Discover Direct Connect stopped working

In its questionable wisdom, Intuit shipped a security certificate with many versions of Quicken that expired in late September. If you don't update this certificate to a valid one, banks will now refuse your download requests. They have made several updates available in order to fix this problem, but the updates may or may not actually work. (One of these updates is specifically for people for whom another update didn't work, which is pretty lame engineering and customer relations.) To top it off, a new line is appearing at the head of many users' "Ons Stop" result logs saying that there is a new Quicken update available for you to load -- but when you follow the given link, you are taken to an update that actually UNDOES the update with the security certificate fix in it.

In short, you need to physically replace that security certificate in any way possible before banks will start talking to you again. And you may even have to cancel and re-establish online downloading for that account (or all your accounts) within Quicken before the new certificate will finally take hold.

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Reply to
Calpurnia
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bitemenow_at_mailinator_dot snipped-for-privacy@foo.com (Calpurnia) wrote in news:326bd$4ac292e4$43de0cc0$ snipped-for-privacy@news.flashnewsgroups.com:

That is a poor excuse from the IT weenies. Doesn't wash for me, whether true or not. I erased another rant.

Reply to
Han

The certificate problem was a Mac problem, and it affected all downloads, not just Discover.

Reply to
John Pollard

}Just this evening, a Direct Connect for all FIs resulted in an error }for Discover.

I don't get the option to direct connect to Discover. All I get is web connect which is OK once a statement is available but sucks with recent transactions (there is no Quicken download). How do you force a direct connect?

Thanks, Dave

Reply to
noway

snipped-for-privacy@nowhere.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

One step update (OSU) works for me many times, but not always. Regular Discovercard. Maybe you have to remove it from direct connect and start signing up for OSU anew? I admit that now I cam only find how to download statements on their website, but I can download recent data often just fine.

Reply to
Han

You can't "force" a download method; it's more a question of whether you are allowed to use a particular method ... allowed by your financial institution.

Some financial institutions do not offer Direct Connect; no way any of their users could use Direct Connect.

Some financial institutions offer both Direct Connect and Web Connect. Some offer both methods using the same financial institution name; some use a different financial institution name for each method.

As far as I know, the Quicken Discover financial institution, "Discover Card" only offers Direct Connect downloads; that's the fi name I use.

There is another Quicken Discover fi name, "Discover Card Account Center", which only offers Web Connect downloads.

You could try to setup your Quicken account to use "Discover Card", but I would backup before I did that.

I suspect you may need to take this up with Discover, and you might want to do that before you even try to change your current setup.

Reply to
John Pollard

Here is the latest update from Discover on Sept 30, 2009 at 11:35pm:

------------- We recently became aware of a server issue, which caused technical difficulties for Cardmembers downloading transactions into Quicken®. This error was recently fixed. You should now be able to download your transactions into Quicken® successfully.

-------------

I've disconnected and reconnected again. When reconnecting I am once again getting the message that webconnect is available, and that is the connection that it establishes.

Bernie

Reply to
B

That is interesting information John. My account is set to "Discover Card Account Center". It is not something that I have changed and, indeed, the user cannot change that field. And I have used Direct Connect with Discover for years - until now.

I have passed your information about two different Discover financial institutions with different characteristics along to the Discover team. Perhaps that will give them a clue as to where to look next.

Bernie

Reply to
B

You can download transactions throughout the month with Web Connect. It just isn't as convenient as Direct Connect and requires more steps on your part.

To download transactions at any time with web connect, or directly from Discover's home page, log in and then click on Recent Activity. On the recent activity page you can click on "Download".

In the popup window, which defaults to Quicken, just click Download. Then let the downloaded file be opened by the Quicken transaction processor.

Bernie

Reply to
B

parobk had written this in response to

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: I believe I have the fix for the original issue. Judging from the dates of this post, the timing sounds about right when my Quicken quit "Direct Connect"ing and thereby downloading transactions into Quicken. I was then forced to visit the discovercard.com website to get the .ofx

Here is the fix: Right click the account in Quicken. Note the "Financial Institution". It may say "Discover Card Account Center". Click "Online Services" then "Remove from One-Step Update". Once that is done, re-Setup the account, but this time, make sure you choose "Discover Card" as the F.I. and NOT "Discover Card Account Center".

This worked like a charm! Hopefully, it will for you.

------------------------------------- B wrote:

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Reply to
parobk

parobk had written this in response to

formatting link
: I believe I have the fix for the original issue. Judging from the dates of this post, the timing sounds about right when my Quicken quit "Direct Connect"ing and thereby downloading transactions into Quicken. I was then forced to visit the discovercard.com website to get the .ofx

Here is the fix: Right click the account in Quicken. Note the "Financial Institution". It may say "Discover Card Account Center". Click "Online Services" then "Remove from One-Step Update". Once that is done, re-Setup the account, but this time, make sure you choose "Discover Card" as the F.I. and NOT "Discover Card Account Center".

This worked like a charm! Hopefully, it will for you.

------------------------------------- JMc wrote:

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Reply to
parobk

parobk had written this in response to

formatting link
: I believe I have the fix for the original issue. Judging from the dates of this post, the timing sounds about right when my Quicken quit "Direct Connect"ing and thereby downloading transactions into Quicken. I was then forced to visit the discovercard.com website to get the .ofx

Here is the fix: Right click the account in Quicken. Note the "Financial Institution". It may say "Discover Card Account Center". Click "Online Services" then "Remove from One-Step Update". Once that is done, re-Setup the account, but this time, make sure you choose "Discover Card" as the F.I. and NOT "Discover Card Account Center".

This worked like a charm! Hopefully, it will for you.

------------------------------------- B wrote:

##-----------------------------------------------## Newsgroup Access Courtesy

formatting link
Tax and Accounting Software ForumsWeb and RSS access to your favorite newsgroup - alt.comp.software.financial.quicken - 18602 messages and counting! ##-----------------------------------------------##

Reply to
parobk

Nope. I've "disconnected" the account from online updates many times in trying to get past this problem. Then telling Quicken to activate online services again for Discover says that Direct Connect is not available, but that Web Connect is, and then it lets me setup Web Connect again.

Maybe you mean something else by "setup the account again". I see now that when online downloading is disconnected that it is possible to edit the Financial Institution to field to anything at all. There are no choices presented, it is just a text field. It does say Discover Card Account Center. Since the DiscoverCard account has been setup in Quicken for ten years or more I don't remember how the field got filled in in the first place.

Bernie

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Reply to
B

Resolution (sort of).

The latest response from DiscoverCard asked me to call their web support team. Spoke to a very helpful and courteous rep who said that over the last three weeks or so they've started to hear from a lot of people about problems with Quicken. They don't know what Quicken might have changed. Nor do they know why Quicken might have changed to Financial Institution field from "Discover Card" to "Discover Card Account Center".

The bypass to the problem is to manually change the Financial Institution field to Discover Card. Parobk had the right idea in his several posts. But there are a couple of steps to the process. Here are the detailed steps in case you need them or want to share them.

If you encounter the problem (instructions are for Q2007 but should be similar for all versions):

- Tell Quicken to "Change Online Services"

- In the pop-up window, disconnect or Remove the update connection

- In the pop-up window, change to the General Information tab

- Edit the Financial Institution field to say Discover Card (You cannot edit the field if a connection is already setup)

- In the pop-up window, change to the Online Services tab

- Tell Quicken to activate the one-step update

- Follow the online prompts for id and password.

I also told the rep about the problem that some of us have been seeing with no transactions to download when there really are transactions waiting. She was going to share that information and also the suggestion that they now provide the bypass in responses to e-mails that they get about the Direct Connect problem. (They'll also contact their Quicken rep to try to resolve the original problem.)

Bernie

Reply to
B

I can't tell you whether the proposed fix will work, but it's clear that the poster you replied to said you need to change the financial institution to "Discover Card" ... which I suggested (at least implicitly) earlier in this thread.

Since the current Participating Financial Institutions List clearly says that "Discover Card" does Direct Downloads; and "Discover Card Account Center" only does Web Connect downloads, it's hard to see how you have anything to lose by attempting to change the fi name.

When the account is not Activated for downloading, you should be able to change the financial institution name; as the previous poster suggested, and as your own comment tends to confirm ("when downloading is disconnected that it is possible to edit the Financial Institution field to anything at all").

If I couldn't change the name in the existing Quicken account (to the desired name), I would create a new Quicken account with "Discover Card" as the fi name and try downloading to that. If that worked, I'd delete all the duplicates from the new account, "Move" the transactions from the old account to the new account, and delete the old account.

Reply to
John Pollard

}the account, but this time, make sure you choose "Discover Card" as the }F.I. and NOT "Discover Card Account Center".

That fixed it! When I said force download what I meant was use direct connect. I had tried to download recent transactions via web connect but Quicken was not even an option; however, now it is. Was that changed recently?

Thanks, Dave

Reply to
noway

John, I appreciate the advice you give and your suggestions in this newsgroup. Where do you see a list of participating financial institutions?

I was hoping that Discover would have a solution which simply allowed things to work as they have for the past decade or so, without my having to edit account names or risk dealing with duplicate transactions. As a software developer I know that unauthorized fixes and workaround can make it even more difficult for a software vendor to correct a problem - usually better to wait for a tested and approved fix than to tinker. Right now Discover is still at a loss to understand what has caused the problem between their system and Quicken for a large number of users in the last month or so. And the situation is made more complicated by the fact that some users, like you, apparently haven't been affected.

Since a fix doesn't appear to be imminent, and may not be forthcoming at all, I've gone ahead and edited the Financial Institution name. Unfortunately that downloaded exactly one year's worth of transactions. In my case that is around 900 transactions!

I noted the date of the last reconciled transaction (9/15), backed up the file, and then accepted all of the downloaded transaction. Sorted the registry by reconciliation status and mass deleted all of the "Cleared but not Reconciled" transaction prior to the date of the last Reconciled transaction. Then sorted the register by date, as usual, and manually deleted each of the duplicate Cleared transaction since that date - all 40 of them! If I haven't made any errors in the process things should be back on track and the next Reconciliation will not have any discrepancies.

Of course none of this should have been necessary for me or anyone else, and this entire thread should have been unnecessary. But I will say that Discover has been very pleasant and cooperative as they try to correct the situation.

Bernie

Reply to
B

Reply to
John Pollard

Thanks. "Online" is a command line item I have never clicked in in all the years and versions of Quicken that I have used. Never have had a reason to click on it. I doubt that I will have a need again, but at least now I know what is there.

When I did click on it I noticed that the only entry of Discover is "Discover Card".

Reply to
B

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