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Quicken Bill Pay - Metavante

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Reader mail:  Quicken billed for CheckFree Bill Pay service cancelled years ago

Christine,

We are past CheckFree Bill Pay customers who cancelled service years ago, but last month discovered that Quicken has been auto billing our account the entire time. We contacted them, and they said they’d refund three months of payments. We’ve never granted them permission to access our account and never used their service. Although the loss is not that large--a few hundred dollars--the principle of accessing and billing our account has us enraged. In Minnesota we call it theft.

During a Google search, I found your posted information dated 7-7-05. It seems we are one of those 27,000 CheckFree customers who cancelled and had their accounts reactivated without authorization. Can you tell me if there has been a suit filed or if there are any updates available. We intend to pursue this matter.

Thanks,

...

I’m not aware of any lawsuit and I’ve completely given up on changing how American corporations are allowed to defraud the people.

Due to my own EXTENSIVE legal experiences as well as the complete failure of class actions to have an impact, I can only recommend taking the 3-months refund and forgetting about it.

If somebody actually filed a class action, quite likely you’d get a COUPON giving you a percentage off Quicken software as settlement. It is disgusting.

It bothers me tremendously that I still use Quicken and I PAY for the updates they force you to buy.  Maybe as part of the Trado project we’ll come up with an alternative to Quicken and MS Money.  When it comes to choosing between paying MS or Quicken, that’s a really tough choice.

Eventually, ALL transactions that are in now in my bank account should be at Trado and I should be able to download the transactions into a program similar to Quicken from Trado.  And of course I’ll be able to pay all bills through Trado, I just choose between Trados and Dollars.

The software I’m installing today doesn’t have the feature to use Dollars yet, that’ll have to be an add-on module.  But since PayPal can maintain multiple currencies and exchange them, it can’t be too difficult.

I’d like to put Quicken and Metavante out of business along with the banks. 

Maybe some of their disgruntled programmers could moonlight for Trado?

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Reader mail:  Can’t cancel Quicken bill pay

Hi Christine,

I have 2 accounts that I can’t get bill-pay 9.95 monthly charges off my accounts. I call quicken and I’m put on hold for a period I’m unwilling to hold for.

What is the solution?

Regards,

There’s really no solution.  I recently sued NetZero for billing after I cancelled, they finally offered to pay what they owe me (around $170), but refused to compensate me for the expense of the lawsuit and having spent over 25 hours on getting this refund.

They get away with this crap because America is run by the corporations and “consumers” are exactly that:

Human beings with no other purpose than to generate profits for corporations and their executives and shareholders.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Reader mail:  Lexington credit repair refunded all payments and provided the letters

Here is the relevant excerpt from a reader’s email:

… They sent me the full amount I asked for—every single penny I ever spent with the Lexington Fraud Pit, almost $2,000—PLUS my entire case file in a large box via USPS. 

Some of the letters they sent to me even revealed the ridiculous nonsense, along with the third grade grammar, that they wrote to the credit bureaus in their so-called dispute letters sent on my behalf! 

So, I got everything I wanted; they didn’t even bother to ask me to sign any disclaimers of any kind—they simply automatically deposited the money into my bank account and sent the box. ...

The “Lexington Fraud Pit” (love that term) has been sued a lot and they HAVE to provide you with copies of all communications on your behalf, there’s no such thing as “proprietary” credit repair letters.  Lawyers HAVE to give their clients everything in the file upon request.

They just don’t want people to see how they make you look stupid with their idiotic letters.

More info on Lexington and the Ovation “proprietary” credit repair letter

I’d really like to get some of those Lexington letters for posting too.

Please don’t bother sending me inquiries about other credit repair companies and debt consolidation firms—they ALL suck.  Most people have no idea how complex credit reporting and scoring is.  I make so much info available—entirely free of charge:

LOTS of FREE info about credit disputes at CreditFactors

I realize that it is “too complicated” and “too time consuming” for most people to learn about credit and scores, but that’s not MY fault.  I dedicated many years to trying to change the system by publicizing UNFAIR credit reporting practices and lawsuits.  Considering the NUMBER of people who are hurt by inaccurate and incomplete credit reporting (at least 100 million), you’d think that there would be a few others who care enough to DO something about it.

My latest experiment:

Political action: contact every legislator in Congress regarding Capital One credit LIMITS

We’ll see what happens. 

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Reader mail:  more Quicken and Metavante complaints

Thanks for you information on the web.  I use quicken bill pay and I just found out that 4 payments I made never got posted (without any notification to me) never were made.  I guess I was just lost on the transition from Checkfree to Metavante.  My contract was with Quicken Bill Pay not with check free or metavante and I believed them when my quicken register said these payments were made.  Now, my credit is affected and quicken says I have to call checkfree and that they can’t help me.  I can not believe this is legal. If there is a class action I can get involved with I will.  Just venting…

My non lawyer opinion is that Quicken is liable for all your damages.

Obviously, Quicken should pay for all related fees and it should provide you with a letter stating that it was THEIR error that the payments were not made.

Mistakes happen to the best.  “Normal” procedure is to send you a letter of apology, listing the bills that should have been but were NOT paid and to also send this letter to the creditors who were not paid, to pay all related fees (late, over limit, whatever) and to give you either free service if you’re interested or to send you a $50 to $100 check for your trouble.

Only the very worst companies will engage in finger pointing, requiring that you file a lawsuit.

If Quicken had done what’s “right”, the creditors who were paid late would most likely have deleted any derogatory data from your credit reports and you could also have disputed with the credit bureaus and included the Quicken letter as documentation. 

At this point, follow up IN WRITING with Quicken AND dispute with the credit bureaus:

“Please delete the late payments for accounts .... as I had scheduled the payments with Quicken Bill Pay and they somehow “lost” those payment instructions.”

They may or may not delete, but you need to do this to mitigate your damages.

If you have otherwise good credit and you carry balances on credit cards, you may well have your interest rates increased due to these lates and incur substantial long term damages.

See the Chase increases to 28% at Chase - Bank One - First USA illegal rate increases

Here’s another Quicken/Metavante complaint:

Christine,

I am one of those being charged for something that I have no idea that I subscribed for.  Do I feel dumb!!!  I just thought I was paying for something that I forgot to cancel.  When I called Quicken, they told me that I was inactive as of 7/29/04 and that maybe I have something with Metavante.  To my surprise, I never heard of them and this has been happening to lots of people. 

I will start researching it, talk to my bank and would appreciate any info you can give me.

Thanks,

...

You need to document this IN WRITING or at least record the phone calls.  Request a full refund of all charges since 7/29/04 IN WRITING with confirmed delivery and let us know what happens.

Sending an Open Letter to the Metavante and Quicken CEOs is on my list of things to do - the trouble is that I have SO MANY things to do and occasionally I even have to do some paid work.  Since I’m NOT interested in getting paid for organizing a class action with all the money going to the lawyers and the fraud victims getting some stupid coupons, I really want to get Quicken and Metavante the publicity they deserve and just MAYBE there’s a law firm willing to file a class action on MY terms:

1) They will NOT settle for coupons for whatever Intuit services or software.  I’m thinking something like treble refunds + $100 to ALL affected customers, not just the ones who file a claim.
2) They will establish a website with the word quicken in the URL and they will post the filings as at fcraclassaction.com.
3) They will post plain English updates at the site.
4) It’s a NATIONAL class action, not just for one state.

And of course it would be nice if there was some money to fund an organization to do what I do and PAY people for the work.  I’m only one person, my day has only 24 hours and I can only work about 14 of those. 

The government does a HORRIBLE job enforcing consumer protection laws and usually the FTC settles with companies who do NOT admit any wrong doing and the consumers never get a penny of the settlement money.  Sometimes they negotiate refunds, but even when I was eligible, I’ve never gotten a check:  I either couldn’t get a claim form or it was such a hassle that it was more economical NOT to bother.

So, I hope to find the time to write and post my Open Letter at http://mylitigation.net/ and who knows, maybe there is another person able to write a letter and post it before I get around to it - please contact me if you’re interested.

Saturday, July 23, 2005

No response from Metavante or Intuit, whistleblower Mathias and 4 contract workers fired

On 7/1/05 I e-mailed and called Metavante.  On 7/5, Mathias got home from work to find a message from the agency that Metavante had decided to let some of the temps go.  Metavante uses several employment agencies and Mathias and the other temp workers from his agency had been there longest with one of them being a couple weeks from his 1-year anniversary at Metavante.

The people who were let go were all from Mathias’ agency, 3 were involved with consumer billing and one worked across from Mathias.  Mathias is one of the least materialistic people I’ve met and taking it quite well, but the message is chilling:

A whistleblower will not only lose his own job, but anyone connected to him will also be fired.

Since temps don’t have any rights whatsoever, there’s probably not much that can be done - other than to do what I’m doing here and to let the world know how corrupt organizations like Metavante and Quicken (Intuit) operate.  Apparently Metavante had the remaining temps sign confidentiality agreements to ensure no further whistleblowing.

The good news is that a reader sent me his demand letter for the refund of the unauthorized charges, including the URL to my postings here, addressed to the Office of the President for Intuit and he filed his complaint with the FTC. 

He also would like to participate in a class action.

Last time I checked, it was illegal to take peoples’ money without authorization and to not issue a refund until they demand return of the funds.