Quicken Users Can't Put Stock in Intuit Reliability
Intuit's never-ending campaign to force customers to upgrade by crippling older versions of its software has reached a new low. Quicken 2005 owners have been receiving "discontinuation" notices that as April 30, 2008, all the program's online functions will be turned off. That's become Intuit's standard M.O., of course, but what makes it worse than ever is how the company has been ignoring complaints that one
Follow @infoworldIntuit's never-ending campaign to force customers to upgrade by crippling older versions of its software has reached a new low. Quicken 2005 owners have been receiving "discontinuation" notices that as April 30, 2008, all the program's online functions will be turned off. That's become Intuit's standard M.O., of course, but what makes it worse than ever is how the company has been ignoring complaints that one of those online features - downloading stock quotes -- often gives wildly inaccurate data.
Around this time each year we hear from Quicken (and QuickBooks) customers who've just discovered that a perfectly fine program they bought a few years ago is about to be rendered useless by Intuit under its arbitrary sunset policies. One cosmetic change this time is that Intuit is apparently sunsetting the "sunset" term itself, opting instead to now call its crippleware tactics a "discontinuation" policy instead. So Quicken 2005 - a program that can hardly do anything without phoning home for the latest popup ads Intuit wants to force on its users -- has recently been displaying this "Critical Notice for Quicken 2005 Users":
"As of April 30th, 2008, in accordance with the Quicken discontinuation policy, Online Servers and live technical support will no longer be available for Quicken 2005 users. Immediate Action Required."
This notice has been particularly unpleasing to those who have had problems getting accurate stock quotes via Quicken's online download feature. "Unfortunately, the problem does not appear to resolved by upgrading to the 2008 version," says a reader who first told us early last year about Quicken downloading stock prices incorrectly and Intuit's indifference to the problem. "I got the notice that Quicken 2005 would no longer be able to retain online functionality, so I did upgrade because updating stock quote info is one of the primary reasons I use the software. But it's having virtually the same problem I originally wrote to you about - specifically you go to update stock and mutual fund prices and it's hit or miss whether they update or not. There have been a large number of frustrated users writing about this on the Quicken community forums, so perhaps they are now taking action. However, as a long time user I do think it is wrong to market a product that seems to have become less and less dependable. Worse yet, until now it seems Intuit was unwilling to take the time to listen to their customers and respond to what many of us feel were serious errors with the product."
