or some other brokerage will have a different disruptive issue next month.
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930 -
While Vanguard's 1st answer to my inquiry was to direct me to Quicken support they changed their tune when I said I would have to consider moving to another company if they were not going to take any action:
Thank you for taking the time to respond. Our team is actively working to restore this service, and we will provide an update as soon as it becomes available. In the meantime, we encourage you to use the following workaround to download your transaction history from vanguard.com:1. Log into your account on vanguard.com.2. Navigate to the Download Center in the Activity tab.3. Click Download to get a copy of the file.4. You can then upload the file to your third-party software. We appreciate your understanding and patience as we work to resolve this issue. Thank you for being a valued Vanguard client. Have a wonderful day.
Hopefully, they are actually working on it.
Quicken Mac user since 1993
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This whole thing sucks BIG TIME! I don't know whether to quit Quicken or to quit Vanguard, but now, my American Express account is not downloading either. The Vanguard error is OL-295-A and Amex says Connections are blocked!
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FYI: Vanguard is blocking ALL DC connections, not just those from Quicken. So if you leave Quicken for another software that uses DC for downloading transactions you will not be getting Vanguard transactions to download with it, as well. This is a Vanguard issue, not a Quicken issue. Only Vanguard can unblock their blocked DC connections.
Quicken Classic Premier (US) Subscription: R61.20 on Windows 11 Home
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I think many of the commenters may be unaware of the royalty issues involved here. Direct Connect and the use of QFX involves royalty payments to Quicken; open source protocols like OFX do not. The moderator has pointed out that there is a transition in progress: "Vanguard is migrating to Express Web Connect+ (EWC+)" which I believe is a different, more secure protocol than DC. However, EWC still appears to be proprietary to Intuit/Quicken, or ultimately, Aquiline Capital Partners, and the royalty obligations surrounding its use may be unclear.
While the question about the phaseout of a proprietary protocol (DC) appears to have been answered (yes, replaced by EWC+), the underlying business considerations remain under wraps. The technical issues seem subject to business brinksmanship, as I do not think the phaseout was an unscheduled act of technical vandalism.
From a purely economic standpoint, Vanguard and Quicken are in different positions from where they were when they first partnered. Vanguard was small, and Quicken was new and entrepreneurial. Today Vanguard is enormous and steadily reducing fees and expenses, while Quicken has sold out to private equity.
Personally, I would happily consider paying the fees charged to Vanguard for my access to some kind of direct connection, but I would need to know exactly how much money we are talking about. I think other Vanguard users who don't use Quicken should not have to subsidize my conveniences, and I am suspicious about arrangements where I cannot see all the side payments.
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Gary R,
it sounds like the QFX file type was not associated with Quicken on your machine. I would have expected Quicken to automatically start when you downloaded the file. You should also be able to start Quicken and select File / File Import /QFX; then pick the loaded QFX file.-1 -
@MaxArai I'm afraid there's a fair amount of incorrect information in your post.
While the question about the phaseout of a proprietary protocol (DC) appears to have been answered (yes, replaced by EWC+)
@MaxArai No, EWC+ is not replacing Direct Connect. They're two very different technologies. Now, some financial institutions may decide to discontinue Direct Connect and switch to EWC+, but that's not being dictated by Quicken. EWC+ is the same EWC (Quicken Connect for Mac users) which has been around for many years, but replaces logins and passwords with a method for user to authenticate to a financial institution, which then sends Quicken a token to allow access. EWC+ is considered more secure than EWC because of the newer methods of user authentication.
Direct Connect and the use of QFX involves royalty payments to Quicken; open source protocols like OFX do not.
I don't believe Quicken receives any royalty payments from financial institutions using Direct Connect or QXF. Quicken contracts with Intuit, a much larger company, to handle all connectivity with financial institutions. Intuit used to receive some royalty payments for Direct Connect connections; I don't know if they still do. I don't believe Intuit ever received royalty payments for financial institutions supporting QFX.
OFX is not an "open source" protocol. It was developed by financial companies which supported it. It is a published standard which financial institutions can support, but its development is not open source. OFX has been incorporated into FDX, the newest, and largest, consortium of financial institutions and software developers ever.
QFX is the same as OFX — it's the exact same standard — except QFX requires a line of code identifying the ID number for participating financial institutions. There isn't a fee for financial institutions to use QFX, but they must sign a contract with Intuit so Intuit has contact information in the event of connectivity problems.
The technical issues seem subject to business brinksmanship, as I do not think the phaseout was an unscheduled act of technical vandalism.
Quicken has been clear that Vanguard notified them in advance that their connection methods would change on February 20. Quicken advised Vanguard that connectivity was not working in the days leading up to February 20, but Vanguard chose to stick with their scheduled date, this disrupting access for Quicken users. No one has suggested any vandalism was involved.
Vanguard was small, and Quicken was new and entrepreneurial. Today Vanguard is enormous and steadily reducing fees and expenses, while Quicken has sold out to private equity.
Vanguard had about $300 billion under management when the Internet was beginning to come of age in the late 1990s — smaller than today, but not exactly small. Intuit was the company which created and developed Quicken. Intuit's other businesses like QuickBooks and TurboTax had eclipsed Quicken's growth and revenue by the 2010's. (In 2015, Quicken contributed just $51 million to Intuit's $4.2 billion revenue, just over 1%. Intuit recognized Quicken was languishing and that its focus was on developing cloud-based platforms; they decided to sell off Quicken so the personal finance software could survive and be revitalized by a company which would invest in growing Quicken. A private equity firm (H.I.G. Capital) purchased Quicken from Intuit in 2016 and invested in building its staff and growing its business. Quicken doesn't disclose revenue, but its CEO said the company experienced a 50% increase in annual sales and growth of its users based over the five-year period under H.I.G. After five-and-a-half years, in 2021, H.I.G. sold Quicken to Aquiline Capital Partners. Quicken CEO Eric Dunn said at the time that “H.I.G. is not a growth-oriented expansion firm. They felt their work was done, and they did what they had set out to do, which is to carve out an asset with a lot of potential from a parent company which had neglected it.” H.I.G. Capital said the results of its investment in Quicken were “outstanding.” Aquiline specializes more in growth, and we've seen Quicken bring several new products to market recently.
All that said, I don't think any of that has anything to do with Vanguard's connectivity with Quicken. Vanguard has said they will fix the connectivity problem they created, and at this time, there's no reason not to take them at their word about that. Vanguard apparently uses a third-party company to handle connectivity with outside software, and it appears there was some miscommunication, misunderstanding, or errors made between Vanguard and their provider.
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19937 -
Is there an ETA from either Vanguard on Quicken on getting this fixed?
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@Rajeev Users have posted several different comments from Vanguard in the various Vanguard threads on this forum in which Vanguard has stated they are aware of the problem, will fix the problem, but can offer no ETA. Theat's probably because companies hate to give a date and then further anger their customers if the schedule slips, and/or because Vanguard apparently uses a third-party vendor for their connectivity, so they may not have control over the timing for their vendor.
Quicken never provides ETAs on service outages, because it usually depends on the financial institution — as is the case here — and/or Quicken's connectivity provider, Intuit, to implement a fix. Quicken itself is usually minimally or not at all involved in connectivity fixes.
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993-1 -
Just noticed this morning that Vanguard has now disappeared from my one step update list of accounts. Coincidence, or work going on behind the scenes? My account details still indicate that the account is set for direct connect.
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The latest update of quicken classic deluxe (March 1, 2025 PC version R61.21, build 27.1.61.21) stopped running Vanguard in one step update. I get no errors at all about Vanguard even though it is selected with passwords already saved.
Are we going to get a refund for the product not working? I don't care why, who, whatever, I want some money back, since these products are now automatically updated, these errors happen all the time. Then the companies point the finger at the other company, so we waist our time. I'm not sure how quicken has the right to even suggest it isn't there problem, it is there product! Work with the other company to fix it
There was obviously no testing at all between these companies with this change. I was in IT for over 30 years, we used to test our software before it was released to a production environment.
I have been using Quicken forever and the track record of one step update over the years is that I am surprised when all of my accounts update without connection errors. That should not be the norm!
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The latest update of quicken classic deluxe (March 1, 2025 PC version R61.21, build 27.1.61.21) stopped running Vanguard in one step update. I get no errors at all about Vanguard even though it is selected with passwords already saved.
@buttw01 The recent update to Quicken Mac actually has nothing to do with the Vanguard issue. Almost all connectivity problems, including this one, exist at the server level, not with the local application on your Mac. There are multiple threads on this site about the Vanguard problem, which document that Vanguard cut off access but says it will be restored at some unknown upcoming date.
Are we going to get a refund for the product not working? I don't care why, who, whatever, I want some money back, since these products are now automatically updated, these errors happen all the time. Then the companies point the finger at the other company, so we waist our time. I'm not sure how quicken has the right to even suggest it isn't there problem, it is there product! Work with the other company to fix it
Quicken doesn't typically provide refunds when connectivity to a financial institution is cut off temporarily. You may not care whose fault it is, but from heir standpoint, if a financial institution cuts off access to Quicken customers, there's nothing they can do. And Quicken has no of promise 100% uptime to each of the 10,000+ financial institutions they work with, because in reality, at any given moment, there are multiple financial institutions which are not working and awaiting for fixes.
Vanguard has acknowledged that they made changes and cut off access to all third-party Direct Connect software platforms on February 20. There is nothing Quicken can do until Vanguard re-enables access. Vanguard customers can continue to keep the pressure on Vanguard to implement a fix as soon as possible.
If the Vanguard issue persists for a month or more, you might try contacting Quicken Support to complain and ask them to credit you with an additional month on your subscription; I have heard of them doing that in some cases as a customer courtesy even though it's out of their control, but I don't thin they ever issue partial rebates of a subscription fee.
There was obviously no testing at all between these companies with this change. I was in IT for over 30 years, we used to test our software before it was released to a production environment.
That's actually incorrect. Vanguard notified Quicken of the upcoming change, Quicken notified Vanguard that it was not working correctly, but Vanguard went ahead with their changes on the date they had scheduled anyway. So yes, there was testing, and yes, Vanguard knew what they were doing when they cut off access.
I have been using Quicken forever and the track record of one step update over the years is that I am surprised when all of my accounts update without connection errors. That should not be the norm!
The problem is that there are some standards, but not a truly robust national standard for financial institutions to work with third party aggregators and personal finance programs. The result is that as financial institutions move servers, change security protocols, update login parameters, etc., it's almost inevitable that some of them will break connectivity. In the best cases, the financial institution simply fails to notify Intuit (the company which handles all connectivity for Quicken) of an upcoming change, and Intuit then lags days or weeks behind in updating their programming too connect with that financial institution. In worse cases, the financial institution makes changes which inadvertently or intentionally block third party connections, and a fix depends first on the financial institution and then on Intuit to play catch-up in adapting their login code. you're right that it's not a great system, and it shouldn't be this way, but this is the reality. Perhaps over time, financial institutions will more firmly coalesce around the latest standard, FDX, but each one still has to implement it correctly, every time, to avoid the connectivity issues which exist nowadays. I don't hold out much hope for things to get significantly better any time soon; it will remain a game of perpetual whack-a-mole for Intuit to keep chasing after the latest connection which has failed.
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19932 -
Believe me … Vanguard is the PROBLEM … Vanguard has cheap rates … now the rest of you are finally learning why. I haven't dealt with Vanguard for years because of their extremely poor customer service in every area !!!
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Even when I try and bring in the downloaded file I'm getting this issue. Anyone know how to fix this so I can at least manually input the data while these billionaires figure out who is going to own their incompetence first?
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Vanguard connection is working again….
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Not for me… yet.
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Yes, but one of my main accounts (50+ positions) broke link during the outage. When you re-establish, its simple web tracking only which is pretty much useless. My other accounts are now fine.
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Yes, now working for both Mac and Windows versions.
I also had one (out of four) of my accounts (Windows version) move to simple tracking. I restored my quicken file to a Feb 28 file and then it was fine.
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[Removed - Profanity]… I followed mikel51's footsteps and restored my Quicken file from an earlier backup (before I disconnected my Vanguard accounts because they were not updating). In the process, I lost ~3 weeks worth of updates to other accounts that I had to work through to recover from, but my Vanguard accounts now "seem to be" updating normally, and not defaulting to the mostly useless "simple tracking". I have not idea if this behavior will be preserved after Vanguard finishes whatever they seem to be doing. I put the blame entirely on Vanguard for this mess… Many thanks to mikel51 for sharing his workaround…
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This is unacceptable and needs to be fixed sooner than later, I have transactions in 2 of my accounts dating back to 1996 and use them for tax purposes.
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@wpenney What situation are you encountering that is "unacceptable and needs to be fixed sooner than later"? The Vanguard connection problem was fixed by Vanguard a week ago. If you made any change to your Vanguard connection in Quicken during the outage period, you may need to disconnect and reconnect your accounts; as long as you select "Vanguard" and not "Vanguard - Personal Investors" when you enable the accounts for downloading, you can select Direct Connect from Vanguard, and you can select Detail Tracking in Quicken. All your past data should still be intact. So you'll have to spell out what problem you're having.
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930 -
I have been a user of Quicken since 1992, and Vanguard much longer. Vanguard has grown over the years to where they no longer have to listen to any individual or small group, which is Quicken users.
Calling Vanguard is a waste of time. No human being answers the phone on weekends, as the office is closed. And the tech support staff (if they have one) is not available at any time, other than by sending an online message (and hoping someone reads it and can do something about it other than fill out a "ticket."
The old adage that "you get what you pay for" is alive and well at Vanguard. Don't expect Vanguard to "jump thru any hoops" to restore what is still available to Quicken users via most other major brokerages.
This problem gets more time consuming to work around day by day for any active trader who "marks to market" on a daily basis. I trade at Schwab, Fidelity and Edward Jones (in addition to Vanguard) and, so far, it is not a problem at these other brokerages.
I don't know who needs to pay who to fix the problem, but it needs to happen soon and I don't have a lot of faith in Vanguard.
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Fix what problem? The issue with the DC connection was resolved a week ago. If that is what your post is about, read the post just prior to yours in this thread.
Otherwise, please provide more explanation so an appropriate response can be provided.
Quicken Classic Premier (US) Subscription: R61.20 on Windows 11 Home
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if there is no resolution I'll be dropping Quicken. - Quicken just isn't as useful as it used to be and lack of proper support for Vanguard makes it worse.
I don't care whose problem it is.
BTW, I buy Fidelity, as needed, within Vanguard - costs nothing0 -
how do you delete your own comment?
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What do you mean "disconnect and reconnect"? do you mean "deactivate" and reactivate?
that doesn't work for windows - when you reactivate you do NOT get a "direct connect" type connection, but get a web connect.
So maybe this means I need to restore from backup older than Feb 28?0
