Intuit Disables Features in Quicken To Force Upgrades

Numerous people submitted a blurb from BoingBoing about Intuit disabling features in older versions of Quicken. Why the BoingBoing submitter and Mr. Doctorow are so upset about this I don't know; when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?

Comments

Why not GnuCash?

[michelcultivo]

Why not use GnuCAsh? It's so difficult to integrate with online banking?

Re:Why not GnuCash?

[blowdart]

Because it doesn't run on the same OS as Quicken? Because it supports a standard that banks are only starting to open up to?

If software doesn't run on your OS and doesn't talk to your bank then the fact that it's open doesn't help much.

(And no, it doesn't talks to my bank)

Re:Why not GnuCash?

[Rich0]

I've tried this and kmymoney. They are getting there, but they're not close enough for me.

The last time I tried (probably six months ago), the budgeting features were not good, online downloading and uploading of transactions looked to be incompatible with my bank, and reporting was not as versitile. The transaction registers themselves worked just fine, though.

It is also difficult to just experiement with the online features since it is your bank, and if it is working with quicken already do you want to mess with possibly getting the online service in some strange state? Financial software really only works well if all your transactions are in one place, so nobody would want to cut-over unless they had a fairly high degree of confidence that the FOSS alternatives are ready for prime-time.

I ended up buying quicken 2K4 for about $5-10 mail-order. If you buy a one-year-old version it isn't nearly as much of a ripoff.

Re:Why not GnuCash?

[Geek of Tech]

What you put:
Because it doesn't run on the same OS as Quicken? Because it supports a standard that banks are only starting to open up to?

The actual reason:
Because it runs on an OS not dependent on any one source? Because it supports a standard?

I figured those two were obvious. Anything that supports a standard must be evil and communistic! I'm pretty sure netcraft confirmed that...

Re:Why not GnuCash?

[scarolan]

Cause GnuCash is hard to use, that's why! Yes, you and I understand that the double-entry accounting system is the proper way to do things but try explaining that to my wife who is in charge of paying the bills each month, with online billpay through Quicken no less. The problem Intuit has run into is that their software reached its full-featured peak around 1999 or 2000, after that there really wasn't anywhere for them to go. What do you do when your software has all the features the end-user needs, and works well enough for most people? With open source software, once a project has reached maturity, it can be left alone and become a useful tool for years and years afterwards. Take for example something like vi/vim - it does everything a text editor should do. But the developers who work on it do not have anxious shareholders knocking at the door wanting to see never-ending growth and profits. Hence Intuit has to force the customers to upgrade to squeeze out more profits.

Re:Why not GnuCash?

[Tim C]

Quicken doesn't run on Linux. Therefore, anyone currently using Quicken almost certainly isn't running Linux. Gnucash doesn't run on anything but Linux.

Are you seriously suggesting that Quicken users should switch not only application but OS? Most of these people are going to be non-technical, and not exactly comfortable switching one thing at once, let alone two...

Re:Why not GnuCash?

[Alioth]

On a point of pedantry, GnuCash runs on pretty much any UNIX platform (*BSD, Solaris) as well as Linux.

Re:Why not GnuCash?

[eraserewind]

You really increased your market share by pointing that one out ;)

Re:Why not GnuCash?

[gl4ss]

FROM: inuits own webpage.

*Retirement of Online Services for older versions of Quicken

In an ongoing effort to provide reliable high-quality products and services, Intuit periodically retires (also known as "sunsets") older versions of Quicken, thereby discontinuing Online Services & Live Technical Support for these versions.

Under this policy, the most current version of Quicken (currently Quicken 2005), plus the prior two versions, will be supported, subject to certain exceptions. Sunsetting older versions of Quicken allows us to focus resources on enhancing our products and providing support for more current versions, which are used by the vast majority of Quicken customers. The result: a better customer experience for millions of Quicken users.

When a Quicken product is scheduled to be sunset, Intuit will provide affected customers with advance notice, generally by means of this Web site. We update this Web site periodically, so please visit us again for more information as it becomes available.**

wouldn't be a problem if they published those sunset dates on their boxes - but guess again do they... "will work for 4 years" or something on a box would be fair, when that's exactly what they intend to do - it's not even about if the software would keep working, it's a built in(or coming from an update) death date that's PLANNED and has nothing to do with keeping them operational costing them(expect them costing in the way that they could try to force the client to upgrade.. extort money).

mods, hey, how about reading the story before moderating????

Re:Why not GnuCash?

[gl4ss]

slashdot - inaccurate comments about anything modded insightful.

http://www.intuit.com/support/quicken/sunset/

dunno how boing boing makes up stuff that appears on intuits site...

Re:Why not GnuCash?

[iamacat]

What do you do when your software has all the features the end-user needs, and works well enough for most people?

Anything but screw that up! They have a large mindshare. Now they can offer their own financial services and people will choose them just because they work really well with quicken. For example, they can offer Internet-based consulting where someone reviews your records and suggest how you can save money without sacrificing your lifestyle. This kind of things can bring way more revenue than software.

They should already get some small fee from banks that use their networks. But if they had to offer that for free or unreasonably cheap to "get in", there will be plenty of other opportunities in future.

And what alternative do you have?

[blowdart]

when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?

Considering there are no (that I know of) open source or not for profit alternatives that allow you to pay your bills online like Quicken does what alternative do users have?

Re:And what alternative do you have?

[bwalling]

Considering there are no (that I know of) open source or not for profit alternatives that allow you to pay your bills online like Quicken does what alternative do users have?

Well, there's Microsoft Money!

Re:And what alternative do you have?

[rah1420]

The problem is that the tail's wagging the dog. Why on Earth are people using their check register to pay their bills?

I log onto my web site with Firefox and use my bank's online bill pay feature to pay my bills. I can download these transactions into whatever money manager supports their download format. I don't bother, preferring to scrape the screen and put the display into a text editor, as I can then import it into my spreadsheet with a few clicks.

Cost: About $6 a month. Beholden to: Only my bank, and I trust them to be the custodian of my money anyway, so I'd better trust them.

Intuit has been sending me begging and pleading letters to upgrade my Quicken 4.0 for years, and all I do is laugh and throw them in the recycling bin.

Do I want Intuit telling my bank what to do? Hell no! That's why I do this rather than initiate bill pays from the payee's web site; you gotta push, don't pull the transaction.

Hint: If you use the bank's software to communicate with the bank, you'll never have a problem.

Re:And what alternative do you have?

[Gryphon]

There's no guarantee of security no matter how you do your banking. A major bank in Canada (CIBC) lost a lot of credibility when it was discovered they'd (mistakenly) been sending customer records, unshredded, to a junk yard somewhere in the United States.

The sad part is the junk yard owner was calling the bank for two years to report this to them, and they didn't listen.

When the guy finally called the media, CIBC sued the junk yard owner!

Re:And what alternative do you have?

[Geek of Tech]

Nah, if it ain't got Clippy, it ain't worth nuttin'.

Re:And what alternative do you have?

[Lumpy]

why??

because I prefer not to give the place I have my car loan $6.00 every month for "online processing fee". My mortgage their $7.00 online processing fee, and the electric company their $4.95 processing fee.

it is FAR cheaper for these companies to accept online payments. The time it takes staff to open a letter, find my account, and enter the information as well as traffic the check is far longer and much more expensive for them to process a debit electronically.

Until all online payments are 100% free (ok they can charge me to do an instant payment) people will be usining paper checks.

there is a law that states they can not charge you to accept your payment. This law needs to be expanded to online payments.

Re:And what alternative do you have?

[gunnk]

Do you use a cordless phone when you call customer support for billing questions? If so, you are using an unencrypted wireless technology -- personally, I prefer to use an encrypted online connection.

Do you use debit or credit cards in stores or restaurants? If so you are trusting the clerk or waiter not to make a copy of your card information and to appropriately handle any receipts containing your information. Again, I think that is a higher risk activity than encrypted communications to a server where your transactions generally don't require anonymous human handling.

Do you mail your bills? By this, I'm asking if you take a slip of paper covered with your finanicial account information (i.e., a paper check) and stick it in an envelope (which stands out as a bill payment) and then stick it in an unlocked box by the side of the road with a FLAG STICKING UP to announce that something valuable might be housed within?

Personally, I think online bill payments are one of the safest means now available for handling financial transactions. The other methods send way too much of your sensitive information in cleartext through one or more anonymous sets of human hands as well as providing opportunities for malicious interception along the way.

Re:And what alternative do you have?

[doj8]

Not quite right.

The bank was FAXING customer financials to the junk yard owner for several years. He finally sued to recover the costs of fax supplies - and presumably effort.

Re:And what alternative do you have?

[lemonboy]

It's not so much that Quicken 2004 and earlier versions will stop working its that the current versions will stop working.
From my credit Union www.coastalfcu.org
Dear Users of Quicken,

Intuit has announced that its Quicken version 2005 will no longer support the .QIF file import capability. Today, you can download your Coastal transactions from COLTS or the e-Statements site in a .QIF file and import that file into Quicken 2004 and earlier versions. In the future, Coastal will continue to make .QIF transaction downloads available via COLTS and e-Statements. These download files will continue to work with Quicken 2004 and earlier versions as they have in the past. At this point, we have no plans to discontinue this support. If you choose to upgrade to or purchase Quicken 2005, you will lose the ability to import your Coastal transactions. Coastal has chosen not to support the real-time .OFX interface required for Quicken 2005 as Intuit now charges each financial institution a yearly licensing, setup and maintenance fee to achieve the same functionality available in all previous versions of their software. However instead of assessing a fee based on the number of actual Quicken users here at Coastal, they require a fee based upon our asset size and TOTAL number of members. As a not-for-profit organization, we are not willing to submit to such an unfair pricing structure. We appreciate and value your business with Coastal and will notify you if this situation changes.

Open source solution?

[Scud]

I don't use Quicken, so I wouldn't know, but is there any reason why the transactions can't be done via FOSS?

Whatever happened..

[Ckwop]

.. to just producing a decent product and letting the market decide if it wants it or not? Why does every corporation have to be a blood thirsty, morally defunct, money grabing ass?

This is why I choose free software because it's in the spirit of cooperation rather than subversion.

Simon.

Re:Whatever happened..

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work for Intuit UK and they were bastards. Just before they pulled their call centre out of the UK and into Canada, they made all the support staff make sales calls.

People were waiting 1-2 hours to get support and there were a hundred people in the queue. Meanwhile the support staff had to make cold calls, which they hated.

Then they suddenley closed the call centre and left all those people without jobs.

I've never bought Intuit products since.

Re:Whatever happened..

[bersl2]

"In [a free-market] economy there is one and only one social responsibility of business to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition, without deception and fraud." -- Milton Friedman

The problem is that, of course, few of them do go without "deception and fraud."

Re:Whatever happened..

[Colonel Cholling]

That's the biggest pile of market-worshipping crap I've heard in a long time. By this token, plantation owners were completely justified in using slave labor because they were completely honest about the fact that they were using slaves.

The decisions made by businesses affect more than just their own bottom line. There's a whole world full of people there, outside the boardroom, and no matter what Mr. Friedman says, you have certain social responsibilities to them as a human being.

Re:Whatever happened..

[abe ferlman]

Another problem is that corporations are treated as Natural Persons under U.S. law, so they have basically all the rights of people and few of the responsibilities.

Another problem is that the free market has a very difficult time with the tragedy of the commons problem- short term corporate gain all too often conflicts with long term social and environmental well being.

There are more problems. And don't get me started on the incompatibility of idea ownership and competition.

Re:Whatever happened..

[tdemark]

I used to work for Intuit UK and they were bastards.

Intuit in general are bastards.

Any time you try to import a text transaction file (QFX), the program calls home to see if the organization you downloaded from paid its "Quicken Tax".

When I called tech support because I was getting an error message when trying to import, Intuit told me that "my bank doesn't support Macs", even though I already had the QFX file.

Me: "I don't understand. I have the file, but Quicken won't import it."

Tech: "Your bank doesn't support Macs."

Me: "Why does my bank need to 'support' Macs? I have the text file, but Quicken won't import it."

Think how ridiculous it would be if Excel wouldn't import a CSV file until it called back to MS to verify that author paid an "MS Tax" (insert DRM/Palladium comment here)?

Anyway, I got around the issue by opening the file and changing the "Institution ID" to a bank that has "paid the tax". By simply changing a few characters in the file, Quicken happily imported it.

Re:Whatever happened..

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Any time you try to import a text transaction file (QFX),
>>the program calls home to see if the organization you downloaded from paid its "Quicken Tax".

I can't stress how true the previous poster's comment is. I lead a team of developers that just finished implementing QFX support for our company, a mid-sized financial institution. The contract terms that Intuit insisted on are truly outrageous. Sure enough, if the customer has a QFX file, but we aren't a "supported" organization, Quicken phones home and will refuse to import the file. This isn't a threat to Quicken users - it's a threat to the *banks*. The amount we had to pay to be "allowed" to continue providing the same support for our customers who had already been downloading QIF files for years was, uh, a LOT. They also strongly "encouraged" us to cripple or disable support for older versions.

During testing, we were not allowed to go live with our upgraded service until we passed their test suites. Problem is, their testing process was neither well-defined nor timely. They promised us a certain scheudle, and then reported "problems" during testing that weren't originally described. When these threatened to delay our production schedule, our customer rep slyly hinted that if we wanted to pay an additional fee, that they could "bump up" our testing in front of other companies. It was a *large* additional fee. It took some high level calls from our management, involving literal screaming, before they would agree to stick to the original schedule.

I am stunned, truly, that Intuit hasn't been held up for antitrust scrutiny at this point. They held financial companies with far more money than them over a barrel, in their latest round of "upgrades". Surely, I keep thinking, it won't be long until some of the big boys round up Intuit and take them out behind the woodshed for a good beating - legal, financial, literal, take your pick.

Re:Whatever happened..

[Monkelectric]

An interesting history note about the ruling which created corporate personhood. The judge who issued the ruling actually ruled *against* the concept of corpirate personhood, but big corporations bribed the clerk who recorded the ruling to record the case in their favor.

There used to be a website about it, but I seem to have missplaced the link.

Re:Whatever happened..

[chriso11]

I think you are applying dishonesty where obliviousness can equally explain to a situation. Left unsaid is the real scammers who prey upon this tragedy.

As for not doing anything before, I think a simple example will suffice: You are driving in your car, and you pass a person on the side of the road, working on their car. That person is obviously in distress, but it is not critical. However, if you are driving and you see an major accident occur in front of you, you would at the very least call 911 or some aid (if it were safe for you to do so).

Don't get me wrong - I agree a lot with you, but it is more of a shading of your statements.

Re:Whatever happened..

[activewire]

Agree, mod parent's parent up. This is the REAL story that gets easily lost in slashdot noise.

Intuit can play both ends: they squeeze the customer with forced upgrades, and the banks with "compatibility" policies.

There is no technical reason why my Quicken 2000 stopped importing QFX files on 4/18/2004: the file format hasn't changed. In fact, I can STILL download QFX from my bank and rename the FID (financial instution id) and it works! Its also possible to edit "hosts" file to block the Intuit "phone home"
127.0.0.1 ofx-prod-brand.intuit.com,
127.0.0.1 ofx-prod-fiusage.intuit.com
127.0.0.1 ofx-prod-cuusage.intuit.com

What I dont understand is why banks agree to this?
If every bank would just allow download of OFX from their website, customers could take Intuit's
"branding" servers out of this loop, a place where Intuit never belonged in the first place.

I finally said "screw you Intuit" and have been happily importing OFX files into GnuCash for 6 months.

Troll Article

[jdhutchins]

This article made a good point, but michael didn't have to add his flamebait last line. When you buy something, you usually expect it to keep working and not be disabled over time. Yes, maybe corporations are evil, but for the most part, when you buy something, it keeps working. I have a computer running Windows 95 that runs just as well as when we first bought it. That's coming from Microsoft, the Big Evil. We read the summaries to start discussions ourselves, not to have incendiary statements put in there just for the fun of it.

On a side note, is anyone here a laywer who knows about retail law? There could very well be a law that they're breaking here, opening themselves up to a class-action lawsuit.

Re:Troll Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, this article doesn't even make a good point. Way to go michael. As usual your over-enthusiasm for yellow "journalism" has run amuck and the worst kind of lies are now being discussed as truth.

As it stands, users of existing Quicken products prior to the Quicken 2005 edition are being "forced" to upgrade to Quicken 2005 because Quicken ended their long-time relationship with Checkfree Corp. sometime last year. Checkfree provided the backend online bill payment features in the Quicken products originally, but Intuit, unsatisfied with the cost of Checkfree's services decided to choose a different vendor to provide this type of feature in their upcoming 2005 version. Intuit decided to not continue the relationship with Checkfree for users who did not want to upgrade to the new product, so Intuit had to "force" upgrades for users who still wanted to use the online bill pay features of the Quicken products. Therefore, if you had purchased Quicken 2000 - Quicken 2004 (I think?) the upgrade to Quicken 2005 Basic (or Standard?) was free. All you had to do as a user was request an upgrade CD from Quicken. Sure, some people don't want to change their software package when the old one works just fine, which is why Intuit keeps sending current customers of their older software these notices that they need to upgrade. In other words, Intuit is saying: "If you want to keep using the Bill Pay features of our Quicken software, you MUST upgrade to our latest version so that our new backend payments processor can start sending your payments for you." Maybe that's a not-so-smart business move for Intuit to make, or maybe they aren't clearly communicating that the reason for the forced upgrade is for the online payments engine issue, but it's certainly not illegal or deceptive. They can't use Checkfree to process their payments anymore, period. So users need to upgrade to keep using that feature.

Now I will disclose that I do not work for Quicken, but do work for a player in the "financial services" industry, so when it comes to this stuff, I know what I'm talking about. I'm more concerned about why /. continues to employ this POS, michael. He is the reason that people call people who love Linux "GNU hippies." He is such a freaking joke! Not only does he make sure to post unverified, inflammatory "articles" submitted by similarly-minded /.'ers as himself, but he also continuously feels the need to add those shitty little quips on to the end of the article which he clearly never reads, and NEVER verifies for accuracy. I call BIG FAT BULL SHIT on this "article!"

Re:Troll Article

[bwy]

This article made a good point, but michael didn't have to add his flamebait last line. We read the summaries to start discussions ourselves, not to have incendiary statements put in there just for the fun of it.

Thank you. Very well put and I hope the point is taken.

Re:Troll Article

[TFGeditor]

"...michael didn't have to add his flamebait last line. "

Michael has become increasingly militant and unshy about exposing his bias. I cannot help but wonder why, and whether someone in authority will call him down in the name of presenting at least some semblance of credibility on /.

Re:Troll Article

[omb]

There are a number of points here:

(1) I used to rely, and would like to continue to rely on /. to alert me to interesting news.

(2) The quality of the 'news selection' is going down.

(3) I am sick of egregious op-ed, trolls, astroturfers, shills and idiots who dont know when to keep their fingers still, off the keyboard.

The bottom line these days is that it is getting harder and harder to get FACTS, not subjective opinions, and there are far too many un-funny FUNNY posts.

All that said Intuit is behaving atrociously by egregiously breaking the functionality that their users have already paid for. This is certainly illegal at Roman Common Law, all of Europe, and in the UK, also, like the US, an Anglo-Saxon Common law jurisdiction; Unfair Contract Terms kills any EULA, then tortious damage!

The real problem here, once again, is the flacidity of the US legal system, in which lower court judges almost never rule quickly and definitively for fear of reversal on appeal, which I am told is a judicial career-damaging position.

I say to all of you in the US, again, that your problem is the practise of the courts, which now denies justice to you all. When you do Tort reform adopt the UK convention that the looser pays all party-and-party costs for both parties. That together with an O.16 practise rule for summary judgement and provision for security as to costs would, _at_once_, stifle vexatious lawsuits like SCO, disposed of in Germany in under a month, and make the likes of Intuit rightly fear their user base far too much to even think of trying this kind of thing.

Incedentally, it would also solve, or at least seriously ameliorate the current IP rustling/patent malpractice since corporations would have a strong dis-incentive to vexatiously defend nugatory IP in the courts and both the RIAA and MPIAA would both have to think hard about issuing suit without up-front evidence. You might have to fix your discovery rule to prevent 'fishing' without a statement of claim backed by prima facie evidence disclosing a cause of action.

Finally, I am also getting very tired of people quoting, wrongly, the mantra of US Capitalism,

The only responsibility is to make a shareholder profit unsaid, in the short term.

When history reflects the 1990s flawed vision of Sharelolder Value will, I suspect, mark the beginning of the decline of the US economy. It is certainly responsible for Enron, the banking and insurance scandels

Re:Troll Article

[mgoheen]

Ok, try THIS then.

Intuit originally released QuickBooks Pro 2001 with the ability to send invoices via SMTP. This was great, and was one of the reasons I actually upgraded to QB 2001. A year or so later, Intuit pushed out a patch that REMOVED that feature -- you had to instead sign up for the "free" service at Intuit, and send all your invoices through THEM. That was bad enough, but later on, they made it so that you had to PAY for the service.

Intuit is a bunch of bastards. I like their products, but I hate them...

Re:Troll Article

[R2.0]

There is more to it than that. I used Quicken 2000, and the omly online features I used were downloading transactions - that's it. No Checkfree, no bill pay. Quicken stlii stopped working.

The basics of it are that Intuit has the banks by the balls. As I understand it, they changed formats, forced the banks to change formats, and then precluded the banks from supporting the old formats. Then they came up with some cock & bull story about "security upgrades".

That being said, Michael's last line is still bullshit.

Re:Troll Article

[Gudlyf]

"I'm more concerned about why /. continues to employ this POS, michael."

Are you kidding? Lots of readers eat this kind of thing up. You read the article and disagreed with its message, so you read the coments to see if others have your point of view. Now you might post a reply to the article voicing your disagreement. Then you come back to see what people had to say about your comments, maybe posting another reply or two. The fact is, it incited interest and made people come back to "see what happens next," over and over again, which is what makes Slashdot make money afterall.

Why do they continue to employ michael? Sadly he will probably get a bonus for this.

Re:Troll Article

[poot_rootbeer]

This article made a good point, but michael didn't have to add his flamebait last line.

Oh, come on. It wouldn't be Slashdot if michael didn't always tack some flamebait onto the last line of a story submission. He does it CONSTANTLY.

I think it's time for me to head over to my Preferences page and change them not to show any stories with michael in the byline. Long overdue, actually.

What does the contract say?

[l2718]

Quoth the editor: "Why the BoingBoing submitter and Mr. Doctorow are so upset about this I don't know; when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?"

You should expect the price of the software to reflect what is actually being offered. The contract between Intuit and the users regarding the operation of the software should (part of the "Software License Agreement", which I cannot find on-line) should say for how long Quicken will support the operation of the software. That factor was included in the price of the software.

Before this can be resolved we need to look at the contract. Then there are two possibilities:

1. The users failed to read the contract before accepting it -- their loss
2. The company is reneging on an express contract
3. The contact did not spell this out. Then there would be an argument as to what is the implied expectation -- what do you think?

Can someone post the relevant terms from the agreement?

Re:What does the contract say?

[bjhonermann]

I could not find anything in it about a length of support for the software.

It's under the Termination Provision:

Intuit shall have the right to change or add to the terms of this Agreement at any time, and to change, discontinue or impose conditions on any feature or aspect of the Intuit Software, or any internet-based services provided to you or made available to you through the use of the Intuit Software. Such changes shall be effective upon notification by any means reasonable to give you actual or constructive notice, or upon posting such terms in the Intuit Software, and your continued use of the Intuit Software will indicate your agreement to any such change. For the latest version of this Agreement go to www.quicken.com or such other site designated by Intuit.

Re:What does the contract say?

[fatman22]

When one party to an "Agreement" can change the terms and conditions of that "Agreement" and the other party has no recourse other than to accept the changes or abandon the "Agreement" in its entirety, then there never was an "Agreement", just a set of required terms and conditions. "Agreements" imply a certain amount of trust and honor between parties. Intuit's "Agreement" is anything but that.

hmm

[nomadic]

hy the BoingBoing submitter and Mr. Doctorow are so upset about this I don't know; when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?

Actually, I don't expect this, it's definitely not a standard industry practice. Oh, sorry, forgot that rationality takes a back seat when it's time to insult proprietary software.

Strategies for a constant cashflow

[acostin]

I am also managing a software company (we produce tools for web developers), and there is indeed a need to have a long term-strategy that could lead to a constant cash-flow. We have several tactics in place to help us in this respect:

• Release new major versions of our products each 20 months (as we generate code, the previous version is probably "obsolete" by the time we release the new version - so we don't expect problems in this respect). We also add features each time.
• Horizontal expansion - enter markets that are related to our core markett - in our case, online training, commercial support, book writing.

Intuit is probable facing the same problems (at a bigger scale - they're public company and they have responsibilities for their stockholders). It seems that they have offered the online service for free, planning to get the cashflow from software sales only. Now, as the sales have decreased, they have to find a way to make people upgrade to their latest version, and I personally can't blame them.

You also have to take into account that they are probably still battling Microsoft... I am from Romania, so I'm not very familiar with the limited MS Money success. Is Money still an alternative?

Alexandru

Microsoft Money does this, too

[cygnusx]

From http://www.microsoft.com/uk/homepc/money/ProductDe tails.aspx?pid=003:

Internet-based services available for two (2) years after activation of Microsoft Money or 1 September 2007, whichever is earlier. See the Microsoft Money Internet-based services policy http://money.msn.com/Money/2005/GBR/IBSP.asp for details.

If you don't upgrade, you'll be able to use the software as before, but not the Internet-based services (AFAIK).

I work at a bank

[aardwolf64]

I work at a financial institution and am in charge of support for PFMs (Personal Finance Managers) including Microsoft Money and Quicken. The reason that Quicken is sunsetting support for online banking in 2001 and 2002 is that your online transactions actually come through Intuit's server, which accesses your bank server on your behalf. You can still use the older versions of Quicken, you just can't download transactions.

Microsoft Money on the other hand still works since it connects directly to the bank's OFX server. Although my bank only supports 2001 and newer, we have users that are actually connecting with Money 1999 with no problems.

Re:I work at a bank

[TykeClone]

It's worse than that.

With our site, older versions of Quicken can still download transactions with no issues - Quicken 2005 and above can not (and money has no issues either). In order to set our site up to allow for Quicken to import transactions, it would cost the bank several thousand dollars (+ several thousand dollars per year!) to gain no functionality. To be honest, it would be just as cost effective to give away copies of MS Money instead of paying Intuit's blackmail.

Intuit is also trying to get into the banking game and become the face of your bank. They're already advertising "Quicken Loans" and I imagine attempting to steer deposits with Quicken.

It comes down to an economic decision by the bank. We give away online banking and bill pay to all who want it (doesn't matter about their accounts or their balances) for free.

If there is any kind of a decent open source financial program available on Windows, please let me know about it so that I can recommend it to our customers!

Almost bought Quicken

[srleffler]

Well, I'm really glad I read about this on Amazon last week. I was about to buy Quicken, since it's almost free if you're buying Turbo Tax. I knew Intuit was Evil, but this was just too evil for me: they lost the sale and I'm sticking with Microsoft Money. It's a sad day when Microsoft is the lesser of two evils...

You don't have to upgrade

[sd790]

I received a similar letter a few weeks back and immediately called my bank to find out if this was really going to affect my ability to use their online banking services. They told me that this will NOT cause any problems and I DON'T have to upgrade to continue using their online banking system. The only thing that I'll lose is my ability to Intuit's help desk, which I'll never do anyways.

Call your bank and check. You probably don't have to bother with it.

Re:What Intuit are doing is outrageous

[TheRaven64]

Rubbish. You paid for iLife '04, and your copy of iLive '04 does exactly what it was marketed as doing. iLife '05 has more features, and you pay for these (well, you don't, but non-criminals do). If you didn't like the features iLife '04 originally had, you shouldn't have bought it - you should have either bought or written something better. This is entirely different from what Intuit are doing - disabling features that the customer has already paid for.

By the way, the RRP of iLife is £49, so I don't know how you paid £99 for it. Education price is even lower, and the 5-license family pack is only £65.

That is Incorrect

[aardwolf64]

From Quicken's Sunset policy FAQ:

Q: What will happen if I don't upgrade?

A: As of April 19, 2005, in accordance with the Quicken sunset policy, Online Services1 and Live Technical Support2 will no longer be available for Quicken 2001 and 2002 users. This means that you will no longer be able to download financial data into older Quicken software. You will still be able to manually enter your data.

Attempts to use Online Services after April 19, 2005 will result in a variety of program error messages related to the feature or service you try to access.

Quicken's Sunset Policy

FAQ

Intuit is not very smart

[TheRealFixer]

As I recall, a couple years ago Intuit came under fire for their production activation scheme and their draconian copy protection in TurboTax, which secretly installed code in the boot sector of the hard drive to prevent the CD from being copied, but also apparently caused some CD writers drives to stop working properly and was near impossible to get rid of. It turned into a major PR nightmare for them, as word spread quickly across the internet of what TurboTax was doing to people's PCs. A good number of their customers left for TaxCut. Several months later, Intuit was forced to admit publically what a dumb decision it was.

Well, it appears that Intuit did not learn their lesson, as this is likely to turn into another PR nightmare for them. How do companies become so dumb?

This happened with me and Toys 'R Us

[nysus]

I bought this electronic drum set for my kid at Toys 'R Us. A year, later, this guy in a yellow and orange vest comes to my door with a hammer. I let him in and he proceeds to smash the drums into tiny fragments, making my kid cry. He says, "Sorry, the model of your drum set is out of date. You have to buy the new model." What else could I do? I had to pay another $50 or my kid would go nuts.

Re:This happened with me and Toys 'R Us

[AC-x]

That's not a particularly good analogy now is it?

They are not remotely disabling your copy of Quicken, they had been providing a service for free as the online bill payment system had to go through their server. They've realised they can't keep doing that forever, but for some reason rather then introducing a small subscription fee they're getting people to upgrade instead.

Re:official line?

[truedfx]

There's a link to http://www.intuit.com/support/quicken/sunset/. You can see the official reason there.

Then what about CodeWeavers?

[bvankuik]

CodeWeaversHas their own version of Wine but almost all changes are rolled back in the main tree. I bought version 2, and don't need the features of the new version 4.1, but if I understand you, it's perfectly fine for me to save on the measly $40 and pirate this product?

Re:official line?

[decade_null]

I you'd RTFA, you would have found a link to the official line of Intuit.

Re:Bank Web sites & paying online

[Rich0]

I do and it is free. However, it is much nicer to just enter a transaction and have it uploaded to the bank, than to enter a transaction in your software, and then enter it again online.

Part of the problem is that as for-profit enterprises Quicken and MS Money can spend a lot more on bank marketing. They can get their foot in the door with their proprietary standards much more quickly. Neither is going to want to make it easy for a FOSS package to play-ball...

Could Happen In Open Source, Too

[reallocate]

Might be bait and switch, might not be.

I don't use Quicken, but if the communication involved is, literally, only between the user and a financial institution, then I'm not sure how that capability could be disabled by Intuit.

If the Quicken relays data to a financial institution via Intuit (why?), then Intuit is within its rights to alter or eliminate that capability. (Doctorow should check the terms of his Terms of Use agreement. I'd be surprised that Intuit agreed to maintain that facility, without change, in perpetuity.)

The same thing could happen in an open source version of Quicken if data was sent to banks via a single central facility, if a code upgrade or rewrite was frustrated by the need to maintain the old code at that real point.

Re:What Intuit are doing is outrageous

[BinLadenMyHero]

Ok for the features, but he said the new version FIXED PROBLEMS of the old one. He has the right to have the product working as expected, thus to have the problems fixed. If they don't release a 4.1 version that solve that problems, he has the moral right to get a pirate the new version.

Try MoneyDance

[czei]

I got fed up with Intuit's bug-ridden software and abysmal tech. support in 2003 and switched to MoneyDance. The GUI isn't as slick, but I ended up spending way less time on finances because the program's well-written and well supported. Instead of talking to tech. support people on the other side of the world who are just reading from a support database you can get email back from one of the developer's in a couple of hours and your questions are answered quickly, accurately, and for free.

I looked at some open source programs at the time, but the big draw for me to MoneyDance initially was it will automatically download transactions from my bank, and there's a great matching algorithm to stick the transactions in the right budget category.

Equivalent of Orphaned FOSS Projects

[reallocate]

Doctorow, et al, are exercising their free market power by switching to something else. That's how competition works. Intuit did something that they don't like and they are going elsewhere. What subsequently happens to Intuit is irrelevant to them, even if they agree with you that it is "a blood thirsty, morally defunct, money grabing ass".

Unless Doctorow signed a contract with Intuit obligating it to maintain that service forever, without change, there's little he can do about it other than go elsewhere.

The equivalent ahppens in FOSS every day as developers abandon projects and leave behind orphaned software. Cooperation doesn't get you much when no one wants to coppoerate.

Relying on a for-profit company?

[crow23]

And since when has software not relied on a for-profit company? I use a mix of F/OSS and proprietary software. My rule is that I use whatever gives me the best result for my money (considering the value of my time+cost of software).

Personally, since it was already installed on my machine Windows XP Pro works fine for me. I've tried Linux several times. I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and it still requires more time to figure out than I care to put into it. If I have to put more than a couple of hours of effort into setting it up/using it/learning the other software it's NOT cost-effective for me to install. I'm better off buying proprietary software like Windows XP that I think works better out of the box than Linux. (Disclaimer: that was a personal opinion, I respect other's different opinions on the issue.)

On ther other hand, Firefox is great, it's free, and it was initially supported by a for-profit company, Netscape, releasing some source code and opening it up. The Linux distributors, Red Hat et al, provide some support (albeit indirectly) to Linux. If they weren't able to make a buck on Linux, it'd be a different piece of software today. So even free software gets some support from for-profit companies.

Until F/OSS software applications provide the same kind of reliability/usability as proprietary software then I will to continue to evaluate each piece of software on it's merits, not just on the fact I save a few bucks and have the "comfort" of knowing I can modify it if I need to.

Re:Alternatives

[tomhudson]

You also have the alternative to call them (Intuit) on this new policy and demand a refund of the price you paid for your product. This is a new policy that they re trying to apply retroactively, which you did not agree to when you bought the product:

As of April 19th, 2005, in accordance with the Quicken sunset policy, Online Services1 and Live Technical Support2 will no longer be available for Quicken 2001 and 2002 users.

If this wasn't a new policy, they wouldn't have to be doing it for 2 years worth of products (since 2001 would have been EOL'ed last year).

This is consumer fraud at its worst. My guess is Intuit is in a cash squeeze and needs to raise some $$$ fast.

We're going to see the same thing in a few years when Microsoft starts refusing to issue activation keys when you reinstall XP because it too will be EOL'ed.

the upgrade is free

[gonk]

Yes, over time, a company or a project has to move forward. Sometimes that leaves older versions out in the dark.

In this case, there is no evil plot. The upgrade to Quicken 2005 is free. They should have mailed you a CD. If they haven't, there is a very obvious way to contact Intuit; from the Quicken Bill Pay home page:

"To continue accessing your account, you must install your free copy of Quicken 2005 Premier* and upgrade to the improved Quicken Bill Pay.

[filling removed by me]

* If you have not received or have misplaced the new software we sent you, and/or the letter that came with it, please call us toll-free at 1-877-486-8844 for further instructions.

robert

Re:MOD RACIST PARENT DOWN

[Bendy Chief]

"Yellow journalism" refers to the use of yellow ink in the printing of an old sensationalist newspaper, The New York World.

It was brought to the pinnacle of sleaziness by William Randolph Hearst, who used his empire to destroy the hemp industry, foster anti-immigrant sentiment, and commit numerous other evils.

I realize it sounds racist, but it ain't.

Re:Cross-platform alternate - mvelopes

[pkiguruman]

Does it work with lynx?

Die Intuit Die!

[spiritraveller]

Retirement of Online Services for older versions of Quicken

In an ongoing effort to provide reliable high-quality products and services, Intuit periodically retires (also known as "sunsets") older versions of Quicken, thereby discontinuing Online Services & Live Technical Support for these versions.

Under this policy, the most current version of Quicken (currently Quicken 2005), plus the prior two versions, will be supported, subject to certain exceptions. Sunsetting older versions of Quicken allows us to focus resources on enhancing our products and providing support for more current versions, which are used by the vast majority of Quicken customers. The result: a better customer experience for millions of Quicken users.

They're making it sound like some sort of political decision... "for the greater good!"

What a bunch of assholes. You're a business. You sold a product. Now you're trying to take it back by disabling features that people have already paid for. You just can't polish that kind of turd.

I have Quicken 2005 (bought before I knew about this crap). And it no longer supports importing QIFs from my credit union. I asked my credit union about it, and they said Intuit wants somewhere around $50,000 to enable the new format.

Intuit needs to die.

Firewall it!

[oogoliegoogolie]

Yes, I've known that for a while, every time you perform an online transaction, even a statment download initiated from your banks website, quicken always connects to intuit, but you can block quicken from connecting to intuit.com if you use a personal firewall, and still dnload your transactions. When you attempt to download your transactions to Quicken, the fw pops up a notice that quicken wants to connect to some intuit.com website, eventhough I am connecting to my bank instead, and do I want to continue. I click NO and the transactions are still downloaded.

It's NOT just the Quicken Upgrade!

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

Inevitably, the new software will require new versions of something it relies on, like MSIE or ActiveX ... and those will refuse to run unless the OS is upgraded ... and the OS will require newer hardware.

So a $19 upgrade to Quicken can end up forcing the purchase of a $1000 new computer ... and some of your other software will have problems running in it so it needs to be upgraded too.

Re:But, you are trusting a company you don't trust

[jeffphil]

Switch to TaxAct for taxes.

I did last year after the DRM fiasco, and had no problems at all.

Re:Alternatives

[matastas]

Whoa, whoa. Hold up there, Tex. This is not consumer fraud in the slightest. This is product management at its core.

I do this stuff for a living. And I've never sold a product to a customer and given them an end-of-life (EOL) schedule at the same time. It doesn't work that way, mainly because you're never exactly sure when your EOL date needs to be. Sure, you have some guesses, but often they're wrong.

Very good reasons for product EOL are declining demand and support/maintenance costs. Tech. support and software maintenance cost real money, and if a company is seeing usage of a product drop off, why support it? Tell your user base, 'listen, you got 4 years out of a $50 product, that's pretty good. Upgrade for a discount and let's get you on something modern that makes both of our lives easier. If not, hey, good luck.'

Companies are not obligated to support/deliver product in perpetuam, else they'd be flat-ass broke. It's not fraud: trust me, there's enough legalese, and this is a common-enough and accepted practice, that it's perfectly legal. Do open-source developers support 10-year-old code builds, when modern stuff is better and more popular?

And yes, MS will eventually drop support on XP, when the time is appropriate for them. Just like they did Win95 and WFW. 'course, at that point, they may stop checking authentication on older SW, as the market will ensure that you upgrade to support new software/hardware. Who knows.

Parent Assumption Wrong, Article Correct (gasp)

[Somegeek]

Please mod parent -1 Self Important, Would Rather Post Than Read.

Here is a the link, (from the article quoted in the Michael's story), to the Intuit statement:

http://www.intuit.com/support/quicken/sunset/

where Intuit states (amidst the spin doctoring):

"As of April 19th, 2005, in accordance with the Quicken sunset policy, Online Services1 and Live Technical Support2 will no longer be available for Quicken 2001 and 2002 users. These services include online bill pay; downloading financial data from your bank, credit union, credit card, brokerage, 401(k) or mutual fund accounts; downloading stock quotes, news headlines and other financial information into Quicken; uploading portfolio information from Quicken to Quicken.com; and access to the investing features on Quicken.com including portfolio tracking, any watch lists you have created, One-Click Scorecard(TM), Stock Evaluator and Mutual Fund Evaluator. To continue using these services and maintain access to live technical support from an Intuit representative, you will need to upgrade."

Re:Parent Assumption Wrong, Article Correct (gasp)

[Thing 1]

I am a Quicken 2000 user. My online services were turned off a year ago.

I will give them not one more cent of my hard-earned money. I started with Quicken back before they used years as version numbers, and bought 5 or 6 upgrades. 2000 was "good enough" although they didn't easily handle put/call options.

But after last year, FUCK THEM! And they didn't even learn from it, I mean, it's not like my packets between me and my bank have to go through Intuit's servers and thus they have costs that they want to keep down by turning off my ability to communicate with my bank.

This is a money grab, pure and simple, one that I had to deal with last year and never will again.

Re:Alternatives

[Julian352]

The feature though is not a feature of software but a service that you've bought. They are not disabling any feature that does not require accessing their service. This is like saying that because I bought my browser, my favorite website must always be available for free.

There's generally no expectation of such from any service-based outfit that has a one-time fee. In general you are required to maintain membership within the organization to be able to continue use their service. Even GPL only requires you to distribute the code for three years after your release and not in perpuity.

Re:Irrelevant issue

[azaris]

From the Quicken Software License Agreement:

Your access may be limited from time to time, depending on the service provided by your internet service provider or your financial institution or other third party. You may be billed for these Online Services by your financial institution or other third party, not Intuit, and such financial institution or other third party may have its own service agreement which will govern the Online Services it provides. You agree to be responsible for all telephone charges associated with your Internet and Online Service usage. You may be required to register with Intuit or a third party in order to use Online Services. Your use of Online Services may be subject to additional terms and conditions. All Online Services are subject to change.

I see no mention of "perpetual use" there.

For the F/OSS lovers, try jGnash

[Noksagt]

People on most platforms might want to try jGnash. This is Free/Open Source Software that works on any platform with java. I haven't used it, but it is somewhat patterned off of GnuCash, which I am a happy user of & which others have asked about in this forum and on others. (Unfortunately, for all practical purposes, GnuCash is Linux/BSD-only, but will run under OS X and possibly even windows if you work at it.) The advantages of using something like jGnash are:

1. It costs nothing (though you can usually get Money/Quicken Free After Rebate)[
2. It is cross-platform
3. It will import QIFs
4. It uses double-entry accounting (though this might take some time getting used to)
5. No features expire
6. All upgrades will also be free & occur more frequently than once a year if needed.
7. Upgrades haven't broken import/export from old files from older versions

Diadvantages

1. Somewhat new (1.0 release was in 2002)
2. Missing some features which can be found in commercial software (some of which can be added, some of which won't be)

Re:MOD RACIST PARENT DOWN

[imperious_rex]

Yes, you should be offended. Racism is *everywhere*. Here's some examples of insidious racism that has crept into our lives:

white sale
white paper
white-out
"Dreaming of a White Christmas"

blackboard
black-out
blacklist
Black Forest
Black Sea
"Paint it Black"

brown bag
brown-out
Charlie Brown
UPS's "What can brown do for you?" ads

yellow journalism
yellow as slang for "cowardice"
yellow birch
yellow dog contract
yellow fever

pinky
pinko

and that's just the tip of the iceberg! For those who find racism in anything that refers to colors found in human pigmentation, life is a never ending struggle to avoid being offended. Your plight has touched us all.

What about the backup files?

[mhollis]

I have been banking at a large institution for many years now and, since they don't directly support Macintosh computers, I have downloaded the equivilent of a backup file to do online banking. The bank also allows me to do electronic bill-pay from their interface, so to have Quicken do it (as opposed to just record it) is not necessary.

I have no need to upgrade to Intuit's current application because of that, unless or until they change the format of their backup file (the extension is .QIF).

So for banks that allow you to download .QIF files instead of using the Quicken electronic transfer interface, the old versions may continue to be quite useful.

Expectations

[Eric Smith]

Why the BoingBoing submitter and Mr. Doctorow are so upset about this I don't know; when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?

Just like when a few years after buying a Ford truck, they disable the stereo and the rear window defogger, to encourage you to buy a new Ford truck?

Once I've purchased something, whether it's a truck or a piece of software, I expect it to keep working. If the stereo or the rear window defogger fail, I expect to be able to get them repaired (possibly at my expense). If the stereo and rear window defogger fail because Ford deliberately did something to turn them off, I expect to sue Ford's ass off.

If a feature of the software stops working due to a deliberate action of the vendor, I expect to call them up and have them turn it back on. Failing that, I expect to sue them, or join a class action suit.

If when I bought the software, the packaging and license clearly stated that the XYZ feature would only work for three years, that would be another matter.

Re:corporatist

[PickyH3D]

Hypocrit.

" make install -not war"

There is a difference between what he said and what you are arguing. He clearly was complaining that Michael made such an extreme exaggeration; "one company is mean to its customers, so all companies must be mean!"

You could easily follow that logic right into the open source world; not everyone is perfect and some people are downright ruthless.

" Michael's insight into how likely is this scenario in any other network-reliant proprietary software is relevant, even if it's a quick take on an evident problem."

I guess we see where Michael's possy of blind followers resides, which keeps his extremely biased postings on Slashdot's front page.

As a side note, when these posts are made I generally first consider the companies history and in this case I had never heard of anything bad coming from Quicken, so I honestly assumed that this was just another complaint from a disgruntled customer that was probably caught doing something he shouldn't (look at all of the baseless lawsuits against everything for my reasoning there, even though this was not a lawsuit). After reading Intuit's own website on sunsetting or whatever they called it, the policy does seem harsh, but in order to keep pace with technology I do admit it may be necessary (as crappy as that sounds). Banks don't want out dated and unnecessary duplication and we don't need multiple routes into the bank. Now, I say that more from the banking perspective than the user's perspective because I would be just as pissed if I did my own finances with Quicken. As a programmer, the idea of removing features that are not broken sounds a bit rediculous and I cannot imagine Intuit getting away with this policy. The company is making a mistake here, in my opinion, and it would seem more honest and make more sense if they asked the banks to make the announcement that the banks would stop supporting older versions of Quicken. Long story short, that's the only morally acceptable route in my book on this page, but I do feel Michael has a problem with posting extreme bias that usually defies logic.

Since we're bashing Intuit...

[Deagol]

Anyone know of a good Paytrust alternative?

I was horrified to get a notice from Paytrust recently about them joining with Intuit. I assume they were bought by Intuit.

Intuit has gotten so anti-consumer over the years. I almost wish Microsoft had won the lawsuit between the two companies, just out of spite.

When the Quicken yearly upgrade routine began in the late 90's, I migrated to GNUCash, then evenually went to using a basic OpenOffice spreadsheet for my account handling. I had been a loyal, paying user since the DOS days.

I was a major Turbo Tax paying customer for many years, too. Then they pulled that stupid DRM scheme a few years back. I tried an alternative suggested by a Slashdot poster (Tax Act, I think?), but that was only for a year, as I felt it was an inferior product. The next year, I went to H&R Block, which I'll proabably continue to do until I can file a EZ form again (maybe in a few years).

I absolutely love Paytrust -- I manage all of my bills and loans with it. However, I'm drafting a letter to physically mail to them once I've converted all of my accounts to an alternative or back to the check and post office routine again. I must tell them that Intuit has proven itself to be anti consumer, so I can't in god faith remain with an affiliated company.

I doubt they'll take notice, though. Such a shame.

This is the result of "software as a service"

[leereyno]

The moral of this story is, avoid software products that operate off of the "sofware as a service" model.

Imagine if you bought a car that relied on special gas that the manufacturer would stop producing in 3 years. Would you buy such a car?

Lee