Review Insights · Google Play
PocketGuard・Budget Planner App
PocketGuard, Inc. · 2,797 ratings · ★ 4.3
4.3
★★★★★
2,797 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 45 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"bank"
12 negative reviews mention this · 27% of all complaints
★★★★★ "I don't know who this company is, you took 80 dollars from my bank account, I never signed up for your service, I want my money back" - Patrick Coatney
2
"account"
12 negative reviews mention this · 27% of all complaints
★★★★★ "I don't know who this company is, you took 80 dollars from my bank account, I never signed up for your service, I want my money back" - Patrick Coatney
3
"subscription"
9 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "I used the app sometime last year when it was free. never gave my banking info or linked my bank at all. Randomly I got a $79.49 charge from this app. I have no idea how. I never signed up for a subscription, never even opened the app this …" - Jenna Thomasson
4
"money"
8 negative reviews mention this · 18% of all complaints
★★★★★ "I don't know who this company is, you took 80 dollars from my bank account, I never signed up for your service, I want my money back" - Patrick Coatney
5
"service"
7 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "I don't know who this company is, you took 80 dollars from my bank account, I never signed up for your service, I want my money back" - Patrick Coatney
6
"bank account"
6 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "I don't know who this company is, you took 80 dollars from my bank account, I never signed up for your service, I want my money back" - Patrick Coatney
7
"doesn"
6 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Not worth it. The app doesn't stay connected or reconnect to banking services very well at all. It talks about making things easy but barely walks you through how to use the app. Every time I wanted to go see what buckets my money was comin…" - Adam Tjeerdsma
8
"paid"
6 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "It might be a good app but the free version doesn't allow basic things enough for me to decide if I want to invest in the paid version. For example, it keeps deleting our linked bank accounts (happening on my husbands phone and account too)…" - M C
9
"work"
5 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "It might be a good app but the free version doesn't allow basic things enough for me to decide if I want to invest in the paid version. For example, it keeps deleting our linked bank accounts (happening on my husbands phone and account too)…" - M C
10
"trying"
5 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "trying to create an account was muckymuck. It said couples could share one login but then it gives alerts that there is suspicious activity. and asked us to drop a line which meant email ....no thanks. This is already too cumbersome and if …" - h d
11
"email"
5 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "trying to create an account was muckymuck. It said couples could share one login but then it gives alerts that there is suspicious activity. and asked us to drop a line which meant email ....no thanks. This is already too cumbersome and if …" - h d
12
"multiple"
5 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "it's a budgeting app that sees all other currencies as dollars. Splitwise handles currency quite well, give it a look. replying to the dev reply: perhaps tying location to currency in a world where one can own multiple currencies and change…" - Viktor Y
📋 All 45 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
PocketGuard, who designed this UX? 😭 This app is literally for tracking expenses. Its MAIN function is quickly adding income or expenses. That’s it. The app basically needs 3 core buttons. But instead of having a simple “+” button on the main screen, they hid “Add transaction” inside a hamburger menu ☠️ So when you need to quickly log an expense, you have to: Find the tiny menu button Open the dropdown Tap “Add transaction” Seriously? Why is the MOST IMPORTANT action in the entire app hidden?!
I don't know who this company is, you took 80 dollars from my bank account, I never signed up for your service, I want my money back
really disappointing. I tried to like this app. used it for months and It never got any better. inconsistent tracking spending and income. constantly freezes. not user friendly and support is not helpful. I wouldn't use it if it was free. it's a bummer because the concept is great, but ultimately no better than my normal banking apps.
Have to create an account to use? Nope.
once you are in you cannot get out. you made a deal with the devil. I cannot find any way to delete the connection to my bank account...Scary!
I used the app sometime last year when it was free. never gave my banking info or linked my bank at all. Randomly I got a $79.49 charge from this app. I have no idea how. I never signed up for a subscription, never even opened the app this year, but somehow it had me signed up and charged my Google wallet. Will definitely be disputing with my bank because this is the backhanded, low lofe thing ever. Thanks for charging me when I didn't even use the app
Don't use, should though
doesnt really work most of the time
trying to create an account was muckymuck. It said couples could share one login but then it gives alerts that there is suspicious activity. and asked us to drop a line which meant email ....no thanks. This is already too cumbersome and if this represents how the product will behave? No thanks.
I want to cancel and I am unable to. none of the steps that were given to me to cancel help. I did exactly what I was told to do and I got nothing. now I am told that I need to contact Google. I didn't create the app therefore I shouldn't have to contact them. just cancel me already. it's that simple privacy be darned I want out.
there is no period range for reporting the insights only give you one month at a time. I had to export to excel and play around with it to figure out how much I went over budget last year. do you know how ridiculous that is when you paid almost 100 for an app subscription. huge buyers remorse literally wouldve kept my money if I knew id spend hours doing it manually in excel anyways unbelievable definitely switching to monarch
Charged $74.99 after trial cancellation. I cancelled the trial a few days before it ended, and was still charged the full $74.99 amount a few days later. I know for certain I cancelled it because I took a screenshot and it says "Your subscription has been cancelled". What a pain to have to figure out the Google refund policy and put in a request.
Tried it. Did not synch with my main bank accounts. Other budget apps have had the same problem. A ticket was placed and have not had any positive results after a month
Useless. Can't even get it to log into my bank.
subscribe before you try bs.
Everything behind a pay wall
The time wasted trying to sync transactions to this app by far exceeds downloading individual CSVs from all my accounts and doing everything manually in a spreadsheet.
Not worth the money to save money!! Really hard to cancel subscription!!
Sign up process is broken. When you go to create a new account it asks for a phone number then enter the code. When I enter the code it says my email is wrong. Won't accept any code even after multiple attempts to resend the code
piss off, not paying for a glorified excel sheet.
response to pocketguard: i did report it to your team. multiple times. and basically told the equivalent of "oh well" they were so against solving the problem that when I said to please solved the problem or give me my money back they just refunded me. so i uninstall it and haven't looked back. the debt Payoff Planner doesn't work. i kept choosing avalanche and it would keep prioritizing the lowest interest card. opposite of avalanche.
it keeps crashing and I played for premium
I hate this app
The app can't connect to my bank account, which makes a budgeting app useless.
They got greedy and turned a great free app into a subscription-based service. Disappointing and unfortunate. I will be looking for another app.
Installed it, tried the trial. Turns out integration doesn't work for my particular bank. Whatever. Uninstalled the app, but they keep spamming me with email multiple times a day. When I went to unsubscribe, there was no "unsubscribe all" button. I had to click 20 different switches to get them to stop bothering me. Incredibly annoying of the marketing department.
zero customer service. I am having login problems and my account has never been registered. I reached out for help 5 days ago (2 business days, 3 weekend days). still haven't had a response. not even an automated one informing me when responses are given. I would have liked to try the app but not now. terrible customer service. received your response indicating the team replied, but there is nothing in my spam folder either, I checked multiple times. please send me an email directly.
worked great till a week into the paid subscription, no longer functions with my cibc account. was a nice looking app specially after spending the time to set everything up. sucks to waste 100$ on something I cant use.
paid subscription service.
Overly pushy about its subscription service and constantly pushes irrelevant offers for other things.
searched for all of them, and not a single canadian bank appeared in the add a bank account list.
Needed an expense tracker. Connected my bank account and it didn't include my mortgage payment (largest expense) in the analytics tool. no confidence whatsoever in this product for my use case
Not worth it. The app doesn't stay connected or reconnect to banking services very well at all. It talks about making things easy but barely walks you through how to use the app. Every time I wanted to go see what buckets my money was coming out of, I had to hunt for that feature, which was the primary reason I downloaded the app. It promotes very simple and easy to understand features, but just leaves you confused and not wanting to open the app because it will be more trouble than it's worth.
It might be a good app but the free version doesn't allow basic things enough for me to decide if I want to invest in the paid version. For example, it keeps deleting our linked bank accounts (happening on my husbands phone and account too) every month. Customer service rep said that's because it's not paid but that seems like an odd thing to allow to link but then delete it, so I can't trust it will work properly if paid.
i am a new user and after linking my bank account many transactions that are purchases are showing as +$xx.xx instead of -$xx.xx, yet e-transfers out of my account are shown as -$xx.xx, purchases and transfers out are both money leaving my account, its confusing and i assume will mess with overall data. in comparison to my credit card linked it shows how you would expect negative for purchases and positive for payments and refunds.
The way this app "helps" you keep track of how much money you have each month is stupid. It works fine for the first month but it does not roll over how much money you currently have into the next month so it assumes you have nothing at the beginning of each month.
an extra star for basic mode which has been an incredible value. after that, no accessibility plan, no accessibility contact. company does not even answer their own email. despite the apps potential, there are showstopper accessibility errors. I won't purchase until the accessibility errors are fixed, and I can't reach anybody at the company. so, I'm unfortunately not a customer.
it's a budgeting app that sees all other currencies as dollars. Splitwise handles currency quite well, give it a look. replying to the dev reply: perhaps tying location to currency in a world where one can own multiple currencies and change locations is not the approach here. edit: the constant bank sync issues make this app almost unusable. I definitely regret paying for lifetime.
Trying to unsubscribe from all the marketing emails, but the 'unsubscribe' link takes you to the app to sign in. I don't know my login info, and you don't have a 2FA login. Please change, I never asked for all the marketing emails, if you say we can unsubscribe at any time, we shouldn't need to log in, that is just dishonest.
Too many Canadian accounts unable to sync. App looks useful otherwise, hope I can try again when support for Canada improves.
I don't think I'm a dump person, but this seems to be quite a confusing app... I spent a couple days trying to make sense of it, but doesn't seem to be useful for me... Maybe because I haven't paid for the extra features, meh.
Due to the developer's response, I'll clarify. My device ID is used for marketing. If you only have functional cookies enabled you will not be able to use it on a desktop browser. You shouldn't need to enable tracking for optional cookies just to log especially when you're paying for it already. So I'll give you an extra star for some of it, but it is against gdpr rules to do that via browser. It's still terrible for a paid service to be partially available depending on the device.
How come this thing doesn't refresh on demand and update data in real time? This is the prime reason why I got the lifetime subscription.
Your app glitching to login bru.. got that shi fix immediately
I really wanted to like this. an envelope system that tracks transactions without me having to manually enter them all? yes please! unfortunately that's not what this is. trying to set up a budget was agonizing. tried to set aside money for bills in an envelope and it imagined an extra $500 that wasn't actually there. I'd love to be wrong but I think fighting this system is more work than just doing the math yourself.
Sentiment summary
83%
Positive (4-5★)
5%
Neutral (3★)
12%
Negative (1-2★)