Wells Fargo Is Charging Me $10 to Use Quicken!

I used to belong to two credit unions. I had several very large CD's at them. Their service was poor, but their interest rates were great. One decided to close all branches in my city and fire all the employees, so I closed all accounts with them, and I told them why. The other dropped their interest rates to lower than the bank. I now have $300 there just to keep the account open.

They both offered direct connect for a while. They dropped that, and I had to switch to web connect. Then they added verification screens that stopped that working. Their tech support was pitifully bad, and offered no help. Now, I manually verify my statement each quarter, and hardly ever go online with them.

If they ever raise interest rates, I'll consider a CD, but I'd never make them my primary financial institution.

Jim H has written on 7/8/2011 12:19 PM:

+1

On the contrary, although some payments I make are for monthly bills, not all are. Some are annual, some are semi-annual, and some are completely irregular.

Four points:

1. I use your system for *some* bills--mostly utility bills, where the amounts paid are either consistent or reasonably close to consistent.

1. For monthly payments that can fluctuate widely in amount, I have no interest in such a payment being automatic. I want to know how much the charge is, I want to check the charges against my receipts, and I want to make sure there is enough cash in the checking account to cover it.

2. The amount of work involved in doing it my way is extremely small. It takes only a few seconds for me to pay a bill.

1. Doing what I do, I get to choose the date on which a bill is paid. Doing it your way, the company that bills you gets to choose the date, and they choose the earliest possible date. So I get considerably more float on my money than you do.

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

In my opinion (of course, that's all it is, my opinion, you need to be comfortable with what you're doing) none of these points are in favor of paying the bills yourself. Au contraire, having the payees pull the payment is easier, more economical, more soothing for the conscience:

I do 1 and 2 too. The I have the payee pull the payments.

After the initial setup (easy) there is no work to get the bill paid via a pull transaction. For most payees it gets "done" on the due date. No need to paying in advance a few days to allow for USPS, or whatever (Long ago Citibank used a post office out on a corner of Long Island only accessible via canoe, hence they took your money out a few days early more so the paddler could get across).

It is the job of the payee to make sure payment gets to him (her) on time. No need for me to count holidays and weekends to make sure things get there, and I also can go on vacation with a restful mind.

None of my investments, approaching the high 6 figure bracket, were affected, BECAUSE I realize I read the newspapers and far more, besides.

Luddites...your ancestors would have said something about how it takes but a few minutes to hook up a horse to a wagon.

I KNOW how much the charge is because I get a bill, usually in the snail mail, some by e-mail, BEFORE the payment date.

It takes me NO seconds.

Bull. ALL my pre-authorized payments are paid ON THE DUE DATE. Only an idiot would choose to pay a bill BEFORE the due date, unless it was a payee who offered discounts for early payment. I have none of those. As soon as YOUR net worth is about a million, THEN you can start giving ME lectures about finance. UNTIL THEN. FO...

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Good post, Han. At least two of us know how to use technology for OUR benefit and NOT the financial institution or the payee!!!

Sharx3335 has written on 7/8/2011 6:57 PM:

1) I was talking about the immoral mortgage loan operations, the refusal to take the TARP money and lend it, etc. Your reference is too Wall Street and risky investments, 2) You're quite a guy to have read the market and escaped with no loss. Is your crystal ball available to the rest of us? ;-)

Cy....allow me to rephrase. I wasn't directly affected by the various illegal "carryons-on" of recent history. HOWEVER, I most certainly was affected by the overall plunge in the market in 2008. My buddy had the crystal ball--he dumped all his stock in June/2008. Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn?t have been better off, in the long run, to have put everything into very conservative "under the mattress" type investments. Due to the somewhat different government oversight mechanisms here in Canada, we weren't quite as screwed over as our neighbours south of the 49th.

Toward of goal of restoring "peace in the valley" in this newsgroup, let me state that if a person wants to pay bills the way their grand-parents did, I have to grant them that right, e.g. going to bank, getting out cash, going to payee, paying bill. Or, like our parents did: taking bill to bank, paying bill there, along with a humongous service charge OR getting out check book, filling out check, getting out envelope, addressing envelope, applying postage, then schlepping it to the post office. OR paying a 3rd party to pay the bill, carefully having to calculate the timing, hoping that none of the various links in the process fail.

YMMV!!!!!!!

I started working in computers 44 years ago. I know how instruction pre-fetch and operand wrap-around work. I know how the data is read off the disk, and how it is de-serialized. I was advanced before you knew the word.

I like the technology to serve me in MY WAY, not in your way.

My ancestors are all dead. They don't say much.

Well, you did good! My losses were in the high 6 figures. So, I fired my broker, and I do it myself now. He did his job, he made me broker.

I've gained a lot of it back, at least the investment part. The real estate is still down, but I bought more cheap, and I'm not selling any.

Yeah, I started in IP in 1973 as a operator on an IBM 360 25 system, complete with key punch stations, verifier, card sorter, tape machines, card punch, card reader, 140n line printer...the whole shebang. I studied Assembler, RPG, Cobol languages. With Assembler we HAD to code each action...or it wouldn't happen.

However, it is NOW 2011. That was then. This was now. We do NOT need "hands-on" actions for mundane matters...unless, of course, we insist on being Luddites.

Jim, see my later post where I DID state that I, too, got nailed in the 2008 crash. Yeah, I had a broker, too, but I fault myself for not leaning on him more than I did. His investing was AOL might have been a clue. My present broker's fees are less, plus he confirms most actions with me prior to the trade. I just don't have the inclination to be constantly researching WHAT to buy, WHEN to buy, WHEN to sell, WHAT to sell, etc.. This is an example where I am willing to pay others to do something...of course, most of what I pay is tax deductible, in some way or another.

Call them and ask what the Quicken and Quickbooks section of their Consumer Disclosure, Book 2, page 63 means.

You are correct. I failed to ackowledge the Intuit service from the one through my bank. Subtle but valid distinction.

But the arguments about how easy it is, or is not, to use are the same either way.

Except it wasn't tha banks fault. They were set up to pay that bill, and so they paid it. The problem getting it fixed was getting the money back from the payee of the payment. That's the risk you take setting up auto payments of things that vary in amount and can't be fixed ahead of time.

So I guess you just trust the payee and don't review the amons being withdrawn. Or maybe you can do that in no seconds too.

As soon as my net worth drops to only a million, I'll accept your opinions without review.

Not an issue if bill pay through Quicken is free.