Community Discussion: Unable to delete/change recurring payment

Unable to delete/change recurring payment

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The original poster says, "The basic situation is that Quicken deleted the payees from my recurring list, but didn't actually stop paying them."

That is almost certainly not true, as written.

1.) While the op does not say this directly, what is being referred to are recurring ONLINE BILLPAY transactions. 2.) Online billpay transactions are "paid" by the online billpayer NOT QUICKEN. 3.) When a recurring online billpay transaction is created in Quicken it must use an Online Payee. If the appropriate Online Payee does not already exist in the Quicken file, it must be created. 4.) When the Online Payee exists in Quicken and the Online Billpay transaction using that Online Payee is created in Quicken, the billpay transaction must be transmitted (Sent) to the online billpayer. Once Quicken transmits (Sends) that recurring online billpay transaction to the online billpayer, Quicken NEVER sends another instruction to make any payment relating to that recurring online bill payment. 5.) When the billpayer receives a recurring billpay transaction from Quicken, they setup the same recurring billpay transaction in their system. And that recurring billpay transaction is available/visible at the billpayer's website ... where it can be modified or deleted by the Quicken user. 6.) All online bills (one-time online bills and recurring online bills) are paid by the billpayer - NEVER by Quicken. See #4 above: Quicken plays NO PART in making the individual payments in a recurring online bill. 7.) Quicken intends that users can stop recurring online bill payments by deleting the recurring online billpay transaction in Quicken, then transmitting that delete to the billpayer. If the user deletes the recurring online billpay transaction in Quicken, but does not successfully transmit that delete to the billpayer, the remaining payments for that recurring bill will continue to be made by the billpayer. The same is true for deleting an Online Payee in Quicken but failing to successfully transmit that delete to the billpayer. And trying to delete an online payee with outstanding payments is likely to fail (at least at the billpayer's site). 8.) If the recurring online billpay transaction is no longer available in Quicken, the user can still cancel the recurring billpay transaction at the billpayer's web site (or possibly by contacting the billpayer directly) - and I believe that is the ONLY way that orphaned recurring payment can be stopped.

The original poster claims that Quicken deleted the associated Online Payees, insinuating that the op did not intend for the Online Payees to be deleted; but provides no evidence to demonstrate that, nor evidence of the specific steps that were taken to modify one recurring payment and delete the other. I have deleted both online payees and recurring online bill payments many times with no problem.

I suspect that the op did not handle the attempts to modify and delete recurring online bills correctly. And it seems virtually certain that no attempt was made by the op to address the apparent failures by going to the billpayer's web site or contacting the billpayer directly (possibly at least partly due to the op's incorrect notion that it is Quicken who is continuing to make the online bill payments).

[NOTE: I believe that some billpayers do not allow recurring online bill payments to be modified; when that's true, the recurring online bill payment must be deleted, then re-added with the modified information.]