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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.
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 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
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