TurboTax Customers Strike a Blow Against Intuit

Joined
27 November 2002
Messages
536
Location
California
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,821479,00.asp
Intuit is following in the footsteps of giants. Wrongheaded, mistrustful, overcontrolling giants.

When Microsoft released Office XP and Windows XP with product activation embedded in both products, consumers and pundits alike responded with a gigantic hue and cry. Many Windows users were angry and felt betrayed by Microsoft. Others were uneasy and wondered whether product activation in Microsoft's products was a grim harbinger of things to come in the software industry.

Well wonder no more – product activation has now made its way into one of the most popular software programs ever created, TurboTax. And, as an extra bonus, the latest release of TurboTax comes with Macrovisions's obnoxious C-Dilla malware. C-Dilla prevents you from copying the CD by disabling your CD-RW drive. That means it's monitoring your CD writing activities all the time. As if you needed more processes running on your machine. Early reports from some users indicate that C-Dilla has caused interference with other software and that it is inordinately difficult to get rid of, perhaps requiring a low-level hard disk format. And to make things even dicier, Intuit apparently did not overtly inform purchasers of the new TurboTax that C-Dilla was included and would be installed on their systems.

We published a heads-up about this recently (TurboTax Customers Upset By DRM ) and the response from TurboTax customers was overwhelmingly angry and negative in the discussion in the ET forum. Intuit has sown the seeds of a mass migration from its tax software to competitors such as TaxCut (see PC Magazine's review of TaxCut). If you read the posts in the discussion, you'll see that many come from longtime TurboTax users who have vowed not to purchase Intuit products again until the spyware and activation are removed.

Anger at Intuit wasn't just apparent in the ET and PCMag forums. The Member Reviews area on PCMag also had very negative comments (see the TurboTax review link above and scroll down to read member comments). And former Intuit customers aren't just posting in our forums, they are taking their case directly to Intuit.

In my own case, I was on the verge of buying TurboTax until I caught the review we published on PCMag and noticed the blurb about activation. Unfortunately, we missed the C-Dilla thing, but as always, sharp-eyed readers caught the omission and gave us a heads-up about it. When it came time for me to buy my tax software, guess which product I picked? You got it – TaxCut. I didn't give TurboTax a second thought. Nor will I until product activation and spyware are completely removed from the product.

There's a lesson here for all companies: don't put activation and spyware into your products. Microsoft got away with it to a certain extent because it pretty much has a monopoly (at least for the time being). It can do certain things with impunity that other companies simply can't get away with. Intuit is not Microsoft and it, along with every other software company out there, had better realize that and act accordingly. Otherwise, they had better get ready to lose customers to their non-spyware, non-activation competition.

We all need to make our voices heard. This is no time to hang back or be passive. We need to take a stand and boycott all products that have activation and spyware in them. We need to contact the companies producing these products and let them know that we won't be buying anything from them until the spyware and activation are removed. We also need to contact companies that aren't including activation and spyware and let them know that we value their products and that we'll keep supporting them by purchasing their products.

H&R Block, are you out there? Remember where your new flood of TaxCut customers is coming from. Keep the spyware and activation out of your products and you will keep your customers. Unlike Intuit.
 
Thanks for the heads-up. I'm glad I stopped using TurboTax a few years ago, after trying it out and finding that it had put advertising icons for AOL & other crap on my desktop (I don't need to pay for software that serves up ads). C-Dilla sounds even more sinister.
 
Bummer. Another vendor implemented a copy protection scheme that restricts/prevents people from stealing their product - what were they thinking?

If users like their product but don't want to deal with more processes running on their systems and/or are concerned about spyware, they can use the online version, easy peasy.

If, on the other hand, certain users are upset because they like the product but now can't copy and distribute it to their pals, Good News: they're just the type of customer Intuit wanted to eliminate.
 
Originally posted by caz-nsx:
I have been using Turbo Tax online for the last three years. Nothing to install. Seems like the easiest way to me.


Curious, is it equally secure to do this on-line vs. on your hard drive first?

I have been using TurboTax for over 10 years now, and I too do not like the idea of spyware, but that means I have to reload all the info on a new software .....?

They get you coming and going .... LOL!
 
Originally posted by queenlives:
Bummer. Another vendor implemented a copy protection scheme that restricts/prevents people from stealing their product - what were they thinking?

It's not the copy protection scheme, but the fact that their product installs crap on their customers' computers WITHOUT ANY NOTIFICICATION/WARNING that bothers me. Read the reviews on Amazon, they've pissed off a lot of legitimate customers.

Originally posted by queenlives:
If users like their product but don't want to deal with more processes running on their systems and/or are concerned about spyware, they can use the online version, easy peasy.

Yeah, if you trust Intuit not to SELL your private information to anybody that comes along! Or risk having your data hacked/stolen as in past incidents with H&R Block. No thanks, I'd rather not have my tax return data stored by a third party.
 
Originally posted by Hrant:

Curious, is it equally secure to do this on-line vs. on your hard drive first?

I have been using TurboTax for over 10 years now, and I too do not like the idea of spyware, but that means I have to reload all the info on a new software .....?

They get you coming and going .... LOL!

As mentioned above, it is not as secure because it is stored by someone else. It is secure when transmiting data to the site, which I believe is the riskiest part.
 
Originally posted by queenlives:
Bummer. Another vendor implemented a copy protection scheme that restricts/prevents people from stealing their product - what were they thinking?

If users like their product but don't want to deal with more processes running on their systems and/or are concerned about spyware, they can use the online version, easy peasy.

If, on the other hand, certain users are upset because they like the product but now can't copy and distribute it to their pals, Good News: they're just the type of customer Intuit wanted to eliminate.


The problem with TT activation is that it so strict. I read somewhere that a customer who activated TT with a DVD drive on his laptop, and later removed the DVD drive for a second spare battery, and had to RE-activate again.

What happens when the day comes that EVERY piece of software on your PC needs activation? If you increase your RAM, or upgrade your CD-RW, or whatever, are you gonna be happy doing 50+ re-activations for those pieces of software???

I'm paying money for software. I'm not going to ask for permission every darn time that I choose to upgrade my HARDWARE!!!!

Also:
the TT activation scheme certainly restricts any notion of fair use. I have 3 PC's (2 desktops, 1 laptop), and I alone have access to. What if I wanted to install the TT on my desktop to use initially, and then later port it to my laptop so I can use it when I'm travelling? The notion of fair use is toally killed with the TT activation scheme. Tax Software should not be treated like Windows OS - it should be allowed to be put on more than one machine, provided the user does follow the TOS and not share it with other people.

I have also read where someone installed TT, activated, then had a problem with their PC, and had to buy or acquire a new PC. TT would not allow them to re-activate the same piece of software on the new machine. The poor customer had to buy a second copy of the software just so he could finish his return on the new machine. That is DRM gone to the extreme.



[This message has been edited by NSX_Dreamer (edited 14 January 2003).]
 
Originally posted by caz-nsx:
As mentioned above, it is not as secure because it is stored by someone else. It is secure when transmiting data to the site, which I believe is the riskiest part.


In addition to the secure storage issue, what if you have to amend the return, or get audited a few years down the road. Are you going to be sure that the information will still be online when you need it? I'd much rather have the client version on my computer. That way when I'm done with the tax return, I save the software and the tax return files onto CD-RW.

Later, should the need arise to go back and amend the return, or look at the input worksheets, I can just reinstall the tax software and drill into the detail. Easy peesy, not so with the online version.
 
The online version spits out a PDF file at the end so you can print the file or save it for later reference. I can't remember specifically, but I think they only store the last one or two years. If you have to ammend a return it's a different form anyway. I would have no need to go back and play with numbers on a previous return.
 
Thanks for the link. I heard the TurboTax/C-Dilla install program writes secret code to the hard drive master boot record. I wonder if the uninstall process will remove that information as well...
 
has anyone noticed that quicken 2003 is a mess of ads as well? i bought it since i've used quicken for years but immediatley went back to version 2002. what a POS...

------------------
Kaye & Trish
2003 MDX
NSXCA #108
-My other car is a 767-
 
Originally posted by Number 6:
has anyone noticed that quicken 2003 is a mess of ads as well? i bought it since i've used quicken for years but immediatley went back to version 2002. what a POS...

I stopped upgrading Quicken several years back as well. I think I tried Quicken 2000, and found the data files to be so bloated (even when compressed) as to no longer fit on a floppy, so back to the old version of Quicken I went. I don't see any sense in upgrading this kind of software every year, my finances don't get fancier every year, so my software doesn't need to either.
 
The Activation & ad/spyware that's in everything these days is terrible. problem is computers & the internet make it too easy for them.

I remember years ago when people had computer games which required a serial number to install, and at the end of each level it asked for a random word from the user manual. (eg. the 9th word on paragraph 3 of page 14)
Problem was owners had to keep their manual nearby, and if u lost the manual... well, time to throw out the disks!

Thank goodness for game and application hackers who write 'cracks'. i don't condone pirating, but they save me a lot of time having to insert CD1 for every program/game i use!

maybe in the future i'll return to my old copy of Windows95 to avoid activation problems!
biggrin.gif
 
Back
Top