aprest:

This is a rant from a long time Quicken user.  It's addressed to you, "aprest" because you are the last post in the thread, but it's an open letter (rant) to all the rest of you indignant and officially unhappy campers.

"Because of the impact that this problem is having on our ability to manage our investments regarding buy and sell decisions we are losing money and this could reach the point of the members of this forum getting together in a class action suit!"

First of all grab your End User License Agreement and read it.  Your chances for a law suit are none and none leaning heavily to the side of none.

Second, if you use Quicken to manage your investments for anything other than occasional after-the-fact analysis and for a more complete look at your Net Worth, you are ________  (comment withheld by iiimaf so that Kathryn doesn't have to edit his post).

If you actually want to manage your investments, here's a suggestion.  Go to your brokerage website where you will get "real-time" quotes and a lot more current stock and market information.  Unless you have a really special version of Quicken you will need to go their to place buy/sell orders anyway, so why use Quicken?

The current situation with downloading quotes is affecting ALL OF US and yes, it's a pain in the butt.

Do you think a few hundred or even a few thousand complaints like yours is going to speed up the solution?  Do you really think Quicken isn't doing everything humanly possible to fix this situation?  Finally, do you want a quick fix or do you want them to fix it?

My suggestion to you and the rest of the "me-to" crowd is to deal with it and move on to something else.

Current quotes and historical quotes downloaded successfully and correct today for both versions Quicken 2008 AND Quicken 2009.

As to this getting out of beta...this has nothing to do with Quicken's software.  It is a problem with Quicken's quote servers relaying bad historical quotes to the Quicken software.  The quotes issue was apparent among ALL Quicken versions...it was not just a Quicken 2009 issue.

I beta tested Q2009....no problems downloading quotes and historic prices on that end throughout the beta process.

Changing the quicken.com webiste seems to have been the culprit for the broken quotes issue.  Obviously, all the complaining and threatening lit a fire under the Quicken support staff to get a fix ASAP...which, as of today, they seem to have completed.

None of those problems were apparent in any of the beta versions I tested for Quicken 2009, until the final RC1 version was released.

That RC1 version was released ONE DAY prior to the actual release of Quicken 2009.  In that version, I discovered that downloaded transactions were not matching properly.  Up until that release, all other beta versions had no problems matching transactions with previously entered transactions in the register.

What was maddening, is that the RC1 version was released one day prior to the actual release...and that the beta forum used to report bugs was then closed the following day.  Beta testers had no recourse to report any bugs in that version. 

Personally, I don't understand the rationale behind releasing the "release candidate 1" version without a complete beta test by all the beta testers.  I'm sure some testers didn't even get a chance to download the last RC1 version before the beta forum even closed.  Thus, any bugs discovered were unable to be reported.

And the next question begs---why CHANGE something that wasn't even broken to start with?  Who messed around with the matching process anyways, and why?  And why would you do it so late in the beta test period?

As to your other issues, I don't use Vista, I don't have the program shutdown problem (using Win XP SP3), and I reported the quicken.com problems as soon as they became apparent.

All the online links to quicken.com in both Quicken 2008 and Quicken 2009 seem to be broken.  As you mention, all I get is the INTU quote page, regardless of which ONLINE RESEARCH I click on pertaining to a particular security.

In Quicken 2008, I don't even get that far.  I only get the Quicken support page and can't access quicken.com through the Quicken browser.  It just loops back to Quicken Support.

This wasn't an issue in the beta test period, since the old quicken.com page was still active and seemed to function just fine.  This is a product of the quicken.com site page changeover...not a software issue.

Do you just post on here....or do you read any of the previous posts?

For most users, it has been reported that historical prices and current quotes were fixed as of today.

Please read the previous posts...at least from the beginning of today!

Bill...

I actually had some phone conversations with a Quicken tech support rep regarding a couple of the issues with the Q2009 beta version.

One had to do with getting Harris Bank to actually work with Expresss Web Connect (which it seems to do now, finally...but has been spotty the last two days).

Another had to do with a minor Quicken problem, which they also fixed.

So, in that regard, I found the follow up to be pretty good.  At least I knew they were listening and were trying to help.  It was little annoying because they would constantly call me at work, and tearing myself away in the middle of a dental patient isn't the best thing to do.

What was perplexing though is, why release Q2009 Release Candidate 1 for 1 day and then pull the "beta plug"?  You would think they would want RC1 FULLY tested over a period of time before it was released to the general public.  That's what I would have done.

I have previously beta tested for my dental professional software (beta tested for over 8 years with that).  It is difficult to compare the two, because we are talking about a Quicken product that retails from $50-110 with a very broad user base, while my dental software is over $5000 with what I would think is a much more limited user base.

Of course, the dental software team was more responsive to my needs, concerns and questions.  They implemented a LOT of my ideas from version to version, plus fixed almost all the problems and concerns during the beta test period.

I didn't feel I had the same input with Quicken.  I felt that I was just a "bug tester", not really a beta tester.  I would give constructive criticism AND suggestions, but I never felt that Quicken really cared about that.  It was almost as if, well...here's the 2009 version, take it or leave it...we don't really want or need your input on how this should look, feel or operate.  Just tell us if something works or doesn't.

Would I beta test again...yeah, I would.  I guess I'm a glutton for punishment...and I do like to see what's new from version to version. 

I'm sure Intuit will get almost all the kinks out of Quicken 2009.  At least, it seems like they listening to the ticked off users on this forum regarding the two major issues...quotes downloading reliability and the downloaded transaction matching problem.  They have seemed to have turned the corner on these two issues (keeping fingers crossed).

Now if they can get quicken.com up and running to full functionality, most of the users can get off their backs for a while...and we can finally get back to the "screen flickering, I can't print, my version has been sunsetted" posts most of us are used to.