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Intuit Apologizes to Turbo Tax Customers
tstoneman writes "Intuit has issued an apology for aggravating $50-90 million in customers over their product activation code. Let's hope that they have learned their lesson, and that other companies will heed this warning. Nonetheless, I am still seething over their malware that they installed without letting me know, and despite the apology, I will be moving to Taxcut permanently from now on."
here and here
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
Use the web version. One cost, no malware, and usable from anywhere with a browser!
$ man woman *
-bash:
Isn't this the shite that flipped a bit in the HDD boot record (in an unused area, of course) to show that it was "activated"?
Intuit drops DRM feature from Turbo Tax
This was a hot issue in Feb-Apr of this year.. What took them so long?
I used TurboTax for my '01 taxes, but because of this incident I changed to Tax Cut last year. I will be sticking with Tax Cut.
I was pissed at Intuit before this incident anyway. They also play those shady rebate games. The TurboTax'01 box stated 'Free State Tax' forms. Once I opened it, I found it was not included, but needed to be downloaded - no problem. Go to download it, and they insist on charging me $20 for the download with the opportunity to mail in rebate forms for a refund. Screw them.
I'm proud to use gnuTaxes. It's a little rough as of version 0.0.4, but the price is right.
Frankly, I think that gnuTaxes is the way to go if you're looking for tax preparation software. Anyone who pays $30 for TurboTax deserves what they get.
For more information, click here.
Personally, I was ticked off at the activation mechanism; it was downright stupid for them to require installation *and* running of a resident program to ensure people don't steal their software when that software is (usually) used only once. I really want CDILLA running in background all year when I took 3 hours ONE TIME to do my taxes. Or, of course, it has to all be uninstalled (bear in mind, you were required to uninstall TurboTax *before* you could remove CDILLA... otherwise you wouldn't be able to uninstall TurboTax!).
I read a bunch of suggestions that would have made more sense for their security. For example, generate a key that uses the address used to file the taxes... sure, you still have the annoyance of having to contact them for a registration key, but you remove the necessity of having separate keys for different machines, and reinstall is a snap.
Of course, you could also key it off of a SSN, but that's a little too "big brother" for my taste.
Although it requires more trust on the consumer's part (ok, admittedly, I don't have this level of trust for Intuit), they could expand their online version of the tax software... not only control who has access, but you eliminate the annoyance of keeping old copies of the software around (for tax revision, whatever), updates, and even storage of old returns. And they save tons of cash on not distributing media.
It could be spun as a "win-win" for the consumer.
Nope... they chose to put a resident program on my computer. Using my resources to "protect" their property. Unacceptable.
Despite the affiliation with Microsoft, I too will be switching to TaxCut.
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
"Consumer friendly"? When did I say that? When did I even imply that?
Besides, what you describe are isolated incidents, probably due to individual overzealous store managers. Who cares. The Divx situation was a lot worse: the Circuit City main office attempting to shove premeditated, primitive, and inconvenient DRM down all our throats through a deceptive advertising campaign and at the expense of whatever good will there was in the DVD consortium.
Yeah, all companies do some bad things along with some good things. You have to pick and choose your battles, and that was an important one, IMO.
[ home ]
TaxACT is free for federal. State is only $13 and $8 per return. I tried it last year; it's just as easy to use as the others.
p er sonal.asp
http://www.2ndstorysoftware.com/products/index_
You can't just go around making claims like that!
Atleast, not without backing it up!
-r
Revenue increased 29 percent, year over year, to $634.7 million. Net income rose to $294 million. All good -- except the company had told analysts to expect revenues between $685 million and $725 million./P
Revenue was $50 million to $90 million less than expected.
I think the difference with XP is that it generates the same hardware hash each time you install it if you haven't changed too much stuff, so it let's you re-activate w/o problems. Also, XP stores its data in %SystemRoot%\System32\wpa.dbl, NOT in the HDD's boot record (!)... the neat thing about this is you can just save this file if you are reinstalling/reformatting and just recover it next time and skip activation altogether.
Although I'll admit the activation isn't foolproof... it threw an "I don't think so Tim" at me last time I reinstalled, which meant I had to call MS. It's surprisingly a no-questions asked phone call... pretty much:
"Is this the only computer you're running this copy of XP on?"
"Yeah."
"OK here is your 10000-digit long cd key..."
see Google Bug [slashdot.org]
The same one that has a 30 day return policy, and so,
when I attempted to return a christmas gift that someone had given me, they wouldn't take it back, as I had the receipt, which showed it was bought in November, so I would've had 2 days from Christmas to have returned it within the 30 days.
It was still in the wrapper, still had the 'Best Buy' price tag on it, I had the receipt, and I was just trying to get store credit. I think what pissed me off more was that I had to drive about 25 miles to the nearest Best Buy (Annapolis, MD) in the first place, and then stood in line for a good 45 minutes, and they just blew me off.
I haven't purchased anything from Best Buy since.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
First know that I am completely against their TOS with the software, as well as their recent use of the bootsector of the HD to keep a product registered. But, there are a few things I think we should all keep in mind.
I did work tech/sales support for Turbotax last year, and eventually went up the branch to be the "mentor" or "floor supervisor", so I'm not pulling any of this out of my ass, it is straight from the top. The days of panic and both customer and agents crying are still vidily in my head.
1. Intuit was already losing quite literally more than a few hundred thousand dollars from previous TurboTax releases. Since very, very minor security had been put in place to ensure software protection, it was passed around like candy. The statistcs proved that for every copy we gave out, it was the same copy that at least 15 other people had already used. 15 being the smallest number I can think of from that statistic report. The software was pirated beyond belief and Intuit wanted to implement a security policy NOW.
2. Intuit needed a security policy, obviously, so they told the coders to think of something and fast. So they did. No one ever expected for the process to be so incredibly cumbersome or restricting. Administration loved it though, (mostly tax advisors than computer savvy) and it was put on the market with the security features implmented. The point remains, that even if this security feature is downright disgusting, something had to be done.
3. After Intuit found out how horribly wrong the activation was, it was a little bit too late. A lot was done to compensate the customers calling in, free states, free this, no questions asked refunds, etc. Internally, Intuit was working it's ass off to reconcile for the unruley security measure it had taken. The point remains, that even though few people saw it externally, internally (especially for people calling into Intuit) we were working our asses off to apologize and make up for it.
4. Too much damage, too late, on both our side and the customer's side. The reason Intuit began to stop offering refunds and free states so quickly to rectify the situation is because we had a constant flow of customers that would not listen, but would have their lawyer on the other line. We were fully aware that the TOS was wrong, the boot sector usage was wrong, but the coders always convienced the administration that it was vital to the lifestream of the company, despite what the actual workers on the floor would say.
Screamed at, threatened (yes we had plenty of threats over the phone which led to much more than a simple hang up on our side), and such other garbage was not called for, especially for the people on the phones trying hard to make it better.
I don't know, I guess I am just ranting.
But I think it needs to be known that Intuit was well aware of the damage, hated what they had released into the wild, and did everything they could to stop it and at times, even offer out free items to get past the security features.
Sure, sure... we fucked up. But sending a team of laywers week after week is not going to help the situation... in fact.... the eventual overflow of angry screaming customers is enough to drive people to the limits. The foul laungage(spelling off, I know, im tired) and constant ordering of the agents trying to help the customers ruined the confidence and patience that administration had. I know... I quit. The community never gave Intuit the chance to repair what their coders had created.... in short.. a monster.
They actually have released universal activation codes (like the much-pirated MS "Corporate" keys) for the 2002 version, so people who are still using that don't have to put up with actiation any more. It's not as good as giving money back, but it's a lot better than just saying they're sorry and it won't happen again.
http://www.chmodoplusr.com/
Conversely, you get someone who's ignorant of tax law and *realizes* their ignorance, and they just scurry off to the CPA regardless of their return. (and, I note, there's no shame in this - tax law is *insane*)
And then, in the middle, are those who purchase TaxCut\TurboTax. They either A)think they know more than they do, or B)believe it's some sort of magic number-sorting program that will instantly produce a tax return for them with no amount of work on their part. I had some customers who legitimately believed they didn't even have to worry about the prompts, that the program would somehow magically "know" what was income, what was royalties, etc etc. (and, of course, if the luser manages to create for themselves a Schedule-C when all they did was have a garage sale, that's the program's fault, even though the prompts and explanations are written at about a middle-school level)
And don't even get me STARTED on those boneheads that thought they could use a $15 piece of software to cheat on their taxes like a $1500 CPA. "But I did this LAST year!" "Which means you got lucky and weren't audited, since it was illegal last year too." (I even had one guy *demand* I help him hide a home business under "Miscellaneous Income" because if a CPA can do it, TaxCut MUST do it for him. He got hung up on.)
I will say, if you know something about taxes to begin with, TaxCut IS a pretty good program. It had a few bugs in the calculations, but most were the staggeringly complex sort one or two people MIGHT stumble across through dumb luck. (and one REALLY idiotic bug involving proxy servers blocking e-filing, but that's another story) The problem is it's marketed (and priced) specifically towards those who LEAST need to be using it. So go on use it if you have a simple return, or if you have a decent understanding of home taxes and just need a hand with the math and specific forms. Otherwise, just get a CPA. It's safer.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.