And to add a little more to ancient history, over 10 years ago, long before
there was Web Banking, it was the banks themselves that promoted Money and
Quicken home banking as a new service to attract customers. Our first
version of Money (Money95) was a freebee from Chemical Bank (now JP Morgan
Chase). They offered both Money and Quicken. We chose Money because it was
the full version, while Quicken was the Lite version without investment
tracking. Updates were via a telephone data connection, not via the
internet. But since banks have developed their own web services, they now
view direct connect as a liability. At least Chase still offers it,
although you do have to have a minimum balance account to get it without a
$10 monthly fee.
--
Peace,
BobJ

"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in
message news:%23RJ95PzHHHA.4068[at]TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
- quote -

In microsoft.public.money, pat wrote:

- quote -

That's different. In that case, I suggest you contact Microsoft
support.


- quote -

Yes, the problems seem to be ones through Yodlee's and such. What is
also boggling is that I can log into MSN Money and my updates/downloads
are there!


Dick Watson wrote:
- quote -

To Ron's point, and with the disclaimer that I don't download transaction
data for reasons long since hashed over in the newsgroup, the real answer to
your question lies with the FIs, not Microsoft or Money. The people who seem
to have the best luck almost exclusively are getting data directly from
their FIs via "Direct Connect". They can do this because the FIs care to
support the direct interface. Further, caring enough to support the direct
interface probably correlates with caring enough to do a good job
implementing it and working hard to keep it working well.

OTOH, those with problems seem predominantly to be getting the data via
"Third Party Services". These services exist and function almost completely
because many FIs simply do not care enough to provide a better (see above)
interface or are downright hostile to the notion. Given this, the "Third
Party Services" make this work entirely without the cooperation of the FIs
and, probably in some cases, despite downright hostility from the FIs toward
the tools and techniques and motives involved. These "Third Party Services"
work by exploiting the web services the FI is trying to offer directly to
you and your eyeballs, so they can show you their logos and offer you their
offers and make you watch their advertising. The "Third Party Services" are
doing what is called "screen scraping": pretending to be you, logging into
their website, getting their pages, ignoring their advertising, et al., and
extracting just the data. The data is then forwarded via Microsoft to you.
You got your data. The bank didn't get your eyeballs. That wasn't the reason
they invested in the website, rest assured.

It's all a kludge (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kludge if you are not
familiar with this term of the engineering art) and will probably never work
well. It's not directly Microsoft's fault, and there's really little they
can do about it. The fact that the FIs view Money--and, perhaps worse,
Microsoft--as a threat to their ability to control the interaction with
their customer does not help any of this. The additional fact that Money is
a far less important player in the personal finance management software
market than Quicken also doesn't help. Interestingly, the Microsoft Money
team thinks their real competition is the bank web sites. We users thought
banks offered financial services and Microsoft sold application software and
didn't see this as a competition between them. Shows what we knew.

What would make the situation better? A WHOLE LOT MORE banking customers
USING tools like Money AND DEMANDING better from the FIs AND WALKING with
their money away from those FIs that don't get with the program. The year
this was going to happen has been just around the corner for about a decade
or more. Kinda like Linux taking market share from Windows on the desktop.
My view is that the integration of "Third Party Services" in M05 indicated
that Microsoft has abandoned any hope this day will ever get here.

"pat" <pcsmith811[at]gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1166062825.779263.167140[at]f1g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

In microsoft.public.money, Ron Rosenfeld wrote:

- quote -

I expect I don't have *any* accounts at your institution. Have you
been looking to switch?


- quote -

On 13 Dec 2006 18:20:25 -0800, "pat" <pcsmith811[at]gmail.com> wrote:

- quote -

I have Money do my updates directly with my banks, brokerages and credit card
companies, rather than going through MS's centralized service. I've not had
any of the update problems others have been reporting here.

This works fine for two bank accounts at one bank, three brokerage accounts at
one brokerage, and two credit card accounts.

But there are some financial institutions for which this does not work, and I
have to go directly to their web sites to get updates -- I usually just do this
at the end of the period. I can download their statements into Money, just not
the data that comes out between statements.
--ron

Maybe I just have too many accounts at the same institution, but it's
very frustrating to not have reliable money updates. Am I alone?
Should I be looking into other products or is this not MS Money
specific?