I’m glad I’m not the only one who hates Intuit, Quicken, and Quickbooks
A few months ago, I posted a rant here about my hate for everything Quickbooks and Intuit. The problem is, however, that a lot of people use it (so that means I have to use it in many of my investigations) and there aren’t many good alternatives.
Intuit immediately got their PR people on my situation, and in no time flat I had my refund and a free piece of Quickbooks software. It didn’t make me like them any better, however. I knew it was simply an attempt to appease a loudmouthed blogger. (Yes, me.)
Now that Intuit has purchased mint.com, consumers are certain that the currently free (and apparently pretty good) personal finance software will become crappy and not free.
Here are some great comments posted on Consumerist about Intuit’s acquisition of Mint.com:
PhilFR: “Ugh. This is a sad day. Mint has made my personal finances infinitely more organized. The only question is which will happen first: will Quicken screw up the product, or start charging for it?”
Blueoysterjoe: “What, Intuit will buy Mint and suddenly have great ideas about how to run a personal finance website? No. Intuit will apply its crappy ideas to Mint and turn Mint into crap.”
calchip: “Long ago and far away, Intuit made a great little product called Quicken that sold for 10 bucks. Then they came out with Quickbooks, which in its original incarnation, sold for maybe 100 bucks and did everything.
More recently, Intuit has turned into a complete and total piece of sh*t company that gives you the privilege of paying $250 for a crappy, bloated, crippled piece of software that nags you every single time you use it to buy more of their overpriced crap, refuses to support a product that’s more than 2 years old, and basically makes a product that is almost unusuable unless you’re willing to pay hundreds of dollars a year for crap that you either don’t need or should have been (and was at one time) included in the basic product.
I wish the management of this company would shrivel up and die and be replaced by people that actually believe in *earning* a customer’s business rather than shoving services fees down their throats.
This can only be a bad, bad sign for mint.com. I wonder how long till they ruin it?”
Of course, management keeps saying nothing will change with mint.com. I doubt anyone believes them.
I deleted my account when I found out about the merger. I don’t really like that Mint was able to sell all of my personal info to the highest bidder. Even if they don’t charge for it I’m not interested in being one of their customers.
I share your dislike for all things Intuit. I cannot imagine the pain of doing forensic accounting in a QuickBooks environment.
It’s really hard to get clients to see that they need to invest in set up and training OR they will end up investing in clean up.
I sent off an quick email when I found out that PayCycle sold out to Intuit. I shared my concerns about Intuit’s horrible customer service and their bent toward poaching clients. I am moving my clients away from PayCycle as soon as I can get my arms around our new payroll software.
Keep calling ‘em out!!!!
Deal with Intuit, watch your wallet.
Two years ago, I thought I’d try these guys again after problems back in the 90’s. (Yeah, I’m an OLD computer guy.)
I had previously been using Wachovia (Wells Fargo) bill pay. Zero problems, but the idea of integrating with a home budgeting program made me willing.
Well, long story short, Quicken BillPay hosed up 3 payments (out of 7), resulting in late fees etc. Problem was the way the *new* Quicken bill pay was formatting the checks such that my credit union would not honor the checks. Quicken finally admitted the error, but refused my request to cover the late fees. So I cancelled the account. And, stopped using QuickBooks. Forever.
Two years later, I discover they are STILL charging my credit card $8.95 a month! Wow, adding insult to injury! Of course, even though there has been ZERO activity for 2-years, they refuse to rebate their dishonest charges. But, they did offer me 3-months “free service” if I ignore their total lack of business ethics! Nice touch boys.
A little research found this gem on a legal site: “In 2004, Intuit Inc., the makers of the popular financial planning software Quicken, began migrating its Quicken Bill Pay customers from a service run by CheckFree to a new online bill management application made by Metavante. During the conversion process, approximately 27,000 former Bill Pay customers were re-activated without their knowledge or approval and subsequently charged between $9.95 and $12.95 per month.”
Now you know who you are REALLY dealing with!
I am really glad I dumped Intuit, Sage, MS and all the rest a few years ago and totally stopped using their products.