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Intuit Drops DRM from Future Products
MisterKoffee writes "ExtremeTech has a story about Intuit dropping Product Activation and Digital Rights Management for most of its future products, including TurboTax, in response to a customer backlash."
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...you print FOUR times total!
I usually need at least that many times because of spotting errors and fixing them up!
Good job Intuit! If this garbage is gone then I WILL purchase your product again.
If you include DRM -- you will sink like a lead balloon. The customers have spoken. Now, we just need to turn the heat up on Microsoft. Why wasn't their a backlash like this for Microsoft? People need to tell companies that they won't stand for this type of behavior. Let's hope that Microsoft is taking notes. Palladium is going to have the same problems as Intuit did.
I thought that you could install Turbo Tax on multiple computers and that the only limitation was that you could only file from the first installation? If so, it's not that big of a limitation for a multi-computer household, as you install it in the living room, but can work on the file in your upstairs office, just transfer the file later for filing.
A relative of mine spent several hours ping-ponging through their tech support line, only to give up in frustration. She cost them a good deal more than what she paid them--she tied up a good four employee-hours' worth of work, swore to never buy TurboTax again, and has talked to other people about her experience. All in all, TurboTax has taken a loss on selling their product to her.
There are others like her.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
As a former Intuit employee, I can verify that they see the government offering the software/service for free as the biggest possible threat. (Even bigger than Microsoft, if you can believe that) Intuit maintains lobyists to make sure that the Government doesn't cut into their action.
I still had to send the IRS my W2 forms when I filed online (the only time) they made me send my W2 forms in anyways. But if I filed by phone they took my voice as my signature, at least that was the IRS' answer when asked. Never once did the file by phone ask you to speak, it was touch tone the whole way, a mute could use it. Whats the point of going electronic if you can't go electronic? ALL federal tax's should be freely doable on their website.
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If I'd known about this DRM problem (and believe me, it was a problem) before we bought Turbo Tax 2002, I'd have used TaxCut 2002 instead. But frankly, this is just the straw that broke the camel's back. Intuit treats loyal customers like idiots, sending us CDs that cost us full price to activate when frigg'n Safeway sells Turbo Tax with a rebate so the real cost is just $10. Plus we file electronically for free where my wife works. But Turbo Tax won't print the required form for electronic filing until you pay $10 to use Intuit's "service." Fuck that shit, we're through with Intuit.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Overall, the experience was positive. We used different services, but both services had the usual wizard-like walkthrough, error-checking, etc.. And we both got our refunds in short order.
I'm now recommending online filing to everyone who asks. It can be significantly less expensive (depending on the service) and you don't have to deal with the DRM issues.
I read them the riot act about this via email. I finally recieved this reply today ..
Dear Valued Customer:
In response to your comments on the implementation of product activation technology in tax year 2002 TurboTax® software, I wanted to let you know that Intuit will discontinue product activation in next year's TurboTax desktop products purchased at retail or direct from Intuit.
We are absolutely committed to listening and learning from our customers. We clearly need to better understand all of our customers' tax preparation needs and how they use TurboTax.
While we remain committed to protecting our intellectual property, going forward, we will only introduce digital rights management technologies that maximize customer experience and preserve customer satisfaction.
Again, thanks for your feedback.
Regards,
Tom Allanson, Sr. Vice President
TurboTax
Well - they saved me as a paying and happy customer!
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
.. they said that though they've taken it out, they might put it back in in the future if they felt they needed to.
Obviously they WANTED to keep the DRM, but the market pressure forced them to do otherwise. They said that there was no financial incentive to keep the DRM in the product. We have to assume that their interest in DRM was driven by other concerns, since as they've taken it out and said that they might put it back in in the same breath. Evidently some of the people at that company are still strongly in favor of DRM, or this somewhat ambiguous statement wouldn't have been made in the first place.
To those people, the consumers of the world have an announcement of our own to make: "DRM is poisonous to future sales. Don't put it in your products, don't use it, don't even hint at it, because we're not buying it!"
Well, looking through my tax software that I have purchased and deducted on my return every year since 1999..
1999 - TurboTax
2000 - TurboTax
2001 - TurboTax
2002 - TaxCut
Its nice to see that Intuit is talking about not using the DRM software next year. I've always wondered if the less expensive TaxCut software was equivalent in quality to the TurboTax software. Since the DRM was implemented this year, I had an incentive besides price to check it out. So I did. As an added bonus, the TaxCut Platinum Home and Business is half the price of the equivalent TurboTax product. However, now that I've switched to TaxCut I think I just may stick with TaxCut. To be honest the TurboTax software made me feel more comfortable, and the final check on my taxes did seem more thorough and helpful. I'm glad Intuit seems to be listening to its customers by not repeating the same mistake again, but since I've already switched I have less incentive to switch back.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
Actually, that is not quite correct. As I understand it, the IRS requires private companies to do the filing for consumers because the IRS still maintains a large pool of modems that are used to accept and process electronic returns. The IRS has a mandate to receive a certain number of returns electronically by a certain year (I forget exactly which year). This is why there are companies that will process and file a federal return for free. The IRS said "You do this for free for a certain subset of the population or we will do it for you".
This is a huge infrastructure, and my guess is that it would not be trivial to upgrade it. Most states do not have this legacy infrastructure to deal with.
Also, there is currently an initiative, chaired by the IRS, to create an XML schema for taxes. Hopefully this will mean better filing options in the future.
Don't you just love the way they call it "copy protection", rather than "copy prevention", a more accurate term?
Actually, it doesn't do a great job of prevention either. However, it tries to "protect" the medium against "unauthorized" copying - which it doesn't really do a good job of either, making current CD's sometimes easier to copy than play on standard devices!
I googled for the name of the installed program and didn't look close enough. Use the open source one instead.
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Unfortunatly, the 'I cost them more money in support' argument doesn't wash. Accountants split money into different 'buckets'. Revenue comes in, and is devided into capital, Operations and Maintance, and Profit. (I'm over simplifying).
Capital money is money given to projects once. It's usually a bigish wad, and it's for a year. You have this much money to get this many new things to do this good work for us (IE: We need to implement a new source code version tracking package. Needs this much hardware, this much software, and will cost this much in support the first year).
O&M money is 'mantaiance' money. It costs this much to keep this web server up and running, and supplied with bandwidth. Salaries come out of this pool as well. O&M is usually a sunk cost. Just the cost of doing business. Support for their product is certainly a sunk cost. They invest a flat fee in salaries, headcount, phones, etc. From my CVS example above, maintance on the hardware, and software would be added to the O&M budget for the second year of it's life.
To the accountants, someone being on hold for 6 hours, and wasting 1 hour of 4 employees time isn't 'wasting' more money than the revenue from purchasing the product. It's just averaged in with all those people who DIDN'T call intuit, and just used TurboTax on one computer (like me (i bought it before I heard of the DRM games)).
Zapman
After very vocally bailing out from TurboTax this year (several phone calls to express my displeasure, and informing them I'd think about coming back when they removed DRM), I chose TaxCut as the next best thing based on many writeups and reviews of various other products. I use the Home & Business version, to handle my home business Schedule C.
I'm sorry to report that when it comes to usability and user interface, TurboTax has TaxCut licked, no matter how you look at it. Just a short list:
- Installation and "automatic" update was fairly painful, in that the state form didn't integrate well and it took a couple cycles thru before everything was working right.
- One feature actually took a tech support call to H&R Block, and manually editing a setting file, to get working right.
- the TaxCut interview was a marginal copy of TurboTax's rather slick, and easily readable version.
- The error check complained about things that were not errors, just things that were legitimately missing from various paperwork I had (it apparently wanted me to make up an address to satisfy it, although the W2 had no information where it THOUGHT there should be some - sorry, I'm not going to fudge info like that for the IRS!)
- Every time I saved and came back later after digging up some additional documentation, to even GET BACK to the "ready to file" screen I had to run thru about 30 mouse clicks to questions I'd already answered, and put up with the return error check all over again (including several "errors" that were NOT errors).
- The help functions stunk. There was no real context-sensitive help for tax questions; in TurboTax when you ask for help, you get specific details about that topic or line of the form from numerous documents. In TaxCut you only got help for the entire form, and have to read thru the help to find the relevant portions. None of the help documents were really keyed to the specific line of the tax form.
- Working with the actual forms was non-intuitive, and I was uncertain what would happen at some points - would this form be added, or could I just look at it to see what's there... etc.
- Many more irritations.
Just to be less biased, I should mention that there were a few things I liked better. For example, it was easier to get thru some interview areas where multiple questions could be answered at once, versus TurboTax's rather nitnoid one-thing-at-a-time interview. Despite the install/update/fix the install frustrations, the installation was faster and seemed to leave less crud on my disk. Also, many of the interview questions did a better job of explaining what the question really meant, and a couple times, I changed my answer from previous years because I finally understood the real thrust of the tax form's question. Still, these were small sparks in an otherwise frustrating experience.
As a result, it's going to be a very difficult decision next year. I want (badly want) to spank Intuit for this almost unforgivable fiasco, and really want them to suffer for a couple years because of this. They need to focus on a good product. But on the flip side, they DO already have a good product that by almost all accounts is years ahead of the competition. And furthermore, I want to reward them for listening to (and better yet, acting on) the complaints.
So "what to do, what to do..." - do I stay mad at them, or forgive and move on?
I'm almost hoping that Intuit pulls some stunt again this winter, like trying to sneak in something a bit less obvious but still too DRM-ish, or that H&R Block does add some DRM to TaxCut, to help make my decision for me.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
They tried, and Intuit Sued Them. Cal Gov Davis met with Intuit's boards, and discussed how bad losing Intuit would be to the califonia economy, and how allowing state filing online wihtout turbo tax needed would damage intuit and they decided to go to court and somehow it got all worked out real nice like so that you still get to buy TT. The official reason is that the state can't provide something that private industry is already providing, it can go the other way, however. (like with water).
But what the accountants cannot and do not take into account is the PR value of a pissed off customer. Some of them have long memories and revenge is best served cold.