Review by SanjeevP

Intuit is a despicable company now. This is the same that company came out with really functional and reasonably priced products in early 1990’s like Quicken, Quickbooks & Turbotax.

But somewhere in late 1990’s this company was taken over by the same crooks who run the Wall Street. Instead of attracting users to upgrade to their product’s new versions by improving them, like Apple does, the nitwits at Intuit blackmail you to upgrade to newer versions of Intuit products by taking away the functionality of earlier versions. For example they are blackmailing users into upgrading to Quickbooks 2009 by dropping support for payroll in earlier versions; and to Quicken 2009 by dropping support for online banking in earlier versions.

Now Intuit’s motto is to gouge the customers as much as they can by hook or crook (mostly) by extorting them to upgrade to a poorly functional and buggy newer version.

1. They are forcing Quickbooks users to upgrade to 2009 version by blackmailing them: dropping support for payroll in earlier versions.

2. The newer version, Quickbooks 2009, is poorly functioning & buggy (as detailed by other reviewers), not a better product. They have omitted useful features like the ability to add multiple downloaded transactions from the bank.

3. After the upgrade they provide very limited technical support. For all practical purposes there is no technical support. They do not even provide a tech support phone number to call. You can contact them from the web site when they provide you with a useless ticket number. Instead they direct to QuickBooks User Communities. After taking your money, they want other users of Quickbooks to provide you with technical support!nn4. So Intuit got your money, you got a buggy software with poor functionality, and no technical support. You cannot even do now what you were able to do in an earlier version.

What a trade off! Basically Intuit screwed you.

5. And heaven forbid if you sign for Quickbooks full payroll service. You will have money taken out of your account with no explanation and when you call, you will be on hold for hours! Here they follow the chapter from old AOL: make it easy to sign up and impossible to cancel! You can sign up for payroll service online by one click but if you have to make a phone call to cancel.

6. Quickbooks Payroll subscription is automatically renewed for year to year whether you want it or not. Call to the sales department is answered right away, and to customer support takes minutes and hours. After holding on the phone for minutes and hours, you will be forced to give up and the only way left to cancel subscription is to stop payment to Quickbooks on your credit card.

7. Online support to download transactions is very limited: for example I cannot download transactions for my credit card from Charles Schwab Bank.

Purchasing Quickbooks is, of course, just the beginning of the upgrade ordeal. Real nightmare starts when start installation and you start getting all those error messages. And while you waiting for technical support, you start browsing the user forums, and often your problem is solved by other users before the technical support even gets back to you. As one of the other users has pointed out, it is better to do a clean fresh install than upgrade. And if you able to install Quickbooks 2009, you will find that it has lost of functionality of the earlier versions, as detailed by other users. At the end you are left with the feeling: Intuit has screwed me.

Every time you deal with Intuit, you will be left with a bad taste and hate for this company. For example Quickbooks sales rep told me that he was giving me great deal for Quicbooks 2009 by selling me for one hundred and twenty and then I found out that i could have it at Amazon for one hundred(now they have raised the price). Not only they blackmail you into upgrading, every time you have to pay the price of newer version, there is no upgrade price.

I hate dealing with Intuit and dumped their Turbotax for Taxact in 2004 and am planning to dump Quicken for Mint. My only reason to use Quickbooks for business accounting is for payroll. This software is begging for competition. Are there any alternatives to business payroll like Quicbooks Payroll? Please leave your response in the comments section and help us dump Quickbooks.