Slashdot Mirror
Intuit Sued Over Product Activation
An anonymous reader writes "PCWorld is reporting: [Scott] Leviant's firm of Stanbury & Fishelman has filed a class-action lawsuit against Intuit in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of all U.S. purchasers of TurboTax software for the 2002 tax year. The suit alleges that Intuit engaged in unfair and deceptive business practices by failing to fully disclose the mechanisms and consequences of its product-activation technology before consumers pay for the software."
Battling the evil forces of Microsoft Money? Ahh, the good old days when things were black and white.
It's not that product activation is bad all of the time, it's just that the implementation really sucks on occasion.
;-)
I have no problem with paying for good, reliable, quality software for my home machine, but if you use tricks or traps to sucker people into paying more than they should, that's just not right.
SOFTWARE MAKERS: Don't cry foul about piracy and then turn around and be just as dishonest with consumers.
Well, I guess this is a reason to go back to pirating my games
Background: 28/M/Bi-Sexual; Owner of a Linux company; MBA Harvard 2003; B.S. Comp Sci MIT 2000
Okay, start taking bets to see if Stanbury and Fishelman will sue Microsoft for their similarly sinister product activation systems.. bet they don't!
I think product registration is a great idea, as it can help you get a better service and allows the company to get info on its users.. but forcing you to activate a product is just a Big Brother attitude.
How would you like it if you had to 'activate' your car every time you moved or made an upgrade to it? Sure, it might help the insurance companies a whole lot, but it's just not right. Ditto for software.
mogorific carpentry experiments
In protest, I will evade my taxes this year.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
People can argue about the merits of this or that with product activation but the thing that really sucks here is the motivations and the way the law works. This is in effect a company touting for business saying "hey look we think a bunch of people could get cash here" its not that they have any real evidence of actual damage that was caused beyond people being a bit miffed.
What sort of legal system allows Lawyers to start procedings before they have plantiffs ? No other industry works like this, and in fact almost no other countries legal system works like this. This is a sickening example of how law suits can be created just because a lawyer needs a new Ferrari, NOT because there is real evidence of damage.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
It's true. I should know, it happened to me.
I thought it was something that _I_ personally did wrong until I started searching Google trying to find out what I did wrong before installing the software. Did I mess up permissions some where? Did I forget to "su root" before running the scripts? Where was the error?
Well, then I found a blog that said "Likely the biggest problem users have expressed, is the level at which the TurboTax licensing agreement is managed and protected with the SafeCast/C-Dilla technology. People believe C-Dilla infiltrates their system in a very insidious manner, and uses memory and resources even when TurboTax is not loaded. And some believe it has caused them serious compatibility problems with non-related CD writing operations. (PC Magazine and ExtremeTech will be conducting some tests next week to see if we can duplicate some of these problems).
Intuit and Macrovision have provided only cursory information regarding C-Dilla operations. Understandably, Intuit does not want to expose significant details. But if the scheme is mathematically and technically sound, there really is no reason why ALL the details should not be known, as it would likely not be computationally feasible to crack in a reasonable timeframe, even if one is armed with full knowledge of how it works. Unless Intuit and Macrovision provide this level of information, many people will still not trust you."
Background: 28/M/Bi-Sexual; Owner of a Linux company; MBA Harvard 2003; B.S. Comp Sci MIT 2000
Or is this just a baseless rumour? I haven't found any concrete proof supporting this claim.
Partition, I doubt it. But if you're using grub and it has a stage 1.5 loader stored right after the MBR, I could see how it might get corrupted by C-Dilla...
The really annoying part about this stuff is that kids who can file with their parents taxes according to the software, but don't have access to the same computer, can't share the software within the family anymore. I suppose this is what the software company is going for. It must be nice to have a monoply.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
We're supposed to PAY for that software? CRAP.
I'll do anything to get back at those pricks for writing to my boot sector...including the enrichment of lawyers.
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
is that we shouldn't need to buy a complex software package to figure out how much money the government is going to take out of our hides every year. Pass the Flat Tax and put Intuit and a helluva lot of accountants, lawyers, and lobbyists out of work.
Though that still leaves Microsoft's product activation. Oh, right, I'm running Linux. Never mind.
The fundamental point here is not destroyed vs corrupted, it's bootloader vs partition.
The partition table won't be mangled and your partitions themselves will be fine, but grub, your bootloader, may be stepped on and need to be re-installed if you want to try to boot the system.
-Matt
Yes, There are several. I use a product called TaxAct. They are located Here
I remember the old days...
.... ahh the old days...
When if a product was well written and did its job, it would sell...
You could put a whole application on a 3.5" disk.
Printed manuals!
When you didn't need copy protection and activation screens. Piracy was more-or-less a marketing tactic more than something that cut into sales (and IMO it still is, but the software publishers don't want the public to know this)
Software companys generated revenue through customer loyalty (as opposed to customer extortion)
One software product had the audacity to recognize that other competing/complimentary products from other publishers did exist, and openly supported import/export functions
When most commercial software wasn't written in Pakastani or Indian programmer-warehouses.
Tech support telephone numbers weren't systemmatically hidden in a maze of FAQs, if at all, and they were 800 numbers.
You could install a software program without worrying if doing so would completely screw up your computer, other programs, or wipe out all your data.
When a "newer version" actually meant more features and functionality.
When the first version of a software package wasn't labelled "6.0"
When software was designed to work with the hardware and RAM you had installed in your machine, and didn't require you to upgrade to next generation crap in order to operate acceptably.
If your Linux machine has an x86 (Intel, AMD, VIA, etc) processor, Kiplinger TaxCut should work in Wine.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Why in the world would you need tax software in Canada? Should be pretty simple up there... just hand over every dollar you make to the govt. God bless socialism! :)
Jeff
Nahhh Its more like the greedy intuit gets punished for not being honest, by even more greedy lawyers.
I have to say this is one of the few times I have heard what could be called good news about the legal system. If you doubt this is so, just imagine how people who have unusual partition tables feel about C-dilla.
Crash
OK, so suppose Intuit gets slapped down. Still doesn't stop other weasels from writing in the boot track. Does this tool exist:
:-)
1. before install, make a backup of the boot track and checksum it.
2. after install, checksum the boot track, and display diffs, if any.
3. optional restore of the boot track.
This allows us to get our old boot tracks back, and *still* get the fun of starting a righteous flame-war on SlashDot.
Sorry if the answer to this is "yes, you clueless fool, go use tool __". But at least I'll get educated
TurboTax has the Windows(tm) logo flag. So, I take it they pass the "Designed for Windows" logo criteria.
How in heaven's name could anything that writes the boot track earn the Windows logo? This cranky old software validation manager smells either cluelessness (MSFT) or cheating (Intuit) or some combination of the above.
What do you mean you "don't have a congressman"? Just pick one out! We got 20 million mexicans who can vote, get a drivers license, get free medical care, bring over their entire familes, open bank accounts and now even get social security-all of whom are not "legal" immigrants. No idea how many legal, that is OK as far as I am concerned, but the other 20 million do exist, and what I said is true, they do all that stuff and no one says boo to them--so-- don't let being a canadian get in your way, the US is wide open! Have fun! Pick "your" congress weasel out and let him have it with your opinion!
%^)
Although it was itself planning to use product activation next year, Block is now making anti-product activation the centerpiece of its marketing campaign for the remainder of the tax season
I love it...
~SL
Must you accept that for every copy of software sold that two will be pirated?
Draconian copy proiection does nothing to solve this - it just punishes legitimate users.
If you don't believe me, try going on Overnet (or eDonkey, Kazaa, etc.) and search for "turbo tax." I just turned up 13 hits for the full program, and about 60 hits for cracks for it.
Software companies learned back in the 80s that extreme copy protection just drives buyers away. That's why games don't come with those ridiculous code wheels and text-lookups-in-the-instruction-manual protection schemes any more.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Bending over backward for Intuit does seem appropariate, given how much they've had their customers bending over forward.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Someone hand Intuit the K-Y Jelly and set up the webcam, its time to watch these guys get the screwing they so rightly deserve. My stepdad uses Turbotax on his aged PC, and when it crashed, and crashed hard, during the middle of the process, he ran into this problem. He tried to get everything straightened out, and when they told him of the fee, this man, who never cusses, used words I shall not repeat here. So he got the joy of spending six hours doing it by hand instead. I'm gonna call him and tell him about this right after this post.
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
I installed TurboTax onto a clean Win2000 guest OS in VMWare. The only boot sector the activation routines got to touch was the one on the virtual drive. Oh, and after I installed TT (but before using it), I made a copy of the Win2000 guest OS file.
So if I wanted, hypothetically, I could copy that VMWare file to any other machine and run it from there.
I don't have any intention of copying or sharing the software. But it pisses me off that a) I had to take these measures to ensure the safety and stability of my real OS installation, and b) for all the possible danger to my machine if I'd installed it the normal way, it was trivial to circumvent.
Good move guys.
Vista:XPSP2::ME:98SE
Maybe they should sue users dumb enough to buy the product after hearing about this activation scheme. In case you haven't been paying attention, the activation prevents you from printing old returns if you change your computer hardware. You're supposed to keep old returns for 7 years and NO ONE keeps the same computer configuration for that long. Therefore, electronic copies of your returns become unprintable (therefore unusable)... not my idea of smart.
...the bastards get ya coming and going, don't they?
Pay for superfluous Windows licenses, or pay more for the privilege of using your pre-existing licenses. What a great choice!
~Philly
That's funny, TaxAct's Download section give me the option between download for Windows and CDRom for Windows. Usually when people ask for a "Linux Alternative", they are not asking what can run under VMWare or Wine. While TaxAct has an online service, I don't think most Slashdot readers would be happy giving some corporation their tax records.
Deuteronomy 13:06-9
The whole time I've had anything to do with Intuit's products, they have been trying to nickel and dime me to death. I guess I'm smarter than the average Quicken user and anyway it pissed me off enough that I wasn't willing to give in.
Let me count the ways.
With the online banking available for Quicken and Quickbooks, there is a monthly fee. Web banking at all three of the banks I've used since the web has been around has been free.
Quicken comes with tax tables that it will use to calculate payroll withholding, but the tax tables expire after a few months. To get updates to the tax tables, you have to pay for a subscription.
But the information in the tax tables is made available for free by the IRS and each state tax agency, and in fact is printed and mailed to business owners each year at taxpayer expense.
Yet there is no facility for manually entering the tax tables or importing tax table files that could reasonably be downloaded for free off the net.
My business has only one employee (myself) so what I do is work out my withholding in a spreadsheet. I've found that doing the calculation this way helps me understand my taxes better when I'm deciding what to pay myself each time. Fortunately QuickBooks allows me to enter the withholding manually - I wouldn't be suprise if they remove that in the future.
They're constantly trying to sell you preprinted checks and invoice forms. You should be able to print nice invoices from QuickBooks on an inkjet printer without using preprinted forms, but there is no facility for designing the invoices. So what I usually do is type up an invoice and email it to my clients; if they want a hardcopy I use a wordprocessor. That works out for me because I don't invoice clients very frequently - it wouldn't work for a retail store.
If you reinstall Quickbooks after reinstalling your OS or move it to a new machine, you have to reactivate the product. My copy of Quickbooks doesn't have the horrible activation scheme this article is about, but what is a pain is that after activating it a couple times, you're told that the product is in use and it won't reactivate. You have to call tech support to get a code to reactivate it.
Fortunately I now have this code written down so I can reactivate it myself. But you know, I paid for the product, I should be able to use it without registering it. They have my damn money.
The last straw for me was that earlier this year, Intuit canceled support for QuickBooks 99's online banking. I got spammed with upgrade notices every time I logged on before this happened. After it happened I canceled my online banking and now I just use the web banking.
I have come to the conclusion that online banking like Quicken and Quickbooks have is just not that good an idea. The whole time I've used both products I have had trouble with my accounts not balancing right. Now that I reconcile my accounts manually with my bank statements, and so am much more careful about it than the supposedly convenient online banking, I have been able to get my books to balance exactly.
I used TurboTax a couple times. I didn't like it the first time I used it, but I used it a second year because I was out of the country and wanted to file online.
First, I think it's pretty damn useless. To handle the schedule C, business income, it asks such meaningful questions as "enter your business expenses" - but you have to figure that out yourself without using turbotax. It's just as easy to enter it on a paper form.
Last year my taxes were much more complicated because I now own a house and so am itemizing deductions, but I found that while doing my taxes by hand, without using software, I was able to claim a deduction that saved significant money. Turbotax would never have found that deduction.
(What I did was have my corporation pay rent to me personally for rental of my home office. But I would have to pay taxes on the rental income. What I was able to do was to depreciate the portion of my home used for business purposes. The maximum depreciation allowed was the business income on the property - which was the total amount of the rent. So I was able to pay myself the home office rental tax-free, I won't have to pay taxes on the rent for decades. The IRS had no complaint about this. Turbotax wouldn't have been able to deal with it.)
I just plain feel that it's wrong for a software publisher to require me to activate a product before I can use it, and so I will never knowingly purchase a software product that requires it. That means I'm never going to install Windows XP. Also I'm never going to install service pack 3 on my Win2k box, because of the EULA.
Finally, I'd like to suggest that if any of you work for companies that have staff attorneys, that you suggest to the attorneys that they require attorney approval of EULAs before any software gets installed. If enough companies start doing that, the current nonsense that passes for a license agreement will get set straight pretty quick - imagine if General Motors wasn't willing to use Windows because their staff attorneys objected to the license agreement!
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Maybe Intuit need a product called ion, then their users would be able to make better decisions about buying their software :)
;)
(for the slow people, Intuit ion)
A couple weeks ago I was shopping at my local grocery superstore and picked up a copy of TurboTax Basic from a display next to the service counter. I usually have one of those *block services prepare my taxes, and it usually costs $75 or more in fees. I really didn't put much thought into buying TurboTax. An hour later I fired up the Windows2000Pro laptop I have an slipped in the CD. The next 3 hours was an amazing lack of progress at getting the thing installed, and 3 support sessions with the company involving uncounted people on their end and a fun phone bill for me.
The cause of my problems are the partition scheme of my laptop. The Windows2000Pro system C: partition is 900MB, just big enough for the OS and some temp files. The swapfile is on another larger partition, as are all third-party applications.
The "Minimum System Requirements" on the box (a DVD-style clamshell) are easy to read through the shrinkwrap. To summarize the relevant parts, the OS list included Windows2000, the hard disk space specified 65MB and an additional 60MB if IE was not installed. IE 5.5 or higher was listed as being required to access online features, obtain product updates, and complete electronic filing. I read this before buying, and noted that my system meets all the requirements given on the box.
On insertion, the CD autorun process kicked up a splash window, then an animated install menu window. I clicked the obvious choice to register and install, followed the prompts through selecting my type of network connection, filling out the registration info and getting to a window with a single button to "Install." Clicking the install button got me a window where the file copying process is obviously supposed to happen, but instead I get a standard alery window that informs me that there is insufficient space on the hard disk to install.
Some notable things at this point: I have never been presented a EULA of any type. None of the windows I have progressed through have displayed a EULA, nor has there been any possible sequence of buttons that makes one appear. There is no EULA in the printed material inside the box. I have also not entered the CD key code anywhere in the process. There is no prompt for it anywhere up to this point, not even in the registration window where I entered my name/address/email type info. This becomes interesting in another hour or so when I'm on the phone with their support staff.
I'm now at the point where the TurboTax installer will not proceed further because I do not have 191MB available on drive C:. I want to install on drive E: which has plenty of space, so I consulted the FAQ on the turbotaxsupport.com website. I didn't find anything applicable, so decided to consult a support staffer about the best way to make this happen. (They use a webchat interface to provice frontline support.) The live person on the other end directed me to the web FAQ with a set of steps for installing from hard disk instead of CD, involving simply copying the CD installer files to the HD. Doubtful, I tried it anyway, and was not surprised when the installer still stubbornly insisted that there was not enough space because it was only scanning the C: drive. I still had the webchat window open, which gave me an option to select that I was unsatisfied with the help I was given and offered me a chance to talk with a "senior" support staffer via webchat. I muttered "hell yes" and was shortly explaining the problem all over again to a new person. I was walked 4 times through the complete process, echoing the window headings and options at each step laboriously. None of the suggestions made were helpful, and few even made any sense at all. At one point I was even told that the only solution would be to uninstall and then reinstall. I reminded him politely that getting the product installed in the first place was the whole point of this exercise, and asked how I could possibly uninstall when nothing has been installed even once yet. I was then treated like a fencepost and told to find the TurboTax menu under Program Files from the Start menu, at which point I seriously wondered what problem the support staffer thought we were trying to fix. (Of course there was no entry under the start menu.) Finally after convincing him that the product was in fact not installed at all, not even a little bit, and could not be uninstalled, he gave up and provided me with a voice toll number and PIN. I asked for a toll free number but was told none exists. Ouch, since I was envisioning a lengthy call if my experience so far proved typical. I decided to take this as far as it goes.
I had no problems getting to a live person quickly. He seemed to understand the nature of the problem and over the course of the next hour I had a pretty dizzy ride as I was asked the same questions repeatedly and he was consulting with an increasing number of people on his end. I had some pointed questions about the minimum requirements listed on the box, such as why the installer wanted 191MB in the first place, since the requirements plainly state 65MB. I was told that the higher amount was due to not having IE 6.0 installed. I pointed out that the IE requirement on the box stated 5.5 or higher, not that 6.0 was needed. I was told that was true, but if 6.0 is not present the installer will install it. I pointed out that the box said that only 60MB more was needed for IE if it was not present, which means a total of 125MB minimum requirement and asked why 66MB more than that was needed. I didn't get an answer to that. I asked him to confirm that IE 6.0 was required, contrary to what the box said. I was told that IE 6.0 is needed, but he stopped short of giving me an actual confirmation that the box was wrong. I asked him to confirm that the requirements on the box were wrong specifically regarding HD space and IE version, and he went on hold for a while. When he came back he asked me if I read the EULA, as all these facts were in the EULA. I told him I hadn't read the EULA and asked where I could find it, at the same time pointing out that it was irrelevant since I had no way to read system requirements prior to purchase other than on the outside of the box. He told me I must have seen the EULA, it was on the third window of the install process. I told him I didn't remember clicking past it, and by now I had gone through these steps many times. I did it again for him, step by step, this time saying "no EULA" after describing every window. When we got all the way to the diskspace alert, there had been no EULA presented. I pointed out that anything in the EULA couldn't possibly apply to me since it never made an appearance. He never mentioned the EULA again.
At one point or another in the phone conversation I was told the following things, all of which turned out to be false:
That I wasn't being presented all the installer windows because I didn't have IE 6.0 installed.
That the EULA was presented on the third window and before the registration form.
That it was possible to install my E: drive regardless of available space on C:
The end result seemed to be that the installer scans the C: drive before offering an option to specify the location for installation, which they agreed was stupid. They insisted that after that space check there is a prompt that allows changing the installation location, but you can't get there if you don't have enough space for the entire installation on the C: drive. They also changed their minds about how the IE installer worked, and said that it offers a choice to not upgrade to IE 6.0, but obviously not before the space check. I have my doubts, since the disk space alert pops up at the beginning of the file copy process, with the progress bar ready to start counting files. I'm not sure where they are fitting in the choices for install location and options, but it sure doesn't seem to be before the initial file copy. This implies to me that it always needs 191MB on the C: drive to install, no matter what the environment is, which is still 66MB more than the requirements stated on the box. I hope it's not so, but I doubt I'll ever see for myself. I'm not repartitioning my system to accomodate a single proprietary tax program.
I know my experience surely isn't typical. Most people have 200MB or more free on their C: drive. I just don't have the extra space to waste on my laptop for a Windows system partition, and this shouldn't be about how I partition my machine. There were several humorous points for me in the conversations, I think the funniest was when I was told by one of their "experts" to relabel my drives to swap E: and C: just for the install and then switch them back. I had to keep from laughing as I explained that I couldn't change the letter of a running system boot partition, and even if I could the system likely would die immediately and certainly wouldn't be bootable in that condition. Another funny one was the idea that "minimum system requirements" meant only those needed to run the application, but not to install it. Their argument was that the installer temporarily needs more than the minimum requirements during installation, but that the program would run fine with the listed requirements. I believe that is an unreasonable position.
I was given an address to return the product for a refund and cut loose. I came away with several concerns, especially surrounding the EULA (or apparent lack of one) and the listed minimum system requirements, which are misleading at best and untruthful at worst. It's bad enough that a product requires you to buy it before you can read the EULA, and we're used to that. But for the CD-based installer to require you to register the product before you can even install it, and doesn't even show you the EULA until after it copies the product to your hard disk is pretty bad in my opinion. Perhaps I should count myself fortunate that I never got far enough to see the EULA.
As you may or may not know, the IRS was going to allow people who made lass than a certain amount of money in 2002 file for free on their website. Intuit complained, citing that they would take a monetary hit because of the loss of people who would otherwise use their software.
So, an agreement of sorts was made: The IRS wouldn't have e-file on their website, but Intuit had to allow people who made less than $27,000 to file for free (see taxfreedom.com). So Intuit did this.
However, here comes the catch: In order to continue your return without paying, you have to click on a small link back at the taxfreedom website. Instead, when people return to turbotax.com, you are greeted with the "Continue your return" link. And guess what? the second you log back in to check the status of your return, you are billed for $30+!
Granted, Intuit does post a small piece of text on taxfreedom.com that states you must continue from this page, but how many people have actually done this? I feel like a fool for falling for Intuit's deception, so I won't be using their product anymore.
It's just so sad that a company has to stoop to such low levels to make a profit these days.
"This food is problematic."
via email and the postal service. email was to their public affairs flacks (the only non "support" address I found on their site at: public_relations@intuit.com), snail mail to:
r m=1&DocID=836
Tom Allanson
Senior Vice President
Consumer Tax Group, Intuit Inc.
2632 Marine Way
Mountain View, CA 94043
6 weeks and counting, and no response on the snail mail side. I did get an email response from a member of the Turbo Tax "Executive Response Team" (myra_support@intuit.com). This obvious boilerplate reminded me what a good idea --and how utterly benign-- the product activation was. I used to spend 3 days doing taxes....software has reduced that to about an hour. But it won't be done with TT any more.
Their response is followed by my letter. I hereby place them both in the public domain:-)
From Intuit:
My name is Myra and I am a member of the Executive Response Team for TurboTax. I am sorry to learn that you have some concerns about our products and want to thank you for taking time to contact us directly about it. Hearing directly from customers like you is the best way for us to know exactly what you're experiencing so we can work together to get you correct information and the best solution. I'd also like to apologize for the delay in responding to you.
After reading your message, please let me share some quick facts with you that I believe will give you the information you need.
TurboTax 2002 includes a product activation process that ensures TurboTax is used in accordance with the TurboTax software license and services agreement.
Product activation ties printing and filing from the TurboTax federal product to a single computer, preventing unlicensed use of the product.
Privacy was a key consideration when implementing the Product Activation technology in TurboTax. Product activation is completely anonymous -- no personal information is transmitted to Intuit. We would never violate your trust or privacy by installing any type of third party software such as spyware.
Product activation transfers nothing but a Product Key and Request Code. The Key and Code key are matched together and a confirmation is sent from Intuit that activates TurboTax on your computer.
Product activation does not monitor any activities on your computer nor will it prevent you from using your CD-R or CD-RW drives.
The functionality that manages the TurboTax product activation (Macrovision SafeCast(r)) can be deleted from your computer when you are done using TurboTax. The uninstall utility is available on our support site at http://www.turbotaxsupport.com/default.asp?platfo
Once again, we are sorry we caused you concern. Your opinion matters to us and we will improve the process for next year taking your input into account. Thank you for your comments. If there is anything I can do to keep you as a TurboTax customer, please let me know. I hope this helps. If I can address any additional concerns please e-mail me at Myra_Support@intuit.com, or you can visit our website at www.turbotaxsupport.com.
Best regards,
Myra
Executive Response Team
Intuit, Inc.
Myra_Support@intuit.com
My letter:
I have been a satisfied user of Intuit's TurboTax for ten years, and purchased a deluxe version with downloadable state tax packages directly from Intuit annually since 1997. Regrettably, unless Intuit revisits its approach towards the honesty of its customers next year, the 2002 version may represent my final purchase of TurboTax.
. The product activation requirement and limitation to use of the 2002 TurboTax product on a single PC makes an unpleasant statement about Intuit's perception of the typical behaviors of its customers, and is unrealistic as more homes move to a networked, multiple PC computing environment. In the last year, my home network grew to three computers sharing two printers on a wireless LAN. It is quite simply unacceptable that I am limited to using TurboTax at just one of these machines. As a 20-year information technology professional, I am sensitive to --and share-- your legitimate concerns over intellectual property and related digital rights. Moreover, as a multi-year repeat customer, I am offended by Intuit's negative assumptions about my honesty.
Equally disturbing was the fact that TurboTax --unknown to me at the time of installation-- placed the hidden "C-Dilla"folder and its associated "SafeCast"file on my PC. I have read Intuit's FAQ on these files, and it's not yet clear to me exactly how "SafeCast"serves me as an honest consumer in any way. I am appalled that I was not notified or given any options about this code during installation.
I am sure you are aware that H&R Block's "Tax Cut"is not only priced below TurboTax, has no activation requirement, and is sold under an family license explicitly permitting installation on multiple computers. As my family prepares now for the 2003 tax season, I hope you'll appreciate why TurboTax has lost much of its appeal in our household. My plans for any future purchases of TurboTax hinge directly on how Intuit intends to approach its customers in 2003. I look forward to hearing from your on your plans for next year's version of TurboTax.
Then you need to get this Excel spreadsheet for Free Ontario Tax spreadsheet. Once done with the spreadsheet, print out a copy for yourself and then use TELEFILE to file for free.
Corporate Gadfly
Jonathan Archer: the most beaten up Enterprise captain in Star Trek history
--dang hell YA! You GOT it. Sad to see HONEST LEGAL immigrants getting the complete BS from our drone bloatedcrats while the illegals are rewarded daily.
I wish you well, I am glad you finally got it straightened out. Hang tough!
Tell ya a story from my girlfriend. She gets a divorce before I met her, but never changed her name back, so one day she goes to do it. Buncha calls later she's down at the SSN office trying to get a new card, she got STACKS of ID, proof of this, proof of that, bills, insurance papers, the whole regular american deal, including our state DL of course. We are the only two anglos in the room. About two dozen or so hispanics. I saw the "ID" these guys were using to get SSN's, didn't even have a picture on it! Just printed up pieces of paper with some weird stamp on it, and they were going through the line fast as the clerks could handle it. One of them was the translator, it was like he had a tour group almost. I mean, we are sitting right there watching this go down.
Comes my girlfriends turn in line, NOPE, not enough "proof" to get it that day, had to go get some more. We are both steamed and incredulous, but what can ya do. So, before we leave, I asked the lady "WHAT is up with handing out all the cards to these guys? Can't you see you are being scammed?" I'm paraphrasing but I asked her that. So, she leans over to me across the counter, older white lady, whispers "we got ordered to do it that way, we don't like it either". No lie, she told me that.
That was in an office in norcross georgia, a burb northeast of atlanta, about 4.5 years ago.
Here my issue with tax software - I would do stuff by hand, I don't mind at all - the only reason I really use tax software is not so much any time savings (I think the savings is rather small overall) but instead that it lets me eFile.
Does anyone remember form 1040PC? It was a fantastic form that provided a sort of compressed-text summary of your whole tax form on one sheet of paper, that was easy for the IRS to parse and was free to mail in, resulting in almost as quick a return as eFiling.
What I want is a return of something as simple as the 1040PC, that would let me either mail or email a condensed version of my whole return.
I believe the IRS was taking comments on a public eFiling system, but the comment period is closed now - there were a lot of comments from the tax preparers forecasting doom if the IRS let just ANYONE eFile without a fee, but there were some good letters of support. Just in case it makes any difference, please everyone write to the IRS and make a case for letting people eFile on their own, which should teach the idiot tax preparation industry a thing or two about treating customers like dirt and taking advantage of the whole US.
A good place to start contacting the IRS would appear to be here, at the Taxpayer Advocate Service.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
> implementation really sucks on occasion
Yeah, if they want to be so draconian about it why not just put one hardware dongle in the box? Sadly, I know why, because trashing your hard drive is much cheaper than a 20 cent bit of plastic and an 80 cent chip.
Hopefully this class action will change the economics around a bit. It should be more expensive to ruin my system than to include a hardware dongle.
The brings back some fairly interesting memories of hand-copying and hand-creating a fairly elaborate code-wheel to play a copy of a friend's game. Took me all d*mn day, but being ~15 or so at the time with no cash, it did let me play it without dropping $50 or so. (Think it was 'starflight' or some such.) Ironically, if they priced it lower than it was (say, $30), I would've bought a legit copy and not needed to go through that. Then the company'd have gotten a total of $60 as opposed to a total of $50 between my friend and I.