From Dave Farber's IP mailing list, this story from Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of People For Internet Responsibility.
Intuit is going through their usual forced obsolescence cycle for
Quicken, and just started notifying users that as of April's end
they'll be cut off from their banks if they don't upgrade to the new
version. Intuit even provides a handy link to click for upgrade
discount information.If you go to the "upgrade discount" page and investigate further,
you'll find that the price listed for an upgrade to the current
version of Quicken Basic is *identical* to that for a new user
install (that is, the standard retail box price).Given that this promised discount was zero, I decided to see what
Intuit customer service had to say about this. I tried both the
online chat and the live phone support. Both were answered without
delay, apparently in each case by someone — you guessed it —
"far far away."I spent a good hour-plus with these support people, who were polite,
apologetic, and utterly useless. Apparently I misunderstood the
meaning of the word "discount" — an upgrade discount turns out
not to exist for Quicken Basic — only for more elaborate versions or
versions bundled with other software: "Would you like to order these?"Seems like bait and switch, clean and simple. If you suggest this
to the support folks, they'll politely agree, then tell you that
there's nothing to be done, no escalation possible, have a nice day.
