It even happens to the best of us…late fees! To balance our finances, many of us at Star Reviews have looked to online bill paying services. We just had to evaluate Quicken, a leader in accounting software, as they’ve recently expanded their services to include online bill pay. We really liked how intuitive and resource-driven their website interface was, but read on to see how they stacked up against their competition.
What’s New with Quicken Online Bill Pay?
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Free 1 month trial
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Works with all versions of Quicken, even the Basic edition
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Multimedia demo showing how Quicken online bill paying works
Star Reviews Favorite Quicken Feature:
Schedule your payments for up to a year in advance. This is a definite plus for those with busy lives, as the payments are automatically scheduled and require no extra effort.
Quicken Online Bill Paying Features:
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Pay your bills from up to 10 different accounts
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Make automatic payments for fixed and variable bills
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Transactions automatically entered into Quicken software to make balancing your books and tracking your outgoing cash a snap
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Guarantee of up to $50 to cover late payments made through their service and occurring through no fault of your own
About Quicken's Online Bill Pay:
Quicken is one of the most respected and well-known names in personal accounting software. Millions of users have the program installed on their desktops and use it to keep all of their finances organized. With the online bill pay service, you can add another way to make Quicken truly useful for you. Quicken is developed by Intuit, the company behind QuickBooks.
Navigating the Quicken Online Bill Pay Site:
Finding information about Quicken's online bill pay service is pretty easy. Just check under the “Products & Services” tab and you'll find the link near the end. From the next page, you can review a list of the service's features, find instructions on how to set up the service on your system, and even watch a demo of the service. Everything is easy to access, and you can enroll or sign-in with a quick click on the right side of the page.
Using Quicken Online Bill Pay:
Using Quicken for online bill payments is fairly easy. If you already have Quicken installed, you can use the software to set up your bill paying account by just selecting the feature from your software’s options. When you set up your account, you’ll have to provide your checking account information but once that information is entered you’ll only have to enter it for new accounts in the future. The same is true for setting up bills to pay. Once you enter all the details, you won’t have to do it again because the software saves it for you. Another great feature is that you can either pay your bills through the software or the Quicken site which means you can keep track of your bills anywhere in the world even when your primary computer isn’t with you.
Quicken Pricing:
- $9.95 per month
- Includes 20 payments
- $2.49 for each additional 5 payments
Customer Support:
Quicken offers several options for customer support. They do have plenty of FAQ’s you can browse through to find answers to most questions, but it can be a bit difficult to navigate through all of their support options just to locate ones pertaining to online bill pay.
Quicken also provided live chat, email, and phone support. Our live chat experience was pleasant, and we were connected with a friendly representative in seconds, who answered our question and even sent an email follow-up. By email, we received a quick automated response promising an answer within 24 hours, which was followed by a clear response written by a real live human (there was a minor typo in the response). Plus, they sent us a follow-up email five days later to make sure our previous issue had been resolved.
One downside to the customer support experience was their phone support. When we called their support line, it was geared toward placing orders and not general customer support inquiries. Plus, if you ask certain types of questions – mostly technical – you’ll be charged $24.95. That’s a bit pricey for customer support.
Upside:
Good customer service by chat and email. Reasonable monthly rates. Reliable name. Guaranteed on-time and accurate payments.
Downside:
Telephone support not customer-attuned. Technical telephone support questions cost you.
Summary:
Based on Star Reviews’ experience, Quicken’s online bill paying service provides good customer support via email and live chat, including following up to make sure our question was answered. If it wasn't for the lack of telephone support and the hefty fee charged for some types of phone support, Quicken would have done even better in our rankings.
Quicken’s service is easy to use, even for beginners, and efficiently allows users to complete all of their bill paying as long as they have Internet access. At $9.95 per month for 20 payments, the price is fairly reasonable for the convenience and savings, especially when you consider mailing those 20 payments at current postage rates would cost $8.20. Despite a few problems, if you’re looking for online bill paying services, Quicken’s service is at the head of the pack.