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."

Comments

QuickTax 2003 (in canada) would only let...

[biggknifeparty]

...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.

Let this be a lesson to all future software makers

[GuNgA-DiN]

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.

Re:Actually, I'm shocked!!

[American AC in Paris]

I'm shocked that the so called backlash has caused Intuit to do this. It flies in the face of yesterday's earnings [link]. According to the news Intuit sales on its tax preparation software increased dramatically over the same period last year. My assumtion being that the copy protection was indeed effective and caused many more people than usual to fork out their $14~$35.

...but what of increased costs, monetary and otherwise? Consider all the horror stories of tech support--monetarily, they probably spent a good chunk of cash providing support for people who had DRM problems (of which there were quite a few.) Additionally, they've taken a measurable PR hit--that equates into a bleaker sales outlook as people stop buying their product.

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.

Re:IRS

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It pays to complain ...

[bizitch]

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!

What got me was the part where..

[The Kryptonian]

.. 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!"

Re:Actually, I'm shocked!!

[Zapman]

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)).