January 30th, 2005

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Technology
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Quicken Retires Three-Year-Old Software

Cory Doctorow has a good rant on Quicken removing functionality from older versions of their software:

This is the dirtiest of pool imaginable. Bait-and-switch. I wonder if it’s even legal. You’d think that if Intuit had actually made a compelling new product that it could entice its customers to buy an upgrade; seems like they’ve decided that instead of improving their products, they’ll just extort money from customers who were stupid enough to buy from them in the first place.

I’m going to track this story, to see whether it dies on the vine or develops into a full-on PR disaster.

Comments: 5 Responses so far

Andrea
January 30th, 2005
2:13 am

This will be interesting to see. I’m still using Quicken 2000. I imagine they cut off financial links a while ago. I mostly use the software for A/R and A/P and just update things by hand. I’d been hoping to squeak by for another year without upgrading.

Incidentally, I came across an interesting situation with Quicktax. (I like to do my own business taxes.) I ran out of CCA and business-use-of-home fields on the Statement of Business Activities (T2124). Two attempts at contacting Quicken left me with bad advice. I finally got through to a rep who said the workaround is to open a second T2124 and then put half your income and CCA information on it. In other words, you act like you have two businesses. I was stunned that this was their answer. I can’t imagine I’m the only person to run out of CCA fields. How hard is that when you get a new computer and accessories?

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Dean
January 30th, 2005
7:42 am

Intuit’s site says that it is ’sunsetting’ old versions, and that is at least partially true.

However, while discontinuing technical support for old products is a normal, reasonable part of the software industry, dropping functionality is not.

I have no objection (nor should any reasonable person) to Intuit dropping technical support for old products, but to have important parts of those products stop working looks like planned obsolescence to me.

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Mark
January 30th, 2005
11:23 am

Like Dean said, this looks like a case of sunsetting, which in some ways is pretty usual. I don’t know much about Quicken, but it sounds like the online functionality was actually an online service offered to users of Quicken 2002 - so it might be more analogous to Microsoft stopping support for MSIE4 on their websites, if users had had to pay for MSIE4. Probably not illegal but certainly questionable - and 3 years is quite a short period in which to sunset software, IME.

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John
January 30th, 2005
12:08 pm

Also on /.

http://it.slashdot.org/it/05/01/29/2215223.shtml?tid=164&tid=187

fwiw, I use QuickBooks for my (very, very small) business. I got a call from Intuit about a year ago saying that they were sunsetting the product and I wouldn’t even be able to install it when the sunset was complete.

I haven’t tried to reinstall so can’t confirm/deny that the product has been completely crippled.

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Mike
January 30th, 2005
12:55 pm

What is even more frustrating is how short the ’sunset’period is becoming. Assuming that each product is available on Janurary 1st of it’s release year:

Quicken 98 - April 20, 04 - 6 Years

Quicken 99 — April 20, 04 — 5 Years

Quicken 2000 — May 18, 04 — 4 Years

Quicken 2001 - April 19, 05 - 4 Years

Quicken 2002 - April 19, 05 - 3 Years

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