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Quicken Bill Pay - Metavante

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.

Thursday, July 07, 2005

More on the Quicken 2005 upgrade problems

A reader sent me Intuit Defends Quicken Upgrade

It sure looks like I’m not the only one unhappy with Quicken and Intuit. Search here for a number of postings about cram down sales, horrible support and illegal activities.

Is there any other product I can use that’s NOT owned by Intuit or Microsoft?

It looks to me like Intuit modeled its business practices and especially support directly after Microsoft. Intuit CHARGES for support calls, the TurboTax activation and limitations are as awful as Windows. Intuit had the nerve to “expire” Turbo Tax so that you can’t use it at all after the end of the next tax year.

I have the choice of getting ripped off by one corrupt organization or another.

Metavante - Quicken update about the unauthorized Bill Pay account activations

Since I haven’t received any response to my e-mail and VM last week, I’m assuming that the allegations are true:

Metavante accidentally activated about 27,000 CheckFree Bill Pay accounts during the transfer from Check Free to Metavante. Apparently these accounts were previously active and then the consumers had canceled. It appears that these cancellations were ignored during the transfer.

If you have been charged for Bill Pay without authorization, please post or send me an email to with “Quicken” in the subject.

Here’s my final attempt to illicit some comments from Metavante, my fax to their legal department:

Friday, July 01, 2005

27,000 Quicken bill pay accounts activated in error during move from Checkfree to Metavante?

I have not yet confirmed Metavante employee Mathias Johnson’s allegations, here is an excerpt from his e-mail:

“In a nutshell: over 27,000 consumer accounts were activated in error during the migration from CheckFree to Metavante. This is a single KNOWN issue among who knows how many other known issues that caused the unintended activation of tens of thousands of accounts.

We have been billing these people $9.95 or $12.95 each month since September 2004.

A coworker & I in the Research Department have worked a special project to process refunds for these monthly fees.

In October, I suggested ways by which we could determine which customers had accounts that were unintentionally activated, but I was told that we wouldn’t move on that kind of initiative due to revenue reasons (that is, we got $9.95 a month from thousands of people and provided no services in return).

I have kicked this up the chain of command many times since then & caused a stink about what I consider an immoral issue. My coworker & I have recently been taken off of the project; it has been assigned to someone else.

Intuit has flat-out refused to return any of these monies (that is, they will not reimburse Metavante for providing refunds when a consumer calls to complain about being billed despite never signing up for the service), and today a policy was made known to us: Metavante has decided that these customers have been billed long enough to constitute tacit consent. If someone calls to request the return of their monthly fees, we will not provide more than 3 months of fees as company policy.”

If you find these charges on your statements and even if you already got your credit, please post here.

If Mathias’ allegations can be documented by consumers, a class action on behalf of all the consumers ought to be filed and the U.S. AG or *one* state AG should prosecute Metavante and Intuit for CRIMINAL fraud. 

Willfully charging credit cards without authorization is no different than what the credit card traders are doing after stealing the numbers and data.  If this is proven, the people in charge ought to spend time at the Grey Bar Hotel.

I don’t think consumers should complain with 50 different state AGs (wasting resources on redundant investigations) or that the FTC should settle for a partial refund with no admission of any wrong doing - as they usually do.

How are these accounts billed, are Metavante, Quicken or Intuit identified on the statements?

20,000 accounts at $10 each gets you $200,000/month for doing nothing.

I had never even heard of Metavante before, did a little research at http://www.metavante.com and searched for Quicken, from the Metavante 2004 Annual Review:

“November 16, 2004: Intuit Inc., a leading provider of business and financial management solutions for small and mid-sized businesses, consumers and accounting professionals, migrates the majority of its Quicken® Bill Pay® customers to Metavante’s online management application, Bill Manager V6.”

From Metavante:

Active Statement / Web Connect Support: provides the institution’s Personal Financial Management (PFM) users to download their cleared transactions from Consumer eBanking accounts directly into Microsoft Money or Intuit Quicken via streamlined processes.

Metavante-Zions Deal Shows EBPP Turning into Commodity

American Banker Jan 26—by Steve Bills

With its online bill payment and presentment contract expiring, Zions Bancorp. of Salt Lake City is switching from CheckFree Corp., the market leader, to the runner-up, Metavante Corp.

The selling point, a Zions executive said, was not features - on which providers of electronic billing service have been competing for years - but price. And that signals a big shift.

“Metavante will provide the same exact service that CheckFree was,” said Michael DeVico, Zions’ executive vice president of technology and operations and chief information officer. “From a feature/function standpoint, we expect no significant customer impact.”

The change “was primarily driven by economics,” Mr. DeVico said.

Frank D’Angelo, a senior executive vice president at Metavante and the group executive of its payments solutions group, said Tuesday that the Zions contract was the biggest win it has revealed in bill payment.

Metavante, the technology subsidiary of the Milwaukee banking company Marshall & Ilsley Corp., entered the bill-payment market in 2002 by buying a foundering Spectrum EBP LLC.

Mr. DeVico emphasized that he was not unhappy with CheckFree - “They’ve done a good job for us,” he said - but said price could not be ignored. ...”

URL e-mailed for comments to Investor and Public Relations, Chip Swearngan

Update 7/1/05 PM:  I have NOT received a response to my e-mail. I called to ensure that he received it, according to his VM he was out Friday afternoon.