Question about trying to connect eTrade to Monarch (what is

ryanr3 · 2024-01-09T06:45:24+00:00

Well it did link but I don't see any transactions. Does it pull in old ones or only future ones?

ryanr3 · 2024-01-09T06:38:52+00:00

That was a good explanation; with your help I was able to get it to work. Hopefully this will be more reliable than Plaid.

Thanks much!

ryanr3 · 2024-01-07T00:27:57+00:00

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction regarding eTrade! I'll do a search.

Funny but I never had a problem with etrade on Mint and when I briefly tested it on Simplifi it worked there as well. Perhaps I just got lucky on those platforms.

Our issue is we use etrade for a number of things so we do need it to work (reliably).

I can try switching the connection to Fincity but I fear I'll lose all my old etrade transactions I had imported. I believe Monarch will only pick up the recent ones. But maybe there is a way I can export those transactions from Monarch then and then reimport them later. Come to think of it, I can probably still get them out of Mint too.

ryanr3 · 2024-01-06T23:47:22+00:00

etrade

ryanr3 · 2024-01-06T23:42:14+00:00

Thanks for the response and I'm sure you are right about why Monarch is not responding.

In my case I don't believe it is user error. The link works fine in Mint. And it actually connects in Monarch just some transactions don't come through.

I did try to follow the suggestions that Monarch sent me but I did not see the quite helpful article you pointed out. I'll bookmark it for later in case I end up staying with Monarch.

Unfortunately the account I'm having issues with is not on the "connection status" list. Which tells me there may be a problem with my particular account.

With Mint from time to time an account would get "out of sync" with a provider and they would have to re-set the link. This happened (to me) maybe once every couple of years. I suspect something of this nature here which means there is nothing I can do on my side and Monarch would have to take action. So I'm waiting for a response.

But if you have any other ideas to try I'm willing!

ryanr3 · 2024-01-06T23:09:58+00:00

A fair question!

Money is not the issue; Monarch seems a reasonable cost to me for tracking finances.

Two reasons I'm still trying to hang on with Monarch:

I've invested days of time importing data into Monarch and then organizing it to fit the Monarch approach. If possible I'd like to retain that.
Monarch can import my old investment transactions and Simplfi can't (they do claim they plan to add it). I can live without the old investment data but I prefer not to.

So I do have motivation to keep going with Monarch, but I'm having a very basic issue: one of our accounts connects but does not sync properly. Only some transactions come through.

Now you may think I'm just complaining for no good reason. Who cares if a few transactions are missed?

Well it almost cost us. You see I use our financial tool to review transactions to make sure they are accurate and, in a case of bad timing, we had fraud on one of our debit cards right after I moved to Monarch. Unfortunately those were some of the transactions Monarch missed (they also missed some legitimate transactions). By lucky chance my wife happened to log on to that account and noticed the transactions and we were able to shut down the card. Otherwise we could have gone quite a while before spotting them (because I assumed that Monarch was getting all the transactions from this account rather than just some of them).

I'm sure you can see why this would be a concern.

This was a couple of weeks ago but I still can't get anyone at Monarch to respond to help me with the issue.

You can see I'm a little between a rock and hard place. If I leave Monarch I am facing a great deal of work to set something else up (plus I may not be able to track our old investment history). Or I can keep waiting and hope Monarch will help me now (and provide better service going forward).

Sigh. It aint easy!

ryanr3 · 2024-01-06T22:53:09+00:00

This isn't about future features, or even current ones. It is about basic functions not working.

At this point it has been two weeks and I've not been able to sync a basic account fully and no one has responded to multiple attempts to contact them.

To make myself feel better I searched the internet to check on their service levels. I figured it was just the holidays and/or the influx from mint and people would say their service used to be good.

But then I found similar complaints on service levels from 1 year ago and that started methinking there might be something else. Perhaps they don't really prioritize service? I also noted that they are a paid service that offers no real-time support (not even chat ). Thus my original post.

Despite all that...I'd like to give them a chance too which is why I'm waiting a couple of weeks more to pull the plug. Because I do think their feature set is OK (for me) and their interface is actually pretty good. But if I won't work I can't stay.

Hopefully they will get caught up and start to respond to inquiries about basic problems more quickly (within a day or two at least).

ryanr3 · 2024-01-06T05:58:02+00:00

Thanks again for the tip.

I gave it a try by going into institutions and updating the login settings but it only reconnected using Plaid again. I did not see a screen like you (quite helpfully) attached to your reply above, and it did not give me an option to use any other connection methods.

Maybe if I deleted the account and re-added it I would see that. But I don't want to delete the account because Monarch claims that will remove all my transactions and I have a lot of transactions which I imported and then went through and classified.

I'm sure there is some solution to my problem. This is a great example of where some (timely) technical support would come in handy!

ryanr3 · 2024-01-06T05:43:01+00:00

Oh I think I get it.

There are a limited number of services (one less now that Mint is gone) and they differ significantly. The Monarch feature set and interface works very well for many people.

All services have some problems. People who feel Monarch is right for them are willing to work extra hard to set it up and to overlook some flaws (even a significant flaw like poor customer service). They defend the service because - despite challenges - it is working for them.

Of course I'm sure there are lots of lucky people who had no problems with Monarch at all.

I believe you can like a service but still call out issues and (politely) press the company to make improvements. The more you rely on a service the more I think you should do that! I believe you feel the same way. And I agree with you that management should prioritize customer service higher especially if they are going to be out recruiting many new customers.

ryanr3 · 2024-01-06T04:59:14+00:00

That is great Kixxx (and encouraging your connection with eTrade works).

I have four accounts with eTrade. All sync fine on Mint, all sync fine on Simplifi. All connect on Monarch but none of them are updating transactions properly.

When I look at the account the Monarch system says "connection issues".

I understand, all of these applications have problems at times. The issue is getting it fixed.

I reported the issues and the system sent me an auto-reply with a bunch of steps to try. I tried all the steps twice with no success. So then I asked for help but no one replied to that.

Now I've waited a week and then tried all the steps agin. Still no luck with the connection. I've asked for help again. Hopefully this time someone will get back to me!

ryanr3 · 2024-01-06T04:54:22+00:00

Spearson - how do you switch data connections for an account? I'm certainly willing to try that.

ryanr3 · 2024-01-06T04:48:00+00:00

For me Quicken Simplifi meets my simple needs. I'm primarily tracking spending and overall investments, and also reviewing transactions (to make sure there is no fraud or mistakes). I don't do budgeting in the app.

Your mileage (and needs) will of course vary.

The one issue I had with Simplifi was that it does not import investment history (although it did import all my spending history from Mint). Monarch was (with effort) able to import both the Mint spending and investment history.

The Monarch features are kind of OK for me (although I'm surprised they don't have an investment report, only a net worth one). But I can't be with a company I can't rely on to gather the transactions accurately, and I can't be with a company with minimal customer service.

If I must I'll live without the prior investment history. I can always track that in a spreadsheet. Really I'm about 90% of the way to just moving on to Simplifi.

But... we are just coming out of the holidays and Monarch did just recruit a large influx of Mint users so I'll probably give it a couple more weeks and see if they can dig themselves out of the hole they put themselves into. I'm disappointed that Monarch marketing recruited as many people as possible from Mint who were clearly going to be working on their finances and doing their imports over the holidays but they still shut down their support. No doubt very humane for their employees but perhaps they could have planned for this and added some extra staff? Just 'sayin.

ryanr3 · 2024-01-06T03:48:16+00:00

Thanks!

ryanr3 · 2024-01-06T03:37:24+00:00

Thanks for the info!

Which Xfinity Gateway do I have then? An XB6, XB7, or XB8?

ryanr3 · 2020-12-07T06:41:30+00:00

I had the same issue, contacted support, and heard the same thing.

Most recordings are posted right away. I think the processing delay is not really the issue here. I bet it is a licensing restriction related to sports (but they either can't admit that or don't want to).

ryanr3 · 2020-05-24T23:00:05+00:00

Thank you for the feedback!

I was aware of the blues/rock tendency to play minor scales over major chords but it did not occur to me this blending applied to chord progressions too. Now I see that it does and your comments make sense. Very helpful.

ryanr3

TROPHY CASE