No longer able to download from Capital One

[501st-alpha1]

This isn't the fault of ofxclient, but I'm posting here for reference, because I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere online.

Recently OFX downloads stopped working for my Capital One 360 and Capital One Spark Business accounts. The last time I know for sure it worked is October 15th, though it possibly worked as late as November 10th. I now get this error:

OSError: [Errno 113] No route to host

I tried on two different ISPs with the same result, and I also tried running ofxclient over Tor, but got the same error.

This is a (sanitized) version of my ofxclient.ini:

[b811...]
account_type = SAVINGS
description = Assets:Savings
institution.broker_id = 
institution.client_args.app_id = QWIN
institution.client_args.app_version = 2500
institution.client_args.id = c0b3...
institution.client_args.ofx_version = 102
institution.description = Capital One 360
institution.id = 031176110
institution.local_id = 2f20...
institution.org = ING DIRECT
institution.password = [snip]
institution.url = https://ofx.capitalone360.com/OFX/ofx.html
institution.username = [snip]
local_id = b811...
number = [snip]
routing_number = 031176110

The domain ofx.capitalone360.com apparently points to ofx-prod.aws-rb.capitaloneglsbex.com, which currently resolves to an IP of 199.15.190.151. Both of the ISPs that I have tried can't seem to figure out how to get packets to that domain, so I suspect it isn't being used anymore and someone forgot to update the DNS.

I also see that the OFX Home page for Capital One 360 shows the last sucessful validation was November 24th, which lines up with the dates I mentioned.

I called customer service at Capital One, and while they were able to help me find the new way to get to the page to create the access code used for the password above (again for reference: go to the account details page, click on Account Services & Settings at top right, at the top of the middle column, under Settings & Preferences, click Privacy, then finally click the Access Code tab), but they weren't able to shed any light on that domain name. They claimed there haven't been any changes to this service, FWIW. The call ended with them telling me to contact the app provider, which obviously isn't a solution because it isn't the app that has changed, but something the app connects to.

So AFAICT, there are two options:

1. Capital One is correct, and there have been no changes to the Financial Management Tools / OFX Direct Connect service. If that is the case, then the only cause I could see would be a routing error between here and Capital One. Aside from the fact that all other Capital One services I have used work fine, all my testing indicates it isn't a local issue. I could maybe blame caching, but it's been happening for long enough now that this seems unlikely.

2. Capital One is incorrect, and there was some change to the service, intentional or not.
   A. Possible intentional changes:

   • The service was shut down. (Unlikely due to assertion that nothing has changed, and availability of Access Code page.)
   • The service was moved to a new domain. (Feasible that this happened and wasn't documented well, and/or only high-profile clients were given details or something.)

   B. Possible unintentional changes:

   • DNS misconfiguration.
   • The server died and I'm the first one to notice. 😂
   • Something else?

I lean towards the most likely option being that the service was moved to a new domain and there was internal miscommunication about this fact.

Regardless, I'm posting this here for the reference of myself and others. If you have any other information or can disprove any of these scenarios, feel free to comment. In particular, please mention whether or not your ISP can route to that domain. It it possible that domain has ICMP disabled, so I'm particularly interested in whether ofxclient can connect, not just whether a ping or traceroute fails.

For completeness: you can still get the transactions, but you have to download them by hand. From the account page, click Account Services & Settings, then Download Transactions under Account Management in the left column. Then you can select the time frame and the file format to download. Despite accessing them through account page, they will be combined for all accounts, as indicated on the download page.