"harrelsonesq" <harrelsonesq2[at]yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:e4Z2PBLxFHA.2008[at]TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
- quote -

I guess I am barely in Yodlee's MAC thingy too - but I already told Yodlee
where they can put that baloney

No I don't have anything on my bank, just made a lot of noise about their
poor downloading service. Banks/brokers were/are in a customer attraction
mode and I went straight to top officers to complain. It worked. Probably
would not work with a real big outfit like Citibank or BofA but I have been
using TD Waterhouse for brokerage/banking services and they are now quite
good. I do use Citibank for credit cards (they have the best deal in the
country) and ING Direct for money market accounts.

Regards

Bill Wood

"harrelsonesq" <harrelsonesq2[at]yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:%23kCmD$KxFHA.1124[at]TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
- quote -

I agree completely but with Money/Quicken the "new" technology is worse than
the old. I use Money 2002 not because I am cheap or a technology
stick-in-the-mud but because, having tested them, the newer versions of
Money are crap!


- quote -

I know exactly what you mean but no way will I get used to it I don't
like being pushed around so any vendor or service provider who tells me to F
off is on my permanent sh*t list. Now that I am retired and have more time
to deal with these turkeys, I have succeded in turning a few of them around.
But mostly I just keep switching until I find an outfit that does what I
want. At this point I am a former MSFT customer because I don't like the
phony upgrades and automatic expiration of downloads deal that they are
trying to shove down our throats.

So I say give your erstwhile favorite vendor an F bomb of your own and shop
somewhere else. If enough folks vote with their feet, these arrogant
companies will get the message.

Regards


Bill Wood

- quote -

harrelsonesq wrote:
- quote -

I'm guessing that's a matter of not having been provided with it far enough
in advance to have integrated into existing systems, including training
technical support staff.

Banks probably would be happiest if customers were always on last years'
version, whatever that was. Maintenance of imcompatible old versions goes
away, tech staff don't need to know 47 different products, and the
implementation folks have time to get the newer one in place and bug-tested.

Oh yeah. Forgot to mention that I'm in Yodlee's MAC or whatever they call it
demographic -- albeit just barely -- so if they're going to listen to
anybody, it would be somebody like me. But they still don't.

Don't know what you've got on your bank, Bill, but it must be pretty good.

Susan

"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in
message news:eLJgbwKxFHA.2008[at]TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
- quote -

I've always complained a lot more about the banks' being slow to support the
LATEST version. Right or wrong, I bet people who adopt new technology are
more on their radar screen than those who cling to old.

To the extent that ANY user is on their radar screen at all, that is, which
isn't much. Recently, my erstwhile favorite online retailer of the kind of
clothes I wear started selling crap. I complained, & they sent me a nice
e-mail saying -- basically -- that they were sorry I felt that way, but they
were going to do what they wanted, regardless, so I could go F myself.

Get used to it.

Susan

"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in
message news:eLJgbwKxFHA.2008[at]TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
- quote -

I think we are in general agreement. The reason the banks talk about
supporting these interfaces is that potential customers want to hear it. My
suspicion is that there is a large disconnect between what they want a bank
to say they can do and what they will actually ask the bank to do. I read an
article somewhere (maybe it was the former Money developer's blog) that a
huge percentage of home personal computer buyers say they want the machine
to help manage their personal finances but only a fraction of these ever
actually use the thing to do so. As to customer demand channeling business
behavior, there is no doubt that it can. Take New Coke. I take M06 as a sign
that not many M05 users actually made their wishes felt at Microsoft. Either
that or they just don't care or really do prefer Money as an optimized
advertising delivery engine instead of a personal finance manager. Were I
you, I'd think the graffiti on the stall indicates that there is no great
groundswell of user demand for backlevel interfaces for transaction download
to backlevel versions of Money. I could be wrong. Time will tell.

"William R Wood" <w.wood[at]cox.net> wrote in message
news:OxSfGXKxFHA.3436[at]TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Dick,

You make many good points. I really don't know the answer to this debate
since I'm not in the banking business and thus don't know enough facts.
Bottom line for me is that I will not do business with a bank/broker unless
they support downloading transaction data to the accounting software of my
choice. So far Money 2002 still directly downloads my credit card
transactions and I can manually download and then automatically import
everything else. So I am happy. If MSFT somehow disables my downloads I'm
not worried because Moneydance directly downloads my data perfectly and also
imports manually downloaded statements as well. Small numbers or not, many
banks make a big point of supporting downloads so it must be important to
them for financial or goodwill reasons, or both. Thus I remain surprised
that any bank would annoy customers by forcing them to make an unwanted
software change. Any bank does that to me and I am gone. If enough folks
squeal like I would, the banks will back off.


Regards

Bill

Comments inline.

"William R Wood" <w.wood[at]cox.net> wrote in message
news:eK7ZdWJxFHA.3860[at]TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Given the small proportion of the consumer banking base that actually uses
either--based on the small proportion of households that use either--I'd bet
it's less than 5% at best of the customer base that use the old stuff and do
the electronic interface thing. I don't have numbers either. I'd actually be
shocked if it was 1%. Anybody got any numbers to estimate any of this?

- quote -

You must have a lot of money parked there or other business relationships
with them.

- quote -

Wow. The last time I was with a regular bank--Wells Fargo--they really
didn't give a crap what the consumer banking customers thought. I always had
the feeling I was just pestering them unless they were trying to sell me
something.

- quote -

But you can never just "leave it alone". In most environments "leaving the
legacy interfaces alone" has costs. You have to work around it. That has
costs. You have to leave older systems in place as the way to "leave it
alone". That has costs. You have to keep using older code from suppliers
that they don't want to support any more. (Just like Microsoft and Money and
you and me.)

- quote -

Most business people who want to stay in business or keep their jobs sooner
or later compare the costs of doing something with how they are going to
make how much money for having done it. They call it "business case". The
business case for consumer banking--at any service level--is pretty hard for
most FIs to make, from what I keep reading. Bending over backward to be nice
to people you don't make much money off to begin with isn't a winner at a
lot of companies. Some companies are small consumer focused. Wachovia may be
one. I don't know. Many are not.

This is really no different than the Money problem--the real customers they
make money from are the OEMs and the advertisers. So their concerns--low
support costs and vectoring eyeballs--become more important than our
concerns as individual retail version end users.

"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in
message news:%23DeckFIxFHA.3000[at]TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Don't have numbers but a lot of folks use Quicken and a fair amount use
Money. I bet older versions predominate because newer versions are mainly
hype, not substantive improvements.


- quote -


I'd say it was significant. Let me put it this way - when I threatened to
pull my money out of my bank due to Money issues, they jumped through hoops
to keep me happy. I got all sorts of concessions, extra services and
promises that my issues would be resolved. Those issues were resolved in a
few months and I was happy.

The bank realized that their response to my concerns was important not just
because of me but also because of the people I know and work with. They
knew that family, friends and co-workers would hear about the bank's
response.



If it
- quote -


Well, what can it cost a bank to maintain support for older versions? They
already have it figured out and working. All they have to do is leave it
alone. I doubt that support calls for older versions is a material issue
because users have already figured out how to download and can do it on
their own.

Most sensible business people realize that customer satisfaction is most
important. So even if it does cost a little to keep customers happy, it is
well worth it because the bank benefits from the geometric spread of
word-of-mouth goodwill.



- quote -

Why do you find this hard to believe? How many customers are we talking
about here? And how much revenue at the bank hinges on this support? If it
costs them **anything** to maintain this code and to field support calls
from customers about it, it may be too much and surely is more to them than
it is worth.

"William R Wood" <w.wood[at]cox.net> wrote in message
news:ebXkQhHxFHA.2232[at]TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Mark Horn wrote:
- quote -

You might just be reading into Wachovia's explanation what you want it
to say! The way I read it, they decided to discontinue supporting
versions below 2003 so that they and their customers could continue to
get support, where appropriate, through Microsoft.

While it is unclear if there were any other incentives for Wachovia to
make this recommendation, I would imagine there are other FI's that
still support versions below 2003. Just don't try to get Microsoft on
board if a problem is beyond those FI's scope of service!

Regards,
JB

"Russ Paul-Jones" <russpj[at]microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:u9E4f$ExFHA.3556[at]TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
- quote -

I find it hard to believe that any banking institution would intentionally
alienate customers by withdrawing support for older versions of Quicken or
Money. It smells like MSFT/Intuit are encouraging banks to obsolete older
versions.

I was an avid MSFT supporter and software buyer until this current Money
situation soured me completely. As a businessman and as an individual I
have purchased significant amounts of MSFT software but I will do so no
longer unless your company changes its policies. I currently use Money 2002
because none of the later versions have any advantage and I have tested each
of them extensively. Instead of improvements, newer versions contain
unwarranted interface changes, bloat, advertising and bugs that prevent me
from managing my finances properly. But the ultimate offense is the
automatic expiration of downloading features. That is totally unacceptable.

MSFT is generating an ill will among many customers that will come back to
haunt it at some point.


Regards,

Bill Wood
Fountain Hills, AZ

On 2005-09-28, Russ Paul-Jones <russpj[at]microsoft.com> wrote:
- quote -

Color me skeptical. The fact that Microsoft has introduced
self-crippling software and Wachovia has no incentive to alienate its
customers, I just don't find your claim credible. Wachovia certainly
leaves me with a different impression:

https://wachovia.com/misc/0,,670,00.html

I've purchased annual copies of MS Money from 2000 through 2005.
I've purchased my last copy. I'm going to continue to use 2002
because it will work for me. I can import OFX from FI websites
even if I can't do direct downloads. But I'm done paying for
intentionally crippled software.

As the product unit manager, your best bet to keep me buying is not
to force me into upgrades but to entice me into them. Selling me
software that breaks itself after a few years is not enticing.

As to the specific problem, I've been doing some debugging. I found
a great MSKB article that helped me:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316867/

When I followed those instructions, I got two text files back.
The first one was the request that was sent to the FI. The second
one was the FI's response. The request included the following
OFX tags:

<APPID> Money
<APPVER> 1000

And the response contained the following:

<SONRS<STATUS<CODE> 2000
<SEVERITY> ERROR
<MESSAGE> Invalid Product or Version. The Software Version
you are attempting to connect with is not supported by your
financial institution, please contact Customer Service for
more information.

I suspect that if I could change APPVER to 1200 or 1400 or something
like that then it would work. Not being skilled with a hex editor,
I think I'll instead look for banks that still support direct
download & billpay for older version of Money.

From time to time, our partner institutions review which versions of Money
to support, and we understand that Wachovia has chosen to support Money 2003
and above.

-Russ Paul-Jones
MS Money Product Unit Manager

"Mark Horn" <mark[at]hornclan.com> wrote in message
news:slrndjlg6n.st5.mark[at]home.hornclan.com...
- quote -

Is anyone here able to use M02 with Wachovia and do direct downloads
and bill pay? I can do it in M04, but not in M02.

In M02, when I try to sign in, I get an error that says:

Your financial institution encountered a general sign-on
error. Please try again later. If the problem persists,
call the Customer Support number for your financial
institution, listed in the Contact Information place in
the Online area.

In M04, using the same userid/password, I get a list dialog which
asks me to match/skip accounts.

Is anyone getting direct downloads from Wachovia in M02?