“I ordered a subscription to Quicken Classic Deluxe. Their website claims a 30 day Risk Free policy where you can get your money back. I decided that the product wasn’t for me and went to cancel the subscription. They make this EXTREMELY hard and confusing: 1. There is no obvious way to cancel the subscription in the account. There is a button to cancel the AutoRenewal, which weirdly then appears to cancel the Subscription, but maybe not? I have no idea what state my account is in after pressing that button. 2. Cancelling the subscription does not automatically trigger a refund. Customers are not told this. I had to do a search and finally stumbled upon the instructions on this page https://www.quicken.com/support/Terms-and-Conditions-For-Exchanging-Canceling-or-Refunding-Quicken-Products#section-1 2a. The link under their “Subscription Cancellation” header goes to a web page that asks customers to call customer service to “get help deciding whether Quicken is right for you”. 3. To get the refund, customers have to fill out a form. The form asks for a lot of information. Among that inforrmation is a copy of the invoice and an order number. Quicken doesn’t send out traditional invoices with the purchase price and an order number. They only send a purchase confirmation. If you don’t have the order number you can’t submit the form. 4. I asked their help chatbot where to find my order number. It claimed that it is in the invoice they sent (it is not). It said if the number isn’t in the invoice I would have to call their customer support. It is night here and their customer support is closed. I fully expect that when I call them tomorrow they will attempt to pressure me into keeping the subscription. Harm: Potentially I am out 60 dollars in subscription fees; also two hours of my time wasted chasing down how to cancel the subscription and get my money back. Potentially more hours wasted tomorrow trying to deal with customer support.”
Quicken was reported to the Deceptive Design Tip Line over the difficulty of cancelling a subscription and obtaining a refund. According to the report, the reporter took out a subscription to Quicken Classic Deluxe under a stated 30-day risk-free policy but found the cancellation and refund process extremely hard and confusing:
- There is no obvious way to cancel the subscription within the account; there is only a button to cancel auto-renewal, which appears to cancel the subscription but leaves the account in an unclear state.
- Cancelling does not automatically trigger a refund, and customers are not told this; the refund instructions are buried on a separate terms-and-conditions page.
- The cancellation link directs customers to call customer service to “get help deciding whether Quicken is right for you”.
- To obtain a refund, customers must complete a form requiring an invoice copy and an order number, yet the reporter says Quicken only sends a purchase confirmation rather than a traditional invoice with an order number, making the form impossible to submit.
According to the report, the help chatbot insisted the order number was in the invoice (it was not) and otherwise directed the reporter to phone support, which was closed. The reporter anticipated being pressured to keep the subscription when calling, and described the harm as roughly 60 dollars potentially lost plus hours of wasted time.